​Interview with Andreas Geiger, CEO & Founder
Andreas founded Xotigo in 2017 after successfully implementing a Sales Management solution built on Salesforce for the German supplier HELLA, which was adopted by over 1000 users.
Winning the Change Management Game
Change Management can mean many different things in different industries, but automotive suppliers know it best as the game that can make or break the profitability of any project. As product development both on the vehicle and the system components starts 2 to 3 years before the final production launch, technical, specification and scope changes during this phase are part of the daily exercises of the suppliers’ project teams. Despite this, managing such Changes remains a major headache for many suppliers and optimising the financial impact an even greater migraine.
Develop Relationships and a Sales Plan at the same time
Too often automotive suppliers consider Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Sales Planning at opposite ends of their Sales spectrum. It is all too easy to categorise CRM as a customer, outfacing activity and consider Sales Planning as an administrative, internal task. However, this is a simplified, legacy-tainted view that ignores the transformation possible with digital tools and a new, efficient way of working.
Putting complex contract data to work
Automotive component supply contracts are notoriously complex: in addition to fluctuating volumes, there are multi-component prices linked to time and volume, commodity material clauses, currency clauses, contracted capacities & flexibilities, etc. In my experience, the biggest challenge for companies is how to intelligently extract insights and take actions from such complex data.
Digital Transformation
Successful digital transformations always focus on people over technology. Providing real benefits for the employees and motivating them to embrace the change are key factors in the development and execution of digital strategies.
Therefore, the size and extent of the transformation become critical considerations for how the people will be affected by and how well they will accept the result.