Venture Clienting #5: "Fake it ‘till you make it" REVERSE - Do we need a branding?

In 2016 Erik Wirsing started the journey of Global Innovation at 德铁信可 – soon after, he realized the need for a centralized team dedicated for the collaboration with startups. Since then, for over five years, we have been serving as a trusted partner for our colleagues and startups, with the aim to digitize and automate our products and processes of our core organization. At the same time contributing significantly to the digital mindset within our organization by constantly challenging the status quo, setting new examples with cutting edge-technologies, and providing impulses that last longer than any trainings or this article.

During this time, we have screened about 4,176 startups, conducted 154 pilots, and successfully integrated 63 startups into our standard operations, whereof 47 are still active today. Right now, we have 25 pilots running. Undeniably, we are thrilled about the work we are doing and the remarkable impact we have been able to generate for DB Schenker and our collaboration partners – the startups.

What does it mean when we claim startups have helped us to digitize and automate products and processes? Sometimes it’s just a plug-in for existing software solutions, sometimes it’s a new tool on the shopfloor, sometimes it’s new materials that are lighter, sometimes we try out new reporting dashboards, data algorithms or gadgets helping us to work more efficiently.

As this is a private account and a public channel, we will not share any numbers, but let’s just say, our activities have long lasting financial and operational positive impact. For me it is important to work on business projects that have a long-term positive impact, in other words, that we still talk about in ten years’ time.

Naturally, in our work there are challenges that we are confronted with and must overcome. Amongst others, one of these challenges is the need to make our impact as the venture client unit of DB Schenker tangible and recognizable, both within our internal core business and the external startup community. This is important to mitigate the undeniable innovators dilemma, present in a big corporation, so that we, as the startup management team, can allocate our resources where we can create and capture value and not have to stop due to dead ends or “on hold” phases.

One fantastic way to overcome this challenge is to create a brand. A strong brand that helps us to connect with the right stakeholder internally and externally, leads to interest, commitment, and sense of belonging, which is recognizable within the SCHENKER family, yet helps us to stand out.

It is in the making. We are thrilled and can’t wait to hit the Go-Live button to open the doors for y’all. What do you think will be the name of our branding mission? You know the beauty here? It is REVERSE fake it ‘till you make it – as we already have this substantial and successful operations behind the new brand.

Alright – in case you are eager to learn more about our why – Why we need a branding – here it is. We hope it either validates your activities or inspires you.

Internal impact - Creating Value within DB Schenker

1)?????Establishing a strong internal network – talk about what you do and do it again. And again.

By establishing the global startup management unit back in 2016 we realized quite soon – this type of collaboration is only possible with the right people on board. We engaged with colleagues in various business units, outlining our ambitions and the value of startup partnerships. Their open-mindedness was evident, and some already had success stories with startups [quick side story: when you meet new colleagues in a call or in a branch, the first thing most people say, is how many years the already work for Schenker – and we say it with pride]. This collaborative spirit led to at least one partner per business unit, granting us access to Land, Air, Ocean, and Contract logistics. This access is of utmost importance for evaluating startup solutions and initiating pilot projects with internal experts.

As a global entity, our next goal was expanding this network to maximize startup value. Concurrently, we integrated key functional units like IT, People and Organization, Sales, Marketing, and Finance (and others opportunistically) into our stakeholder network. Coordinating the right functions with the appropriate business units demands coordination, knowledge, patience, and most importantly, the right people and mindset in your network.

Fast forward to today, we have established a strong global network of internal partners in all business and relevant functional units (from shopfloor to top management) with tailored processes and models for implementing startup solutions in our company. If we have such a strong network and well established operating model, governance structure and process – why do we need a brand now?

A network is dynamic by nature. Important colleagues leave, new ones arrive, organizational structures change, processes undergo adjustments, priorities shift, and this list could go on forever. Our job is to deal with these dynamics and keep this network alive. Therefore, we must explain almost every day, again and again, why, and how we work with startups and what the business gets out of it. We believe a strong brand, can and will strengthen our positioning and in my wildest dreams will trigger excitement and unfolds further dedication and commitment for our team, colleagues, and startups to push things even further. ?

2)?????Set a clear focus and create synergies

A brand may not fix this per-se, but we are strongly convinced that a global brand for startup corporate collaboration can empower us to set a clear focus and create synergies. How? We can be the joker-taskforce for our colleagues in the business and functional units to provide impulses for their digital strategy and help them realize it on the operational level.

Setting a clear focus - Recently I have shown how we moved our venture client activities more from push to pull (Startup Management: Push vs Pull | LinkedIn ). The first step here is to define a standardized but also flexible format to identify pain points among all business units. Based on that we, evaluate the problem size, define clear use cases and derive our so-called scouting areas. Here it is important to also state what is out-of-scope, to allocate resources in the best possible way. If a solution has the potential to tackle the problem, and the underlying business case (price, quality, scope) is attractive, we prepare a pilot project. Easier said than done – to make this work we need to find the right contact person in the right business or functional unit, in the right region at the right time. Therefore, we need to be in constant exchange with all units to be aware of potential use-cases, need of technologies, where startup solutions can be beneficial.

Create synergies - To capture knowledge and facilitate processes we need smart tools. Therefore, we created an internal platform ( ITONICS - The Innovation OS ) where we store and organize all pain points, pilot projects and implemented solution (our solution pool). Everyone in the organization has access, can upload a new pain point and we match their pain to either an existing solution or we start a scouting, consult them, show them alternative or be their sparring partner. ?

Question here again – why do we need a brand for our venture client unit then?

By having a strong brand in place as well as internal awareness it will be more clear where startups are home in the organization. We will use the brand and the corresponding internal awareness as a vehicle to capture knowledge, create synergies and centralize pilots.

3)?????Demonstrating value created, captured, and delivered

In parallel to capturing all the internal knowledge around startups, pilots or implemented solutions we need to demonstrate in the end of the day the success of startup collaborations. How can we do that? There are two ways: On the one hand we need clear figures that show savings or new revenues and other hand we need to communicate success stories to let the organization know what we have and how they can benefit from it. Beyond that we established prominent internal formats that underline the efforts and determination of colleagues whom work with startups to make their success visible to the whole organization.

We believe a brand has the ability to boost internal visibility and awareness in particular and make our internal and external stage for startups even bigger.

External impact - DB Schenker as the partner?of choice for Startups

I)?????Navigate startups to the main entrance door

If you enter a museum or art exhibit through the back door, you're likely to miss some great sights or the overall map and thus the impression is less imposing seeing them in the wrong order. The same applies to startups that come through DB Schenker's back / side / regional door. Often, we come across implemented startup solutions in our organization that are used very locally, albeit successfully. We are happy about this, but it has its limits, in terms of scalability due to alignment with overall strategic goals, application harmonization, resource allocation and quite frankly – prioritization of projects.

Even though we have clear processes in place, it's natural that external startups can't all be aware of this. If we build a strong brand, it helps us to better illuminate our main entrance and provide a map to find the way in our organization.

?II)?????Positioning Schenker as the leading startup partner unit

Let’s talk business - We are one of the biggest logistics service providers in the world with 700,000+ customers, 150 years of experience in logistics, and 2,000+ locations. With more than 4000 Startups in our pipeline, several pilots and implementations we are also quite successful in working with startups.

This foundation is not built on mud and would collapse when the weather gets tough [is this a metaphor in any language? feels off] – in more business words - we want to make our value proposition for startups more visible and accessible. We are confident, that a strong brand will foster this visibility.

III)?????Fostering Open Innovation in the Ecosystem

Working in a venture client unit, Open Innovation is part of our DNA.?We truly enjoy the work with startups, we are determined to foster innovation and create success stories together with startups. Therefore, it is also important for us to look beyond our own daily activities and exchange with other like-minded people from large companies. We want to share and hear their success stories, ideas, top startups, fuckups, and challenges. This is how we can learn from each other and bring venture clienting to the next level together. Again, I am convinced that this work helps us and our economy in our digitalization trajectory, it helps startups because – lets be real – at the end of the day they need customers – and helps the meta level with inspiration, new technologies, open mindsets, and skills - I am strongly convinced we all come out a little better out of this.

We hope the Venture Client activities of DB SCHENKER will continue to shine bright in the ecosystem and perhaps ignite other units to trust the process.

So two more things – One, what do you think will be our venture client brand name and two, what hint, or proposal do you have for our launch next week?