When ARC Europe Group rolled-out its new SPARX platform, it was a major milestone and quite a coup. An automated system to transfer assistance requests and related data from a car manufacturer’s backend to a club’s back-end, SPARX initially supported to manage more than 50 cases on its first day after launching in July.

At this stage, SPARX enables real-time services and data exchanges from one ARC’s B2B client (OEM), a top premium carmaker utilising a central call centre to handle customer interaction, to ACTA Assistance, a wholly owned subsidiary of ARC Europe Group. It will gradually expand to other clubs and other use-cases.

Under development for more than nine months, SPARX provides ARC Europe Group and its network partners, service providers, with a digital platform to provision service requests from ARC Europe Customer, ensure real-time data exchange and updates between ARC Europe customers and service providers.

It will also allow new Management Information capabilities for B2B reporting of extended data set, support connection to ARC Europe customer data warehouse. It will also facilitate management of cross border cases by the automation of data exchange between Service Providers.

Previously to SPARX, the management of OEM’s cases required manual operations, mostly copy and paste of information from one system to another. The new platform allow to automatize these and all correlated updates reducing the workload per case, improving quality by reducing occurrences of human errors. It also allow eliminating staff training previously required to handle OEM’s cases through different interfaces.

SPARX introduces two important middlewares:

  • The Connector: it links in SPARX with the Customer’s back-end, real-time transformation of customer service request into SPARX service requests. ARC Europe developed the connector to a dedicated OEM.
  • The Bridge that links in SPARX with the Club operating system. The bridge allows decoupling SPARX from the actual implementation of each Club’s back-end, always specific.

The ACTA team implemented the first bridge ensuring proper mapping of SPARX services requests and data with internal ACTA system, CACTUS, and real time update of CAC cases managed by ACTA.

Bridging the IT and operations functions on both sides involved extensive testing, process refinement and software adjustments.

“This is just the starting point: technology is the enabler, the goal is the business” , said ARC Europe Group CIIO Arnaud de Meulemeester. “Currently, seven clubs have started their connection to SPARX. We have also started to implement a Connector to another carmaker, a mass market OEM to support its specific demand, use case. We are looking to have our entire Service Partner network utilizing SPARX before the end of 2018 and to create immediate value for them through an enhanced support of cross-border cases and for our customers in order to support our business growth.”

ARC Europe S.A.
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communication@arceurope.com
diana.dumois@arceurope.com
Diana Dumois