Benefits

TV commercials show cars zooming and careening along narrow, winding country roads because the fantasy of performance--even unrealistic performance--sells cars. On the other hand, for millions of competition car racing fans, the sight of performance cars tearing up the track at heart-stopping speeds is a reality, and the reality is also good for sales, especially for the sale of competition car parts.

To keep its racing customers happy, Irvine, California-based Mazda North American Operations offers parts at dealer cost through its Competition Parts program, a significant cost advantage that makes loyal customers of the thousands of active racers who qualify for the program. However, the Competition Parts department was fielding up to 100 calls per day regarding parts information and availability. This created a frustrating bottleneck for staff members who run the program.

Ross Katz, Web development consultant for Mazda North America, explains, "We last printed our catalog in 1997. So, not surprisingly, customers were calling for the latest product information and asking if they could access this information online. But to meet their demands, we needed to do more than just put our catalog on a Web site. We also needed to integrate it with our inventory information so that customers could check actual parts availability. And ultimately, we wanted to take this one step further and enable racers to order parts and pay for them online. Considering our limited resources, we hoped to find an out-of-the-box package with rich e-commerce functionality."

Mazda carefully evaluated the best-of-breed e-commerce software on the market, and found that IBM WebSphere Commerce Suite, Version 5.1, best met its needs. One of the principal factors driving the decision was the functionality of the IBM e-commerce suite, which includes a full range of tested e-commerce software solutions. Says Katz, "WebSphere Commerce Suite, Version 5.1, is an out-of-the-box solution that has cataloging, payment processing, ordering, campaign management and reporting capabilities already in it, along with many other features we will need to grow our e-business. We have just scratched the surface of this product in terms of utilizing its functionality."

Another consideration for Mazda was the fact that IBM had recently helped the company create its Java(tm)-based Parts Availability and Vehicle Locator System for dealers. It was advantageous for Mazda to leverage this relationship, as well as IBM's knowledge of Mazda's computing environment.

With the Competition Parts catalog online, Mazda's Competition Parts department anticipates greatly reduced call-in traffic. What's more, the WebSphere Commerce Suite solution is expected to help Mazda increase parts sales to racers by at least 25 percent per year.

From an IT perspective, the WebSphere Commerce Suite solution helped Mazda preserve its investment in its legacy systems. The Competition Parts System leverages Mazda's existing Parts Availability System on its IBM S/390 Parallel Enterprise Server. Grant Uehara, systems manager of Web application development for Mazda North America, comments, "The beauty of our new solution is that WebSphere Commerce Suite not only integrates seamlessly with our back-end systems, it allows us to use a Java infrastructure we already had for retrieving inventory data."

Customer self-service with Web browsers
The initial release of the Mazda Competition Parts System provides Mazda's racing customers with a searchable online catalog and inventory information. Using any standard Web browser, customers log on to the secure Web site with a user name and password. Customers can search over 3,000 parts by part category, car model, engine type or year range. The system displays the product data along with the availability of the part and the estimated time of arrival for out-of-stock parts.

"IBM has invested millions in e-commerce and has really kept abreast of what's going on. We feel we can rely on IBM research and its products to enable us to be a successful e-business."

--Grant Uehara

In the near future, Mazda will add more functions to the site, including registration of customers to verify their racing credentials and qualify them for the Competition Parts program, online parts ordering and payment processing.

A complete e-commerce solution
Mazda is leveraging several of the components of WebSphere Commerce Suite, Version 5.1, including IBM WebSphere Application Server, Advanced Edition, IBM DB2 Universal Database and IBM HTTP Server.

WebSphere Commerce Suite, Version 5.1, powers Mazda's electronic Competition Parts catalog on a MicrosoftR Windows NTR server. The catalog content itself--product specifications, pricing and other descriptive data--reside in DB2 Universal Database. Also on this server is WebSphere Application Server, Advanced Edition, which provides the runtime environment for the Java components, and IBM HTTP Server, which connects users to the Competition Parts System over the Internet.

To provide inventory data, Mazda is leveraging its Parts Availability System, which it created in 1999 to access its IBM CICSR applications running on the S/390 server. The application uses IBM MQSeries to facilitate communication between the online catalog and the CICS applications on the S/390 server, which accesses product availability data, and forwards that information through MQSeries to the online Competition Parts System.

WebSphere Commerce Suite provides Enterprise JavaBeans(tm) (EJB(tm)) to access DB2 Universal Database. However, rather than rewrite the business logic involved in navigating through to the S/390 databases (using MQSeries and the CICS applications) Mazda simply customized the Java parts-availability inquiry so that it could be prompted by the EJBs to retrieve the necessary data. "We didn't have to rewrite our applications, which saved a lot of time and effort," says Katz. "The new WebSphere Commerce Suite, Version 5.1, Java programming model makes it easier than ever to customize Java code and provides tools for ensuring back-end integration with MQSeries and CICS."

Fast-track e-commerce features
The Competition Parts System is the first stage in what Mazda envisions as a full-scale B2B e-commerce initiative. In the near future, Mazda will extend e-commerce capabilities to its dealership body. "We know that WebSphere Commerce Suite, Version 5.1, will scale to new demands wherever we take this solution and will provide us with the necessary tools to help us create virtually whatever we want," notes Uehara.

The company plans to use many of the new features bundled with Version 5.1 to accomplish its expansion. Mazda will use WebSphere Commerce Suite Accelerator, which provides a variety of tools for setting up online or e-mail campaigns and discount structures, and performing other marketing functions such as cross-selling and rules-based personalization. WebSphere Commerce Suite Accelerator leverages business rules to match user behavior with product suggestions and empowers line-of-business users to create and deploy dynamic campaigns and promotions. Mazda also plans to utilize WebSphere Commerce Analyzer, another product shipped with WebSphere Commerce Suite, Version 5.1, for analyzing customer behavior to refine marketing techniques and increase the effectiveness of campaigns and promotions.

Uehara comments, "I'm sure that WebSphere Commerce Suite will give us ideas for service enhancements and ways to do things that we haven't even envisioned. That's one of the primary reasons we selected IBM and WebSphere Commerce Suite. IBM has invested millions in e-commerce and has really kept abreast of what's going on. We feel we can rely on IBM research and its products to enable us to be a successful e-business."

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IBM marketing representative or
IBM Business Partner.

Visit us at:
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For more information about Mazda North America, visit:
www.mazdausa.com

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This case study illustrates how one customer uses IBM products. Many factors have contributed to the results and benefits described. IBM does not guarantee comparable results. All information contained herein was provided by the featured customer and IBM Business Partner. IBM does not attest to its accuracy.

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