Siemens Shared e-Business Environment

Posted Thu, 10/23/2008 - 20:00 by admin

I led the client relationship and series of initiatives, over a two-year period, which established the global e-business sales strategy and architecture and launched a range of e-commerce sites, customer portals and one industry marketplace. Siemens' first global initiative to be run in North America.

Situation:

In 1999, I co-led discussions between my firm, ZEFER, and the new CIO of Siemens Corporation, Dana Deasy, who was responsible for Siemens internal IT in North American. Siemens had just finished implementing SAP over 350 times – for nearly every business unit in every country. He observed how suboptimal this was and, as they were now facing the Internet boom, wanted to take a more strategic and cost effective approach with e-business. We agreed this would one of his major thrusts in his first 100 days in office.
 

Challenges:

 Siemens Operating Companies (SOCs) were highly decentralized and bureaucratic. To the extent that SOC CIOs took orders from anyone besides their immediate CIOs, their allegiances tended to lie with their global parent CIOs in Germany and not with the brand new CIO of the North American holding company. Getting them to work together on any common or shared infrastructure for e-Business would be very challenging, especially given their recent precedent with SAP. 
 

Approach:

 We started with a 12-week strategy engagement, a 20-person team representing more than half the North American SOCs and a key question that we aimed to answer:  Can decentralized Siemens Operating Companies (SOCs) share a common e-business platform, agree on standards and collaborate on projects?

The strategy engagement led the team through three workshops: (1) Principles – established current inventory of assets and established guiding principles for working together; (2) Opportunities – developed a qualified list of opportunities and selected 3-6 with the highest potential business impact; (3) Actions – Refined business case and action plan for going forward with this integrated set of opportunities.

Presented our final recommendations first to the Siemens North American Presidents Council and then to the global Management Board. They approved the vision and a multi-phase program to establish the Shared e-Business Environment (SeE). Through trips to Germany, socialized and refined the “global pilot” with the global CIOs, the first to be driven from North America.  Over the next 18 months, led the Siemens SeE Program that:

  • Architected, prototyped and integrated e-business platform
  • Developed and executed methodology for working with multiple SOCs to envision, define & prioritize integrated e-business elements
  • Designed, built & launched four e-business solutions using e-Commerce, Personalization, Content Management, Single Sign-on, XML, EAI & e-Billing
  • Developed/launched first Customer Marketplace, e-Utilities, providing a single face across all of Siemens Operating Companies to their utility customers in Austria and surrounding countries

Project universally recognized as most successful e-business effort in Siemens history. Dramatically accelerated time to (Internet) market for several SOCs. Reduced and avoided significant costs through shared infrastructure. Captured business opportunities across SOCs and countries that were otherwise impossible (e-Utilities).
 

Results:

 Project recognized as most successful e-business effort in Siemens history. Dramatically accelerated time to (Internet) market for several SOCs. Reduced and avoided significant costs through shared infrastructure. Captured business opportunities across SOCs and countries that were otherwise impossible (e-Utilities).

My Role:

 Program Manager for the initial strategy engagement. Responsible client executive relationships after that (e.g., Dana Deasy and global CIO in Germany). Led the Account Management team (in consulting firm) and responsible for client P&L, which accounted for 24% of ZEFER's revenues.