MG Motor India looking at the next level of transparency: Manish Patel, CIO

You must have viewed the Benedict Cumberbatch (or, Dr. Strange in Avengers) advertisement on TV, where he can be seen talking to his car! Well, it's the car featuring MG Motor, when it had arrived in India.

At the SAP NOW India event, held in Mumbai, Manish Patel, CIO, MG Motor, discussed the purpose of brand – the MG Motor growth story and vision. He said that MG Motor started setting up in 2017 across India. MG Motor is strongly focused on four pillars. These pillars are: Innovation, customer experience, diversity, and MG Seva. We focused on these pillars. Patel is primarily focused on the first three pillars.

From a brand perspective, MG Motor India is a 5-year-old company. We have products that are technologically advanced and tech-savvy. We chose the product that was more advanced technologically.

MG Motor India has a growth ambition with a long-term brand aspiration. Patel noted that growth has been fairly good. Last year, MG Motor India had sold 50,000+ cars. This year, it is expecting around 80,000 cars being sold. MG Motor India is credited to bringing the first connected car to India. We are going to repeat the new EV with equal technology, or more, in 2023.

The proliferation of EVs has increased the demand from a sustainability, safety and technology standpoint. The Indian Government is also giving thrust to us, and to all other OEMs to ensure EV is a part of an OEM’s portfolio. We contribute in the way to direction of the Government.

The consumer behavior is rapidly changing into a digital first or digital-centric journey, where buyers now want to research, configure and experience the vehicle online, make up their mind about a particular model, variant and color. There will be digital savvy buyers who would book the car online, and visit the dealer to only to test drive and determine the next steps.

Innovation being one of the key pillars for MG, over period of last three years, MG has thrived to make the customer journey go complete digital. Consumer can book their favorite MG online. They can pay the full on road amount, and request to deliver the car at their home or office.

MG’s car configurator allows customers to configure and accessorize the car. They can save and share the configuration. The centralized configurator is available on the MG Experience Cloud (website), and at dealerships for customers to experience the vehicle of their choice.

MG Motor India has augmented the digital car exploration and buying experience for the new-age customers with eXpert and e-Pay. While eXpert takes a customer on a journey to get a holistic digital experience, e-Pay enhances it by adding flexibility in online financing solutions, making the journey from discovery to delivery customizable and customer-centric. MG e-Pay will augment the customer journey from loan application to loan approval in just 5 clicks.

According to Patel, we provide lot of technology into our vehicles. We would like to stay ahead of our competition. We also have one of the most advanced voice recognition technology. Usually, vehicles have knobs to control the AC or radio. With the functionality of VR provided in our vehicles, one does not feel the need to do the same. The owner can simply focus on driving the vehicle.

SAP forms the backbone of MG’s dealer business suite. Its centralized business management solution integrating pre-sales, sales, and post-sales journeys of the customer. SAP C4C Sales Cloud forms the key pre-sales application used by relationship managers across all the sales touchpoints. In addition, APIs hosted on SAP CPI are provided to all third parties for lead generation.

Digital leads with pin code are automatically qualified and assigned to dealers based on custom geolocation routines using Google Maps APIs. SAP C4C Service cloud is the centralized solution, which gears the MG Pulse hub agents with 360-degree customer information to field the queries and complaints from the customers.

SAP DBM is the core ERP for the dealer sales, service, and warranty operations. Fiori Apps widely digitize the service lane experience. MY MG App with SAP Hybris as the back end is native app, which powers customers to manage the post-sales journey. It enables customers to book, track, and pay for the vehicle services. Regular notifications keep customers updated about upcoming services.

SAP is our core partner to help us digitize the entire customer experience journey. We are now sitting with five years’ worth of data. That’s a lot of data! We are now moving to an advanced analytical platform. We want to give a better, deeper and a more transparent customer experience to our customers. MG is taking the digital customer purchase journey to next level with MG Comet EV – Stay tuned for hear more about it!

The vehicle charging infrastructure is rapidly developing and moving at a fast pace, thanks to the push from the Government of India. Every MG dealer is equipped with an ultra-fast charger. The current MG EVs can be charged in about two hours or less. The charging port in an EV in India is currently neutral to all EVs. Eg., MG Motor can charge via Tata, and vice-versa. Hence, it makes it easier to charge an EV, so far as the charging KW matches.

The shelf-life of an EV battery charger is 8 to 10 years. Draining of the battery during a trip is dependent on the functions being used. There are certain functions like the head lamp and IP illumination that are not dependent on the core battery. They run on the 12V battery instead.