CDO

Generally speaking every big company has its own CDO – Chief Digital Officer. One who holds a management position and the responsibility to plan and steer the digital transformation of the company. Sabine Scheunert has been holding the Daimler CDO position since 2016. Daimler tackles the digitalization by a combination with 100 new jobs and a newly founded Digital Unit.
An overview of Daimler digitalization can be found here.

For Daimler, digitalization is the biggest enrichment since the invention of the automobile.”

Dr. Dieter Zetsche, Chairman of the Board of Management of Daimler AG and Head of Mercedes-Benz Cars

Daimler Digital Transformation

Basically Daimler’s development went from an automotive company to a mobility provider. Eventually the plan is to digitalize the whole value chain systematically. On one hand they address their employees, but on the other hand they particularly focus on their customers. Speaking of employees they exploit also virtual meeting rooms or new tools to realize new ways of working. Looking at the costumer’s perspective new digital services such as moovel are offered as part of the Daimer digitalization. Narrowing this aspect on the smart factory (explanation: Smart Factory) they have defined five main goals. These are: Greater flexibility, greater efficiency, greater speed, attractive working environment, smart logistics. Summing it up Daimler’s big goal is to become the world’s leading, most innovative automobile manufacturer when it comes to digital technologies.

Digital subsidiaries

In recent years Daimler established the Mobility AG. It’s spectrum starts with automotive-related financial services, mobility services over insurances towards mobility concepts like car2go or moovel. Daimler TSS is the digital protege being responsible for most of the digital products. These are for example the Daimler AppStore, car2go or Mercedes Me Connect. Their aim is to shape Daimler as a digital brand through innovative, holistic IT solutions.

Accelerators / Incubators

With this intention Startup Autobahn, Lab 1886 and the Incubator-Truck (Explanation: Incubator) are just a few projects by which Daimler gives innovators the opportunity to develop their upcoming ideas. Startup Autobahn, a so called accelerator, is an innovation platform. The platform is giving startups access to the Tech-Know-How of Silicon Valley and the German Hardware-competence. Especially those ones having solutions for the interface of hardware and software for mobility. 

Social media

To address in particular the younger generation – their new trainees – Daimler works with different social media channels. ‘Snap4Mercedes’ is an account managed by trainees giving interested students insights into their future tasks and training elements. In addition to this Daimler CDO uses the Twitter account ‘DigitalLife@Daimler’ and a blog with the same name to keep their customers in the loop about all the Daimer digitalization going on. With the help of a new app called ‘Daimler Experience’ Daimler offers us the opportunity to increase our knowledge about connectivity, autonomous driving, sharing and electromobility.

Blockchain

There are also big efforts in establishing the Blockchain at Daimler, e.g. in terms of the Mobility Blockchain Platform. Further information about this can be found here.

See also:

Jan

My name is Jan Puder (LinkedIn profile Jan Puder). I am the founder & CEO of the BusinessTech-Company. Me and the BusinessTech-Company want to push the digital frontier. This is the reason, why I started this website. I want to provide information about digital businesses, especially for Chief Digital Officers.

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