30. ECC-Forum: Transform or Die!

As mentioned in the welcome speech by Sabrina Mertens, the leader of the ECC Köln, one of the main problems became clear. The “Digital Transformation” is for many people intangible. According to an ECC survey, the insecurity regarding the cost-benefit as well as the lack of knowledge regarding the technical demands are barriers that will be addressed during this topic.

As incentive for the digitalization process, Sabrina Mertens emphasized the numerous benefits of the digitalization:

• Increase in client satisfaction
• Time saving in the daily business activities
• Revenues optimization
• Cost savings
• Increased employee satisfaction

The message is clear: the implementation of the digitalization is not that easy. There barely is a company that doesn’t mess up their first digitalization project. Besides the process thinking, Sabrina Mertens suggests that encouraging employees’ involvement along with a healthy start-up-mentality is a success factor of digitalization projects: collect the impulses of your employees, act agil and generate a good mistake tolerance.

Kai Hudetz, Manager of IFH Köln, represented the actual development: though the b2b market is strongly characterized by the external work, the online trade increases steadily, still less than in the b2c. The internet changes sales structures as well as the customer behavior. Also in the b2b the selective channel choice increases. Pure online buyers are still an exception – even under the smart natives.

Thus many b2b customers see enormous potential in special business marketplaces, like Amazon Business. Kai Hudetz emphasizes that the same persons buy in b2b as well as in b2c, therefore they have the same expectations for the usability, services and so on. The challenge for b2b merchants is to complete their offers with specific b2b-mechanisms like the customer individual prices.

Learn from others: valuable reports from experience

Karl Wehner, director of Business Development at Alibaba, provides insight into the fascinating business story of the Alibaba Group. The Chinese company grew to be one of the world’s largest trading facility with innovative thinking. Just one of the impressing numbers of the enterprise group: about 42 million packages are orchestrated daily over the Alibaba network. His recommendation regarding the digital transformation in companies: “Embrace the change.”

Many b2b companies go through their strong external work as well as the stable sales structures as inhibitors of the digitalization. Daniel Herr, head of marketing at EJOT, recommends to face it with an active anchor of the online channel in the sales strategy. With a fitted incentivierung such as the feared loss of sales of the external work will be settled. E-Commerce has to understood as a tool of the sales and as discharge of the sales team, so Daniel Herr.

The company soldan, a special provider for chambers equipment, encounters the digitalization refreshing: thinking from the customer´s perspective and understand it as an opportunity for the emotional customer connectivity. “Just try things” is René Dreske´s motto for digitalization, the Manager of Hans Soldan. A clear differentiation and a distinct USP is a key element for success in the digital world. Who doesn’t define it clearly is changeable and will have difficulties, affirms Dreske.

Peter Sappert, Manager of Fassbender Tenten, and Tobias Schlepphorst, product manager eBusiness & Enterprise Mobility at GWS provided an insight in the transformation and professionalization of the Fassbender online shops. They applied an open-source-shop system as their first steps into the topic and in order to gather experience. Key points for the following system selection were for example the processes in the background as well as the having the possibility for a central master data maintenance.

As well as at Oiagen, one of the world wide leading bio technolody companies, the digitalization didn’t work smoothly and Dr. Thorsten Harzer, Global Head of e-commerce at Ogiagen reports many lessons learned. One of them: the digitalization doesn’t apply just the e-commerce – it changes the way people live and how companies work. The digitalization of a company has to be thought integral, from the supply chain over the production and development to the sales and administration. His tip: think outside the box. Keep an eye on the trends and developments of the digitalization and get also suggestions from beyond your own market.

Thomas Heim, Senior Vice President Brand Positioning and Distribution at Bosch Power Tools, sees a big advantage of the digitalization in the extinction of inefficient value chains. Therefore, cooperative supplychains and standardizations in the data exchange are not just mandatory for the realization of the digital businesses they also contribute to the cost reduction and efficiency increase.

No Action is no option

The referents agree that companies, which want to be successful in future, have to operate taking into account digitalization. Customer focus as well as a healthy experimenting are the most important success factors in the e-business. Companies must have the courage to make mistakes and learn from them.

Happy Birthday

The 30st ECC-Forum – parsionate congratulates the ECC-Club for the successful series of events! It really was fun to be part of it again. The presentations from the experience as well as the instructive research results, combined with the exciting discussions and conversations in the breaks make it worthwhile for the visitors.