Mastering transformation in a data-driven world

Alexander Frisch

SVP/Global Head of Partner Management at Siemens

Two topics are front and center for all businesses: sustainability and digitalization. Environment Social Governance (ESG) has gone from optional to mandatory, and nearly everything is creating data around the clock. In this interview, Alexander Frisch, SVP/Global Head of Partner Management, explains how Siemens and its Distribution Partners are finding their way in this changing landscape.

What do you see as the most important strategic cornerstones in the electric wholesale business?

First of all, it is important for us as a supplier as well as for our partners to secure and win market share in the traditional segments. Here we expect more an evolution than a revolution, but still, this is the biggest part of the business.

The disruptive changes driven by digitalization and new players in the markets are revolutionizing the customer journey and the decision-making process. This brings me to the second topic, the overall customer and partner experience as a key differentiator for a successful electrical wholesale business. Perfect processes and customer proximity are required to adapt to changing buying behavior.

Last but not least, we foster our efforts together with our partners to be prepared to offer cloud- and datadriven solutions to the industrial and building markets. This requires a transformation of all stakeholders towards new business models and ecosystems instead of traditional supply chain processes. You cannot steer your company in the traditional way. In this regard, wellestablished market players can learn a lot from startups.

How does sustainability or ESG fit into this picture?

Our products and solutions, combined with the services of our partners, are perfect enablers for end customers to achieve their sustainability targets. A big contribution from Siemens is increased transparency on the environmental footprint of our products across the complete supply chain. Furthermore, we seek to understand how our applications and products are used. All product data sheets are calculated based on average assumptions concerning hours of usage, loads, etc. This gives you a good first impression and allows comparisons to be made between different products. By increasing the level of transparency within a customer project, it is much easier than before to predict and act based on real data. This brings much bigger savings than just deciding on product features.

Therefore, it is crucial, to stick to internationally accepted standards. Otherwise, nobody will be able to handle or compare the different data necessary to get a complete picture, for example for a given customer project.

Coming back to your strategic cornerstones. What do you expect from your electrical wholesale partners and what is in it for them?

Digitalization is not only a topic for processes and business models. More and more products are now based on digital instead of analog internal functions, which provides them with additional features. One of the biggest differentiators an electrical wholesaler can offer customers is consultative selling. And by doing so, the wholesalers offer considerable added value over pure online traders. Investing in this direction increases customer loyalty in the long run and is a foundation for future growth.

That’s clear, but didn’t you say that the customer journey is changing rapidly? What does this mean for the wholesaler?

You are touching on a very important topic. The decision-making process today involves more aspects and people than ever, and it starts much earlier in a project lifecycle than it did in the past. This requires a different go-to-market strategy, for example when launching new products. Taking this into account, we have been joining forces with our distributor network to streamline marketing messages and make full use of our joint communications networks. Our Partner Management Vision 2025 ensures that we are all heading into the same direction. At the same time, it involves introducing state-of-the-art tools to ensure fast and easy information exchange with our partners. We understand our distributor partners as a single point of entry for their customers. As such, we constantly strive to ensure highest quality service globally.

Your third strategic cornerstone of offering cloud- and data-driven solutions sounds like it might be the most difficult one to implement. Why should an electrical wholesaler invest in the development of new business models?

In the ecosystems electrical wholesalers are actively working in, you have many stakeholders who are close to the end customer as well as the decision influencers. However, they are often too small to invest in digitalization concepts and are not able to recruit enough projects to get the critical mass of data to run data-driven analysis. However, electrical wholesalers are well positioned in the supply chain and, due to their customer proximity, own the required domain know-how.

Thanks to their financial strength and their access to individual solutions and products from multiple suppliers, wholesalers can offer their customers competitive applications that help them to become more efficient and make processes more environmentally friendly.

This is what sustainability is all about and where digitalization with a clear purpose is key.