Naza Kia fast-tracks savings with SAP Business All-in-One for Automotive and IBM DB2

A subsidiary of the Naza Group of companies, Naza Kia Malaysia Sdn. Bhd. (Naza Kia) is the sales, marketing and distribution representative of Kia Motors Corporation. Naza Kia offers a comprehensive line of vehicles through more than 85 points of sale throughout Malaysia. Since its incorporation in 1996, the company has put nearly 170,000 vehicles on the road in Malaysia.

The Naza Group of companies is committed to continuing its regional and international expansion. As part of its growth strategy, Naza Group has standardized on SAP^® business management applications, which will help each of the group’s companies share operational and financial information. In parallel, Naza Kia has introduced a standardization program for the supporting database and hardware platform, designed to reduce infrastructure cost and increase operational efficiency.

Naza Kia uses SAP All-in-One software to manage its main dealerships, running on HP-UX systems with IBM^® DB2^® database software. The company uses the financials, controlling, materials management and sales and distribution applications, SAP Business All-in-One for Automotive, and the SAP Dealer Business Management solution designed specifically to meet the needs of automotive main dealerships and importers.

As the company’s IT Manager explains, “The advantage with SAP is that as soon as you have completed a transaction, it goes straight through to the financial, accounting, warehousing and related components. You can control and monitor transactions at branch level to see what is actually happening, and check if a specific transaction has generated a profit. Sales, order tracking and all of our operations rely on the same information.”

“As we grew, it became more important that all group companies standardized on the same software and database, to help us improve information exchange, increase efficiency, reduce complexity and lower administration costs.”

Enhanced performance at a lower cost
Nearly 400 people in 40 dealerships and 20 company locations access the SAP applications at Naza Kia, focus on developing customer loyalty by providing excellent service. The company also runs an extensive after-sales operation, its own auto stockyards, and an assembly factory for cars imported from Korea. As the company grew, all business management activities were consolidated to SAP software. One result was that the transaction volumes generated by the SAP applications were outpacing the existing hardware, which was due for a refresh.

At that point, Naza Kia took the opportunity to review its database strategy. “Working with our business partner, we considered price, performance, scalability and administration workload for the SAP database, and selected IBM DB2,” says the company’s IT Manager. “From our perspective, IBM DB2 scored very well on all counts, particularly on the reduced administration effort. DB2 Cockpit for SAP, for example, almost eliminates the need for separate database administration efforts.”

Naza Kia installed IBM DB2, again on HP-UX systems, over a period of six months.

The core production database of roughly 500 GB and the development, test and other instances were migrated with assistance from the IBM Migration Factory. Migration was completed smoothly and enabled continuous operations.

“DB2 provides improved performance and greater system automation at a lower cost of operation,” says the company’s IT Manager. “We purchased the DB2 license as part of our SAP software, and the lower percentage of SAP application value charged for the DB2 license means that we save costs immediately.”

Optimized memory management
Because database workloads and the environments in which they run change over time, a system tuned at one point in time may not be optimal at another time. Workload changes may occur in seconds (rather than days or weeks), which can impact response times.

Naza Kia uses IBM DB2 Self-Tuning Memory Management (STMM), which automatically optimizes DB2 settings to ensure best performance.

STMM uses intelligent control and feedback mechanisms to keep track of changes in workload characteristics, memory consumption, and demand for shared resources, and dynamically adapts memory usage as needed.

By automatically setting the memory parameters for the database, IBM DB2 9 simplifies the task of configuring the data server. This improves DBA productivity, freeing up the administrator’s time to focus on other important tasks.

“The advantage of DB2 STMM is that we can inspect it from the DB2 Cockpit for SAP,” says the company’s IT Manager. “If we wish, we can adjust the parameters easily, though in practice we tend to let the system do it for us. Features like this mean that DB2 requires less effort to manage and delivers lower operational costs.”

Faster, more compact data storage
During the migration, Naza Kia took advantage of DB2 compression features to reduce its data storage needs. DB2 Deep Compression delivers data storage reductions of around 65 percent on average for the largest three tables, delivering direct savings on disk space. Smaller data volumes can also be backed up in a shorter time, reducing the time window needed by two hours 45 minutes and enabling SAP systems to be returned to production more quickly.

Thanks to DB2 Deep Compression, more data can be stored in and processed from RAM, making more efficient use of I/O bandwidth and server memory resources. As a result, queries and other activities execute significantly faster. For a given processor and workload configuration, IBM DB2 Deep Compression can deliver a ten percent performance improvement, offering greater business results from the same infrastructure investment.

Meeting global ambitions
Naza Kia has been using SAP Business All-in-One for Automotive for four years across all its business units. The Naza Group of Companies has also standardized on SAP applications and DB2, regardless of the underlying hardware platform.

“We are focused on customer relationship management as part of our long-term expansion program,” says the company’s IT Manager. “IBM DB2 is an essential element in our strategy to standardize and optimize our IT infrastructure. The aim is to increase market share, and our experience with DB2 shows that it has the capability to scale up to meet our ambitions as we expand regionally and globally.”