Creating Digital Experiences by Democratizing App Development with Siemens Global Business Services
[Music] so welcome everyone at creating easy to use digital experiences by democratizing app development my name is philip sheek and i'm service owner for business process management at siemens global business services global business services is a professional services company within siemens to get their jobs done our 6 000 employees around the globe often have to work in a variety of different systems application usability and user satisfaction are low so this situation made us rethink the way we build enterprise software applications and we came to the conclusion that easy to use digital user experiences had to be at the center of this new approach although we realized this need we still had to overcome a shortage of professional developers to actually implement these new solutions so this is why we decided to go for mendix and its low code development platform and the story that i am about to tell is about our journey and first experiences with mendrix so here's my agenda for today during the presentation i will touch on the following three main points so first what was really the need for change from the business second what applications did we build what was their impact and what were our experiences with mendix so far and finally how are we using the citizen developer approach to decentralize and scale application development so if you're very busy person and you have just wanted to watch the first minutes of my presentation maybe to check it out here's here's the executive version so with our first mendix apps we have achieved a multi-million euro financial impact for siemens the net profit over a period of five years is 24 times what we invested and the speed at which we were able to deliver software applications was four times faster than before so so much for the key performance indicators impressive right so if you are interested and want to learn how we achieved all of this then stay with me at its core siemens is a maker organization this was the case when vanavon siemens our company founder visionary and inventor created products like the pointer telegraph the electric dynamo or the world's first electrical railway more than 170 years ago so since its founding siemens has been shaping industrial revolutions and has been a leader in electrification automation and digitalization the tools might have changed over time but our people are still driven by the ambition to innovate and deliver impact for our customers our mendix teams today and here you can see our first team that we started our journey with are collaborating highly in platforms and virtual networks we delivered our first apps mid of this year while working completely remotely due to the global covet pandemic and i'm very proud to say that this way of working did not prevent us from delivering great results actually we expect this virtual collaboration to be the new normal going forward so many of you know or have heard about siemens so let me just maybe give you some context here so siemens is a german multinational conglomerate with a revenue of 87 billion euros in 2019 and employs 380 000 people worldwide our main activities are in the industry energy infrastructure mobility and also healthcare business and our digital portfolio is quite impressive as well with 500 digital service offerings and approximately 40 000 employees in digital jobs at siemens we are one of the top 10 software companies in the world cnn global business services the organization that i'm from is a service business within siemens global services is offering digital end-to-end process solutions and expertise driven services for our siemens companies so let's have a look at this short video clip introducing gbs [Music] so we make ambitions possible so let's first talk about the business need so in the past the operating model of shared services organizations like gbs was primarily centered around labor arbitrage so what does that mean so that means creating synergies by bundling and then offshoring work to lower cost countries for example in our biggest gbs delivery center in bangalore india a big chunk of our purchase to pay order to cash or record to report services are provided by our 1500 indian colleagues locally and these colleagues often have to work in a variety of disparate tools and systems and just to give you an idea of the sheer size and complexity of our i.t landscape there are more than 60 different sap systems in place at siemens and i'm not even talking about non-erp solutions and other applications so that is the reality that our gps colleagues are confronted when doing their job every day so words like seamless end-to-end digital easy to use they are not only buzzwords for us but they are really the main target and ambition for our intelligent automation journey now how are we using mendix in all of this in essence we're using mendix as a platform to build user-centric workflows and enterprise applications seamless user experiences are very important and so is the ability to relieve our users in their daily work from for example switching applications performing manual or redundant tasks or having limited transparency on the overall status of their process siemens gbes is also currently in a major transformation to offer its services not only to siemens companies so internally but to the external market as well it is therefore critical for us to continuously innovate and establish new end-to-end value add services for our customers we have heavily invested in intelligent automation technologies such as robotic process automation chatbots artificial intelligence or business process management platforms to support and accelerate this transformation so i already elaborated on the need to improve user experience and satisfaction what we think is by involving users in the creation of business application it becomes easier and more simple and automation of these processes is likely to increase so in february 2020 we started a project with mendix and gathered a small team consisting of two developers a scrum master and a product owner from our gbs logistics services group a mendix team of business consultants supported us in the evaluation of use cases and enabled us on the mendix delivery methodology our first app in the area of freight claim management was a good match for a starter app the complexity of the use case was medium the business impact was significant and the app could be easily scaled to other customers even outside of siemens so what is the freight claim management app about let me let me explain so the idea is quite simple imagine you have to ship a piece of equipment from a siemens manufacturing site to a customer location let's take a construction site the shipment of that equipment takes place via truck and a grid delivery time is 48 hours let us assume the delivery now took 100 hours instead of 48 hours that means it was late a couple of days later siemens receives an invoice from that freight forwarder saying the equipment was delivered within 48 hours and the invoice amount is 500 euros however the delivery was late by 52 hours and the invoice amount should have been 200 euros instead of 500 so that exact difference between 500 and 200 euros is the claim potential that we are addressing with this new gbs freight claim management service and the mendix app that we built around the service so the main users of the freight claim management app are gbs claim managers the mendix app provides them with an integrated view of all claims they can see filter and see the status of individual claims they can assign claim managers to cases and initiate the communication with freight forwarders so the time for claim managers to analyze data and communicate with freight forwarders was reduced by 67 and we see the total claim volume at siemens over the next two years being greater than one million euros and believe it or not but we were able to go live with this application and start processing claims after only six weeks of developing in addition to the freight claim management application we implemented a second mendix app for our gbs tax services group so the results were very similar to our first application we implemented in record time the business impact was huge and we really had happy users so let me highlight the three success factors that really made the difference for us so we brought together a small team of people from business and i.t so we made sure they are ambitious and what i call hungry to achieve something really great the role of product owner was also key and very key in these projects and we were lucky we had product owners that took full ownership and dedicated the majority of their time to the project and now to the service [Music] second very important is an agile mindset and attitude and that's another very important ingredient here and to me very personally it was very interesting and exciting to see in all our projects what applying a true agile delivery approach can do to a team it really sparked motivation creativity and enthusiasm with every single team member and with mendix having all of this agility built into its platform we all became mendix enthusiasts right away and last but not least celebrate success our teams were spread across multiple locations globally due to corona the team members had never met before in person yet the teams did an exceptional job and delivered great results so our virtual go live celebration was therefore an important milestone in our project to appreciate and recognize a job well done and at the same time we used the celebration as an opportunity to create awareness and promote our results across the whole organization we also promoted our project and applied for the vanna from siemens company award and if you're a member of siemens you would know that this is a very prestigious internal award in siemens and we were selected for the best 15 projects among more than 500 projects and units globally so this was another big appreciation of our work and by the way created even more interest in our journey with mendix maybe let me reiterate a little bit on the business impact that we realized with mendix at gbs i believe it's worth spending a little time and give you some idea of what's behind that business case meaning the financial impact and also the return on investment so what's included so first it's the direct revenue from offering that service so remember for the clay management um so this direct revenue were the claims and the cashback from the freight forwarders second component operational efficiency so for example you might remember claim managers spend significantly less effort and time to process claims now so this is also accounted for in the business case and lower one-time costs being four times faster to deliver an app reduces one-time development costs by 75 this is also a huge contributor and also factored into the business case and for our next projects now that we delivered it four times faster we're even targeting at a six times faster time to value having done first projects with mendix we believe that this is absolutely realistic and achievable so what are our future plans with minix as you've seen we've achieved great results so far and now want to further grow and scale the service we have completed the first phase of our journey with one team we delivered two apps and demonstrated success a big advantage during this start phase was the siemens mendix starter package this package contains for example corporate entitlement services single sign-on integration and siemens style templates that were ready to use for us and this has helped us focus our development work on the core features of the applications we're now in the transition from the start to the structure phase we've set up a gbs app factory and grew our team of developers by training more than 10 developers all over our gps centers globally new projects are staffed with senior and junior developers to facilitate knowledge transfer in some projects where even onboarding citizen developers now from the business that will take over the operation and maintenance activities have to go live of the applications at the same time we're investing in more advanced profiles such as solution architects or ui ux experts a mendix factory suite app is helping us achieve operational excellence by managing the portfolio and the full life cycle of applications from app intake to delivery and operation so the third phase of our journey the scale phase will be about delivering apps globally in a decentralized setup we are planning for five and more teams some of these teams will be dedicated to one line of business and implementing their own business line portfolio of apps and the role of our more central mendix app factory will also shift to topics such as setting up architecture guidelines establishing best practices ensuring agile awareness and foster reusability so the siemens app store will be the central component to achieve reusability and skill for us so i'm coming to an end here and maybe let me shortly summarize the key points of my presentation so i showed to you how we embarked at gbs on this intelligent automation journey i emphasized how important it is for us to really put users at the center of this journey and mendix for us is really a key enabler to improve digital user experiences and therefore user satisfaction i've also showed how our first phases of this journey have been extremely exciting and promising with our first app the freight claim management we were really able to demonstrate success and create clear business impact and exactly this co-creating enterprise applications including business nit and then doing this in an agile way is extremely powerful and mendix enables and accelerates this process resulting in faster time development i also mentioned we started with a small team we're now in the process of ramping up a global community of mendix makers to grow and scale the service all makers are part of this gbs app factory and really the main goal behind this app factory is to further enable local teams to execute and to deliver value to our customers so thank you so much for watching have a great rest of the day here at mendix world 2020. you
2021-03-19 15:13
