Digital Transformation @ SEAT, a little summary! ????

During my summer holidays these days in August @ Barcelona I finally found the time to summarize & refelect my last job experience as CIO @ SEAT & CUPRA.

These almost 3 years (2018-2021) have been the most challenging, the most disruptive but also the once with the highest learning for me in my professional career so far. A new country, a new company, a new position, an ambitious goal, COVID-19,... We are writing July 2018. I am responsible for the IT-transformation program "Next.IT" @ AUDI. Luca de Meo the President of SEAT S.A. and Martin Hofmann the Volkswagen Group CIO are searching for a new, disruptive CIO (Chief Information Officer) for SEAT who is also able to drive the digital transformation of the Spanish brand. After presenting my concept (more on this later) I got the job and only 6 weeks later I should start. What a honour going to be a CIO and this with an engineering background! It's a really hot September in Barcelona (Spain) - 6 weeks later I am arriving in Barcelona and starting my digital transformation journey. First target ??: Presenting the new digital strategy before Christmas 2018 to the SEAT board - 12 weeks to go ??...

#Clear Analyses - The first weeks I used to make a lot of interviews with my different IT-business partners, stakeholder, board members, union representatives and also with my IT-team to understand the background of my new organization but also to find out what are the paintpoints and challenges of the current situation. First of all I have to say that I've got a extremly motivated IT-team with great individuals! On the other side I would say the analyses were quite similar to a lot of other IT organizations you can find today: 1) IT delivers to slow 2) IT delivers not in the expected quality 3) IT doesn't deliver with the right business impact 4) IT doesn't generate profitability 5) IT doesn't has the right tech profiles in the organisation (no own IT-development) 6) IT is not transparent enough.

#Digital Strategy - For me it was always crucial to build a strategy not only with the right team / people but also with the right methology. A) As IT you are partner of the whole company (all business units). Therefore I've created a strategy team around me with members of all business units @ SEAT + the right people out of my own IT-organisation. I would say this was the first key ?? of success at the very beginning. Building a strategy without the acceptance around you will definitely fail. B) Using a suitable methology is generating speed and gives a clear structure to a project. We decided to build the new IT-strategy in an agile setup in sprints & clear story points.

Remember we had only 12 weeks to show our results to the board of management. With our deeper analyses we created the target picture of a New.IT that helps to transform SEAT from a classical car manufacturer into a fully digital company (btw I ? stargate ??). But how to reach that target? With 4 clear pillars: 1) IT will be a strategic player inside the company 2) IT will fully focus to it's customers (internal & external) 3) IT will be efficient & flexible in the delivery and also be transformed "back to tech" 4) IT is focusing on a modern and secure technology from now on.

Finally we created this clear vision of the new IT with the target picture of 4 key pillars where IT is an efficient service provider but also the technological developer for the digitalization. A few days before Christmas ?? 2018 we presented our result to Luca de Meo and the whole SEAT board -> everything was approved - what a great first team result! Now it was all about implementation & delivery...

#Team - Like always the team & the organization around you is key for success. I was immediately starting to build the new organization and to find the right members for each of position in my IT-leadership team with the right attitude, the knowledge and the wilness to deliver great results. Organizational wise we decided to build on the one side a strong business partner management which understands perfectly the needs from our customers and is able to deliver the projects with a technological focus / background. Important here was that each business partner manager of IT got a counterpart on the business side to ensure direct care and these special customer centricity (Pillar 2). On the other side a powerful delivery team with all necessary parts (infrastructure, software-development, application management services, digital workplace,...) of a modern IT organization. Both framed by central functions like IT-governance, IT security but also a new Agile Center of Excellence (to continually transform also the way of working in IT). People wise I would say the mixture of creating not only an international but also a diverse leadership team was the second key ?? for success. Important here was also hiring from the external market to get powerful & influecing leaders on board.

#Cleo - The birth of my daughter Cleo in April 2019 was the best moment in my life and will always connect myself with the beautiful city of Barcelona / Spain ? - after 2 weeks of holidays to enjoy this special lifetime I was back @ work to focus fully on the implementation of New.IT because April 2019 was also the Go-Live of the New.IT-organization with the new leadership team.

#SEAT:CODE - A very special highlight for me is our digital machine SEAT:CODE (Center of Digital Excellence). Only 1 month after the birth of my daughter Cleo SEAT:CODE was born in May 2019 - announced by Luca de Meo on the Mobile World Congress. Designed and created to deliver software products really fast and efficient for our customers inside and outside of SEAT. As I always say my 2. baby. Why? Because I had the chance to build a complete new (software) company from the skretch with the goal to foster the digitalization within SEAT to pivot from a successful car manufacturer into an even more successful and efficient mobility service provider. The company is created as much techy as possible - 95% are pure-tech-profiles - even the management is coding in the daily business. 20 products delivered in the first business year. More than 30 products delivered in the second business year. Two years later SEAT:CODE is a well known Barcelona tech start-up, business wise very healthy (used by SEAT & CUPRA, the VW Group but also external customers) with more than 200 tech-employess from more than 20 different nations. One of the successful SEAT:CODE products of today is the multimodal mobility platform "Giravolta" which is e.g. running the SEAT.MO e-scooter sharing in Barcelona - daily used by hundrets of users. I am so proud!

#Back2Tech - SEAT:CODE is the perfect example of what we understand with efficient and flexible delivery (Pillar 3) and how we have applied the digital transformation in our company. We need a clear back to technolgy! Not only in IT but also in a lot of other technical departments. We regognize a trend of outsourcing of core competencies in the automotive industry over the past years. This makes you dependent on suppliers, slower in delivery but also less attractive for new employees. The transformation of back to technology in SEAT IT was consistently implemented. Finally we increased our tech-profile-rate from 16% (2018) up to 56% (2021). Having your own data scientist, network-specialists or security threat hunters is another key of a successful digital transformation.

#Impact - My motto - Delivery always wins politics. With the implementation of our New.IT strategy @ SEAT we were able to improve important KPI's:

• Customer satisfaction 7,8 (0-10)
• Internal satisfaction rate 8,3 (0-10)
• Own tech-profiles within IT 56%
• Own software development > 30%
• Cyber attack protection 100%
• Incident resolution time -61%
• Delivery speed of IT-products 2x faster

#Greatest Moment - Last but not least I would like to share the greatest business moment of my 3 years as CIO: With SEAT:CODE we also started to transform SEAT-employees from outside IT into real digital profiles like software developers. With a special selection process we were looking for people with the right mindset to start a new job / life as junior software developer. And here we go: Miguel Angel, Pablo, Adrian, Oscar and Oscar made it. After a softeware bootcamp they were the first 5 new CODE'rs which we transformed internally from the line of production into line of CODE. ?????????? The handover of their contracts as software developers made me cry.

And finally don't forget - everything works much better with humor - even management!

?? MUCHAS GRACIAS por este tiempo fantastico! Nos vemos ??