Venture Clienting #3: Our Value Proposition for Business and Functional Units & our promise to Startups
Ronja Stoffregen
Venture Clienting DB SCHENKER | PhD Student WHU | Lecturer | Entrepreneur at heart
Alright, we fancy Venture Clienting, but why exactly?
It all comes down to one question – make or buy. Startups can be one vital way to digitize and automate our products, services, and processes of the core organization. Let’s take a moment and think about all the projects in the past that any internal Research & Development team (or any other visionary-do-it-yourself-minded) team decided to plan, execute and NOT-apply, think about the time-to-market and the related costs to build a new application versus the respective value and impact it can actually create. So quick Q - do we always need to build it ourselves? I get it, it’s fun, and a big achievement when we click the Go-Live button – but the real question we need to as is make, buy or co-create. Naturally not everything can be bought from the rack so sometimes we need custom-made items, but I would argue for a wide range of digitization and automation use cases there is a suitable solution in store. We just need to buy it. This reduces R&D costs, speeds up the availability and we can focus on more strategic activities and daily operations.
The purpose of our global venture client unit is defined by “we find the best startup solutions and foster collaboration success” – thus, once we have identified a startup that tackles our needs and provides a valuable solution, we are eager to test the startup solution and thus jointly decide to conduct a paid pilot (a test-phase with real data, defined KPIs and a clear potential future scope). If the pilot went successful, all stakeholders are convinced and we can measure a sound impact, we aim to implement and further scale the startup solution. By providing a diverse portfolio of ready to plug-and-play solutions for business and functional units, we can help to reduce research and development costs and shrink the time to market for (demanded) solutions, and ultimately all of this pays into customer satisfaction. Button line that is what matters and makes us stand out.
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Our Value Proposition for our Business and Functional Units:
Strategic Startup Scouting
We conduct pain point workshops with the organization to identify white spots of digitalization and automation – we then screen the startup landscape to identify and evaluate the best solutions, coordinate matchmaking and define the use cases for a pilot.
Pilots & Scaling
We prepare and help execute startup pilots by providing relevant templates, defining KPIs, help pilot steering, identification and alignment with relevant stakeholder and defining new use-cases with the goal to scale it across countries, regions or BUs/FUs.
Knowledge Transfer & Best Practices
We centralize the knowledge about startup activities within the organization, make it transparent and accessible for everyone at DB Schenker. Itonics is the partner of choice here for the innovation platform.
Partner Management
We create synergies through regular internal interaction with BUs/FUs, strong relationship to the global ecosystem consisting of mentors, universities, venture capitalists & other corporate partners.
New Products & Services
The network and the knowledge in the startup environment enable us to create new services and products for existing and new customers
Networking & Events
We provide access to various global events and position DB Schenker with active participations as an innovation leader in the logistics industry
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Our Promise to Startups
Business Pain Points
Together with the four business units (land, air, ocean and contract logistics) and the functional units we identify specific potentials to automate and digitize the products and services of the core organization. These search fields help us to prioritize certain technologies, industries, regions or business models.
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Startup Evaluation & Matchmaking
Informed, fair and fast feedback & next steps. Together we identify use cases for the individual startup solutions and prepare the pilot with aligned KPIs, resources allocation and project management.
Pilots & Scaling
We initiate and empower pilots for startup solutions in business with the goal to scale it across countries, regions or BUs/FUs: Lets speak about facts of our Venture Client Unit: 4000+ startups in our database. 1250+ have been evaluated. 130+ pilots conducted and more than 45 in standard operations on a global scale.
Why Schenker should be your hottest lead:
??????150 years in logistic
??????2,000+ locations
??????700,000+ customers
??????Venture client unit in place
Fast Decision & Dedicated Resources
We have a dedicated budget and resources for pilots with startups. We have an empowering governance structure set up and running to identify the right stakeholder to implement and scale successful pilot solutions.
Knowledge Transfer & Best Practices
We centralize the knowledge about startup activities within the organization, make it transparent and accessible for everyone at DB Schenker to learn from best-practices and get better every day.
Branding & Networking
We do good work and talk about it. We are looking forward to sharing new success stories at events, workshops and online. Stay tuned.
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Please note that this is a personal article, if you have any comments or thoughts happy to get in touch. I am fully convinced that venture client units can create and capture a very fair share of value for the organization, the startups, the investors and the society and I am proud we, the venture client community, pave the way for this new way of working.
Have a great day and one last question – how do you contribute to this ecosystem?
Greetings from Hamburg
Ronja
VP Partnerships, PR & Corp Affairs LATAM @Skydropx Founders Team (YCombinator S18)
1 年Great reading, when it come to SAAS companies, and I have seen it also in many big global enterprises is that they will try to implement or create in-house solutions and tech evolves so quite that they finish throwing away what they build and end up using or paying for a tech/SAAS solution. I believe that when companies can identify what its reasonably capable of building or working on it, do it but in the mean time get a solution that will shorten your execution, also by using something already build you can validate if it works for the company or not, you can try without a bug investment.
Business development
1 年Great article Ronja, may I ask how do startups appear on your radar? For example we process compex sensor data with neural networks on multi-year battery charge with a chip built on analog neuromorphic architecture. For logistics challenges it may serve in smart pallet usecase when vibration signal could tell exactly how the goods were handled on the way. Do you think it may qualify for a ??pain?? in your case? How do you deal with emerging technologies that appear either within startups or established companies that innovate and not yet visible to the general public ? Do you have a sort of ??industry pain vitrine??? I think it would be nice to have a look at one. Collective thinking is powerful)
Co-Innovation between startups and corporates, Head of Infineon Startup Co-Innovation Program
1 年The question we sometimes get: why do you limit yourself to startups only? There are also nice solutions from established companies. What is your answer at Schenker?