Tobias Bald: I think there are two reasons for this.

One reason is primarily that, with the introduction of the agency business model on the part of the OEMs and NSCs, we haven’t given enough thought to which processes and functions will become our responsibility in future. And we lack the expertise to carry out these processes and procedures that were previously handled by the dealer.

Let me take a concrete example: in the past, order data management was the responsibility of the retailer. The dispatcher in the retailer transferred an order to the manufacturer. The dispatchers know how to do this. Just like, for example, payment processing by the customer. These are processes that will have to be carried out by the NSC in the agency business model in the future. But there are no processes there, there are no systems and no functions. And that’s why the need to deal with processes and systems is so great in the first place, in order to be able to maintain business operations at all.

That’s the first point.

The second is a different one. What I referred to earlier as a change of mission statement. It is human nature to withdraw to the field of action that we are familiar with. The NSCs and OEMs have a high level of process expertise. They know what the processes look like, they know what requirements there are for systems and they know how to manage projects.

However, an end-to-end customer journey would require thinking from the market, thinking from the customer and adapting processes to the customer’s needs. This is the only way we can differentiate ourselves from the competition.

But we still think like we did in my grandfather’s day:

What will happen when we have overproduction? How can we then subsidise the stock vehicles in order to sell them off? It’s like the old world 50 years ago. Unit numbers are more important than customer needs!

And in my opinion, that is the wrong way of thinking.

If we were to think in terms of the market, then we would look at it: What does the customer want? In what form do they want it? How can we make storage trolleys attractive to them, in different channels, so that they receive satisfactory service?

But this requires a rethink. And that is difficult. It is currently almost impossible for those involved in the projects today when it comes to transformation.