Interview with Michael Nilles on "What Makes Leaders Successful in the Age of the Digital Transformation?"
Michael Nilles is Member of the Group Executive Committee and Chief Digital Officer of Schindler and also serves as CEO of Schindler Digital Business. BISE: Mr. Nilles, you did receive several awards in 2015 for your work as CIO at Schindler. What are the success factors of the new type of CIO or CDO? Nilles: First of all and most important the recognitions and awards were a team effort. This is also one of the most important success factors in the digital transformation. At Schindler we call this 'unity of effort' Within the journey of the digital transformation it is essential to break silos and to work very closely together with other functions like R&D, the various lines of business and most important with customers and people in the field. In addition, time to market is key. The greatest innovation doesn't help if it doesn't hit the road. Agile approaches are therefore not only a trend from Silicon Valley but a necessity. This might even require to build up an own innovation incubator in a protected space. On thepersonal sideyouneed tobeprepared todrive change. That's not always fun, in particular in the early days of such a journey. So you have to be a risk taker. Inspiring people and driving a shared ambition remains is another important factor. In terms of tech capabilities it is essential to find a good mix of existing capabilities and new ones. Expertise on the existing business processes and its underlying application landscape is needed as well as new technologies and concepts like the Internet of Things or Design Thinking. BISE: The business of Schindler is split in new installation business and service business, How does that influence the work of you and your organization? Nilles: You are right, Schindler on the one hand engineers, manufactures and installs elevators and escalators and other hand has a strong business in service. Here the business model differs substantially from other industrial engineering and manufacturing companies. You have to manage two related business models and accordingly two value chains have to be optimized through the best business processes and digital solutions which fit the respective business. For our digitization efforts the strong share of service business helps to drive the transformation since the servicing the customer attitude is already in our DNA. Beside of servicing our customers in New Installations and Service we also strongly focus on the 1 billion A. Maedche Institute of Information Systems and Marketing (IISM) and Karlsruhe Service Research Institute (KSRI) Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) Fritz Erler Strasse 23, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany e mail: alexander.maedche@kit.edu
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