CIO-France Online Conference : Joining forces on Data democratization

Focus on Renault testimonial

Some feedback on the collaboration between Renault and the start-up askR.ai. >> original article (in french - Front commun sur la data : retour d’expérience de Renault <<

Top/down strategy request appropriate intermediaries

Since 2014, Renault has clearly announced its digital transformation ambition. A corporate vision that matches the “top/down strategy” definition of a company strategic orientation pushed from the top. The following years saw the creation of a new entity called “Renault Digital” to internally develop apps and softwares to answer business units’ needs. In this transformation process, data exploitation is key.

Jean Dumas, BtoB Customer Data Manager at Renault, started working on data issues in 2015. This is the reason behind his participation in the CIO France conference “Joining forces on data democratization”. As a CRM project manager, his experience feedback is all the more relevant as he is now responsible for making these positions more "data autonomous".

Choosing a manager from the field, in order to find new data tools and to make sure they are adopted, enabled a down-to-earth approach. It is about overcoming daily issues that face Renault distributors and that Jean Dumas has also faced.

Accepting feedback (or the absence of feedback)

Jean Dumas closely monitors the implementation of a new data portal for his teams from 2015: Fleetb@se, a dashboard helping operational teams accessing key information on their local market.  This tool was a first response to business users needs.

 However, our head of project quickly became aware that this new tool was not used enough.  He started looking for a solution that would make users more autonomous without entirely rebuilding an already operational system. It only requires a simple, instantaneous access that can be used by different types of users: business users tend to give up on a tool that is not fast enough.

Jean Dumas turned to askR.ai in 2017 to add our data bot to the portal: users could ask their questions and receive an answer instantaneously, without having to dig for the answer in FleetB@se. The number of connexions were multiplied by 7 in a few months !

Thanks to its relevance, the intuitive solution sparked off a “wow effect”. After all, every car dealer’s dream was simply to get a precise and instant answer to a question they had in mind when opening FleetB@se… Question that can now be asked to askR.ai, 24/7.

Develop data exploitation with a double approach

This CIO-Online conference testimonial proved that it is complex to offer business users a solution that meets both their daily issues and the company strategic orientation. When talking about data and users, different needs combine with multiple approaches and numerous tools. Last but not least, every piece of data has a different value according to its accuracy and its timing.

Decision making comes from data, which makes easy access to data for business users paramount. That is why IT and business teams have a common stake: IT is in charge of framing technical resources, and business teams, the only ones able to decide on their true needs. This, even within the framework of a top-down transformation strategy.