Bringing people together for BMW Australia’s digital transformation journey

JR

SITUATION

There were more than 20 fragmented digital projects owned by different departments in BMW Group Australia. There was a push from Germany and the regional headquarters in Singapore to strategise towards a more complete digital transformation focusing on an integrated customer journey.

It specifically wanted to digitise 90% of its customer journey by 2022, as part of the global BMW directive. This meant first of all, defining the customer journey end-to-end, improving existing digital touch points as well as by offering new ones.

To get started, BMW AG appointed a project lead in BMW AG and initiated an Asia Pacific-wide digital change program working closely with the presidents of various Asia Pacific countries and their newly appointed local digital change managers.

This became my new change project and challenge after relocating from China to Australia in 2018. Keeping in mind that the cultural differences between both countries, I spent close to 2 months building my relationships with the different digital project owners before initiating any key change management activities (see photos above).

TASK

Support the development of the customer journey map, review and consolidate existing digital projects and initiate new ones. More importantly, bring the people and the mindsets behind the digital projects together. This groundwork preparations were an important requirement for the company’s digital transformation plans.

ACTIVITIES

Digital Change Planning

  • On boarding. Weekly one-to-one JF started on 6th Jul by the project lead from BMW AG for Asia Pacific digital projects. The focus was in understand the digital strategy framework and in facilitating a digital roadmap for BMW Australia using that framework.
  • Meetings with CEO. I held 5 meetings with the topic owner, the new CEO of BMW Australia, to understand his expectations and wishes for the digital change activities in Australia. The CFO also participated in the meetings. At the same time, I organised XX stakeholder interviews from 2nd Aug to 10th Sep 2018 with all the GMs and key digital project owners from BMW, MINI and Motorrad and the IT colleagues and developed a stakeholder analysis and a change impact and assessment.

Joined the BMW Asia Pacific Digital Circle (B3)

  • Asia Pacific Digital Circle. The main driver for the digital change was BMW AG which had set-up an Asia Pacific digital circle made up of digital change managers from India, Singapore, Thailand, Korea, Japan and New Zealand. I joined this circle as the representative for Australia.
  • Weekly Meetings. I participated in weekly Asia Pacific digital change meetings from 12th Sep onwards to jointly develop the digital strategy and identify regional synergies and joint digital change activities as follows:
    • AU in the lead for BMW customer journey and digital touch points
    • New Zealand in the lead for BMW retailers websites
    • India in the lead for online BMW car sales
    • Korea in the lead for BMW retailer digital space
  • Digital Strategy & Roadmap Workshop. I participated in a 2 day virtual digital strategy and roadmap workshop organised by BMW AG on 3rd Dec 2018 to further understand the new digital strategy framework, to discuss common digital pain points and to align on common digital projects and synergies.

Set-up the BMW Australia Digital Circle (B3 AU)

  • Started weekly JF with digital topics owners. I started weekly one-to-one status update meetings on 2nd Aug with each of the 12 digital topic owners for me to understand their digital projects. I also encouraged them to talk about their pain points, emphasised collaboration and at the same time helped them to understand the new Asia Pacific digital strategy framework.
  • Cascaded the new digital strategy framework. I communicated and shared the digital strategy framework with the digital community and initiated discussions to use that framework to built a digital strategy for Australia. I also offered transparency on digital initiatives from headquarters such as Global Loyalty Blue Print, Customer Eco System, GCDM (Global Customer Data Management) / UCID (Unified Customer ID), The Hive etc. I used the new Confluence site to upload all relevant information.
  • Set-up the BMW Australia Digital Circle. To further facilitate this, I proposed and set-up a BMW Australia digital circle with 12 digital topic owners nominated by the General Managers. I then kicked-off monthly BMW Australia Digital Circle (see photos above) meetings on 14th Nov 2018 with participation from CEO and BMW AG.
  • Carried out project documentation. I created a template for project letter for digital projects in BMW Australia after alignment with BMW AG. I had many meetings with digital project owners to complete the project documentations. I also developed a weekly status update template and initiated a process whereby the weekly status of all the digital projects in the company are accurately captured and shared in the management meetings. The template eventually became a benchmark for the rest of the digital managers in Asia Pacific.
  • Built a Confluence site for the digital community. I designed and built a Confluence site, a home, for the digital community of BMW Australia, which soon became a benchmark for the other digital change managers in the Asia Pacific Digital Circle. The Confluence site offered transparency on all the digital projects in the company and brought all digital related resources from the company and headquarters into one place.
  • Digital newsletter. I also designed, wrote and published the first monthly newsletter on digital projects for the larger digital community in the company.
  • Who’s who digital community directory. I also build a directory of digital community members, to show who is working on what, complete with photos, project documentation, links and contact details.
  • Glossary for digital projects. Some of the digital projects were not easy to understand as they used specific terminology. I therefore started a glossary for all the IT and digital projects in the company and shared them transparently with the digital community via the Confluence site.

RESULTS

  • Brought the minds behind digital projects closer. The digital circle, monthly circle meetings, weekly JF with each of the digital topic owners, the Confluence website and the digital newsletter all contributed to bring people behind the digital projects closer than before into a digital community. Collaboration was encouraged and digital owners decided to cooperate to work together on 3 projects. Examples
    • Marketing decided use Use Car’s e-solution to set up a E-web shop
    • Dealer website solution. Collaborated with New Zealand digital change manager to offer the Asia Pacific a joint NZ+AU solution. Started weekly catch ups with the digital manager of BMW New Zealand on 11th Oct 2018.
    • X7 pre reservation functionality. Followed up on a new tool to secure customer interest with an online payment. Functionality implemented but market has not decided to use it.
  • Offered support for digital projects. The digital topic owners received support from me for their digital pain points with me. The digital topic owners to month gave me transparency on their projects and I in turn offered support to resolve their pain points as well as to bring them closer towards the new digital strategy framework. Examples:
    • Web development team. Conveyed Motorrad, marketing, after sales and BMW New Zealand’s concerns for a contingency plan when the contracted web development team leaves.
    • E-commerce. BMW India became the first BMW company in Asia Pacific to launch a complete online car sales platform direct to the public. I brought the relevant stakeholders from BMW Australia to explore the Indian solution solution closer.
    • New ConnectedDrive functionalities. Brought after sales and ConnectDrive (BMW phone app) responsible together for local alignment when AG released new updates.
    • CDP. Supported and moderated local colleagues ideas to utilise CDP to enrich databases for NBO/NBA (Next Best Offer/Next Best Activity). Brought ideas to Asia Pacific level for AU to lead this digital initiative.
  • Improved the project management infrastructure for digital projects. Started central project management support to all digital projects. I ensured that all the digital projects in the company had a proper project letter signed off by the respective General Managers and all supporting documents were all stored in the Confluence sit and transparent to the digital community. Project status update. Management started getting a consolidated and proper weekly status update of all the digital projects in the company for the first time. Project’s purposes, timelines, risks, budget and costs, outcomes etc were made transparent and which helped management in prioritisation according to the emerging digital strategy.
  • IT/Digital Budget Submission. I organised a series of budget meetings to consolidate a budget for BMW Australia for 2019 IT/digital to the IT central planning team in Singapore. There were several revisions and negotiations with various IT/digital project owners before the budget was finalised.