Genc Begolli: CIAM at AUDI - A Constant Transformation in a Worldwide Digital Ecosystem

So I'm really delighted to give you today. Some, yeah. Some insights into the topic of customer identity management and maybe also some X management within Audi ag. So when I first thought about identity management and management at a vehicle yeah. Car manufacturer it's of course related to our vehicles. So I just want to briefly show you a short video, but might explain the challenge we are facing today.

So when, okay. When identity management started, of course it has been with the keys. So with the keys, you, you were able to unlock the vehicle, but as I've seen in the last spot, it changed tremendously. So within today, you're possible to lock in with your, with your mobile form, even. So you have a, a digital key and enabling such yeah. Complicated features like technically complicated. Of course you need, you need identity and access management, which is digital and which is working worldwide. So I would like to present our customer to you.

And in the first, in the first step, I would like to show you maybe some organizational and yeah. Set up and our business model in order to better understand why are things that Audi, how they are. So our customer usually, yeah, so customer and there's the OEM. So the car manufacturer, which is basically me within the car manufacturers, we manufacture cars, we build cars and, but we are not selling the cars. So this might sound weird, but this is how our business model is working. And nevertheless, we have digital services, which our customer can directly consume from us.

Why are we not selling the vehicles? I think it's more or less a, a historical setup.

And yeah, our business model is working at that, that we are, that we are selling our vehicles to so-called importers. So there's an importer, for instance, in France, which yeah, buys the vehicles from us, from our, from the common manufacturers and therefore can provide thes to the French customers. But the import font is not selling thes either. So he's selling thes to the dealerships and the dealerships.

Then they, these are the ones who are really selling the vehicles to our customers. And nevertheless, the importer has some digital services. The importer might have, Porwal providing some events and stuff like that to our customers. And of course the dealership also has some digital services. So you might be able to online to have some reservation of a vehicle to reserve some test driving, things like that.

That, of course only the one who's really sending the cars can provide. So there are a lot of, yeah, a lot of players let's say, and then in and Audi G having digital services, but also, but also providing then in the end, the, the cell chain or the, yeah, the chain that the wheel car can be delivered to our customers. Nevertheless, the customer doesn't really recognize that there are different players in the, in the field. So for the customer, it's only Audi.

So doesn't matter if, if there's some digital services from the dealership, from the importer, from the OEM, for the customer, it's always Audi. It's really important for our setup.

Next, I would like to give you a short introduction now related to the identity provider. So I would like to focus on that topic further. So there is a center identity provider provided by Audi ag. So basically by, by us, by the car manufacturer, within this identity provider, usually also the cars do the lock in with, but further, as I described before, there are also other players using the centralized provider. So there are subsidiaries, like for instance, Audi sports, which is not part of Audi G, but it's a subsidiary. They provide a services in here.

It's Audi shopping where it's a, Porwal where you can log in and yeah, do nice things as a customer, but there's not enough. Of course, also you have not Audi ag or not even subsidiaries, which do connect to our central IDP. It might be that there's an importer, a digital service from the Porwal side. So they do have a local identity provider, but they also connect to the central identity provider for some services, which are related to our joint customer base, let's say, and this is now like decentralized setup, but there are also a decentralized setup.

So there are subsidiaries which have their own identity provider, which have their own digital services, which are at least from the few of the event provider not connected directly to the centralized. And of course there are also local identity providers within the specific markets worldwide, which have their own identity provider solutions and which do provide digital services to our customers and to several of them, to be honest. And so the setup is that there's a centralized den provider, but there is also like decentralized UHD providers.

And this is basically what our customers are facing today. The next yeah.

Insight, I would like to show you some more about the centralized Audi den provider and about some challenges we face at that point. So now we have the Audi ID. So it's the, it's a customer name for our centralized provider solution. And of course we have the vehicle set up, it's called my Audi and also connect.

So you, you are able to log in within the, my app for instance, and the vehicle to have some digital services, you can send some, yeah, for instance, some, some gear locations to your, from your app to your, to your vehicle, that the vehicle directly, when you are into, when you're going into your vehicle, that you are directly pointing into that direction. So that's basically the connect functionality. But as I said before, we are also providing the central solution for, for other topics. So in here, it's now the tradition shop. Yeah. And we have the collection shop.

We have it's for instance, also our France one, one our, of our importers is using the Audi ID for their local yeah. Customers. So they have a so called seamless login, which is from our standpoint really important. And there's also, let's say Brazil driven with some kind of setup front of the customer, and there are other touchpoint.

So, but this, I would to say that there's of course the decentralized, which is have shown before, but there's also the decentralized set, which yeah, there are a lot of internal and internal within LDG, but also a lot of external providers products, which are yeah. Provided to our customers, to our joint customers. And therefore the, the having a lock in which is seamless for our customer. So the customer can jump from one website to the other, for instance, having some singers and on functionality is really important at that point of time.

And as there are a lot of different players, which yeah. Might be aware of, there are a lot of products that are a lot of different teams being able to integrate against our solution. Also it's really important to yeah. Give easy access for them, but also, yeah, not to, let's say not to hinder them, to integrate and to, to provide this kind of service to our customer. That's one that, so having our, our, our ID solution, I would like to show you maybe some, some other challenge we are facing. So of course you might, you might be aware that ODG is not a local German car manufacturer.

We are sending cars into over than hundred countries. And of course our digital services are also widely, widely spread around world. So basically this is now a map which shows the, the rollout. So to say of our centralized identified solution, you will see that there's for instance, some, some north American, some south American countries, there's of course, some Asian countries there, European countries and rolling out such an identity solution is of course related to a lot of laws.

So it's not only GDPR, which is fair, which is present in Europe, but there are also some specific laws in BR Brazil. There are some specific laws in some Asian countries. And what is really, really important for us is that really, of course, legal that we have a legal and then provide a solution. So one of the main challenges being rolled out internationally is yeah. Knowing all the laws, of course, being able to adapt our solution frequently, Fastly to being also like, yeah, legally correct in every country.

But additionally, it's not only about laws, but it's also, there are about the culture and the yeah. Digital natives let's say in, in different different countries. So specifically if you see Asian countries, they are way ahead being digitalized. Then we are here in Germany to be honest. So also our then provider solution of course, needs to adapt on that. So being able, not only to cover things that are needed for German customers, for Beijing customers, for French customers here in Europe, but also internationally being able to yeah. Deliver some services, which are used and in Asia.

So this, I think one of the key topics being so widely rolled out one word and having, yeah. The really positive, positive effect that, that our services are worldwide used. Yeah. Coming now mainly to, to the last topic. So having now the challenge being rolled out internationally, having of course, international laws, having different customer needs, but in addition, so going back from, from legal and with us, we decided, and I have to explain this picture. We decided to have a microservice architecture. So you might notice there's a, like a big bubble in the middle.

This is mainly our, our like centralized provider solution. So the very, the very basic is of course standardized with international standards. Like we mainly use augment connect, which of course is internet national known. So really important for us that everyone want the world, every, every dealership, every importer, but also every subsidiary, everyone who is, who would like to use the Audid can use the Audid and can use the Audi ID with some international standards. Like my Deconnect.

So this was, I think, one of the main challenges that we provide now, some safe services that not a, like a centralized team has to onboard somebody being able to log in or to use log in. It's like, like that, but specifically do it by own. So this is, is such a big company with so many interactions, our customers, this was one of the main topic within this year. So we provide this now to our, to our group, everyone who would like to integrate and has some nice services being part of the Audi world, the Audi ecosystem is now able to do it by themselves.

And this at least I believe is one of the key topics to scale. So in order to, to deliver nicer products for customers, we need such things. And further, you might notice the, like the little ones, the little bubbles around the big one in the middle, and although cubes, not bubble, sorry, but the cubes, the cubes are small microservices.

We have, as you might also have in your own companies. Of course, not only the very, the very, yeah, let's say clean and the very best integration. So one of the part, one of this cube is for instance, some legacy world. So we decided not to integrate everything in our core product, but to have a microservice which covers legacy world. So in there, the process are still working. We need to not to adapt the process, but still we can, we can provide the features which are used by our customers to also the legacy world.

Another cube is for instance, also the, let's say some GDPR regulations we have to, we have to fulfill. So of course the identical providers, only one, one topic in the Audi ecosystem having customer data. And once there is a, yeah, one of our customers would like to have say, extract of this data, this microservice is getting the data from the identical provider. And of course all the other systems have their own microservices. So they join together the, the customer data, which is requested by our customer.

And yeah, basically there, there are a lot of microservices for a lot of topics, which we do not see within our core product. And that's why we would like to be yeah. As flexible as possible to fulfill all the challenges I just showed to you. Okay. So basically that's my presentation. Yeah. Thank you very much. You're interested in, in my presentation. So if you would like to use the Audi ID, just go to my audi.com and you're there able to create your own audiod.

And if you have any further question, I will be in the speaker room later on, but there's also QR code where you can contact me directly with the information inside.