September 2018 - AFSMI at Forum Dienstleistungsmanagement of University Hohenheim
The program of the event Link had the intention to discuss challenges digitization creates for service business development strategies and how can digitization can be used internally, how to use it for additional value for customers and how to create new market and new business with digitization.
This event was hosted by Prof. Hadwich from University Hohenheim and our former AFSMI president and honorary member Dr. Walter Duschek moderated the event in his perfect manner, as we all remember him!
Let me summarize the key learning I got from presentations from Markus Sieber (Spirit/21), Ivo Siebers(Thyssen-Krupp), Ulrich v. Stael (John Deere) and Gerd Duffke (Trumpf)
"Is Service business development a Chess or Poker game?", Markus Sieber summarized, in a complex and fast world we are today, to determine outcome like in chess is getting more complicated. You need to try, test, pilot more and take a risk. Key for success is having employees, who act as employers to drive the success of their company. It works, as the successful turnaround at Spirit/21 was based on this change.
At ThyssenKrupp, Ivo Sievers described there is a huge change process for elevator maintenance technicians in place. Service software applications based on Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence help every service technician to increase availability of their assigned elevators, help to increase first time fix rate and reduce overall spare parts inventory. What was interesting to see, that digitization gives the technician more responsibility and control of the overall process. His knowledge, feedback and cooperation with digital tools contentiously drives improvements for the customer, for his work and for ThyssenKrupp.
Key Learning is that the human factor is key for success of new service business models supported by digitization.
At John Deere, Ulrich v. Stael described John Deere's effort to provide anonymized usage data to Sales and Service Partners to enable them to better help and support their customers, means farmers. I learned from this presentation there is huge investment from all parties (fertilizer, pesticides, machinery) in digitization and into new go to market models. New services will be built, which help the farmer to be more productive and successful. Will be very interesting to see, whether there will be winners and losers.
Trumpf, a family owned industrial equipment company with excellent sales, profit and overall growth numbers is also known for their focus on the employee and the customer. Gerd Duffke from Trumpf showed, how essential people development in this age of digitization for Trumpf is to keep the knowledge and experience in the company, which is essential for the success of Trumpf. Several prices 1. Preis Deutscher Bildungspreis 2017, Winner European Excellence Award in Human Resources and third price in Demographic Excellence Award 2015 show how important for a digital and Hightech driven company like Trumpf the human factor is.
In summary we closed the event by being surprised, that during moderation we mainly talked about the employee or the customer and not about technology!