The challenge
The year 2021 was full of change for Aston Martin, with the rebrand from Racing Point to Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant Formula™ (AMF1) and breaking ground on a new factory. The team also established plans to hire 200+ new people, all of whom would need to get up to speed very quickly. Bringing more change, the new FIA cost cap requires the team’s finance and operations groups to comply with new limits on the amount of money each team can spend in a season, demanding new thinking about how to ideally invest to optimize performance. Another key challenge involved providing brilliant content and experiences to the AMF1 fan membership program by enriching fan profiles. To increase its ability to attract more fans, the team needed help bringing together disparate data sources that could reveal insights to drive rapid and relevant marketing engagement. To embed a significant amount of change quickly, the team chose Cognizant as the digital transformation partner.
Our approach
The partnership between Aston Martin F1 Team and Cognizant presents a winning combination of racing knowledge and technology expertise. Our team of on- and off-site software engineers were fully embedded, working collaboratively as one—from discovery to sprint delivery—to engineer technology, optimize experiences and speed processes.
Cognizant built a data and intelligence layer on top of the current ERP system to gain better, more suitable reporting in the format mandated by the FIA. We also implemented infrastructure, cloud, data and application support to make sure that the technology in the organization works for all the new hires. Additionally, we performed audience segmentation to enable content curation for specific groups, boosting fan engagement capabilities.
We are helping the team integrate IoT for connected road cars with a unified premium customer experience. In addition, we are working to evolve facilities into smart factories, leveraging 5G and IoT to get the best performance and output. We also took over daily operations of the business, including the help desk, app support, app and cloud maintenance and monitoring—which was critical as we implemented the cost cap financial project.
