09 10 2015 23 INTERVIEW Mr Mueller before you came to Kia you were in charge of IT at Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics in Asia How dif ferent are the technical requirements in these industries The two industries are very different At the end of the day however they produce products and bring them to the market information technology supports all of their business pro cesses while optimizing workflows and companywide cooper ation Despite the obvious differences on the product side the IT missions are comparable to a certain degree But the con gruency ends at the customer structure a company that spe cializes in clinical diagnostics is strongly oriented to B2B and has a very precise understanding of its customers Things are different in the automotive field In the past virtually no auto maker had direct contact with the buyers of its vehicles This is beginning to change due to the networking of new models And it is precisely here that I see one of my core tasks I would like to bring customers as close as possible to our brand using the opportunities presented by information technology and vice versa Where do you want to go with IT at Kia Motors Europe in the medium term Since I arrived at Kia in 2011 the company has rapidly grown from year to year Back then the strategic goal was to become one of the 10 top automotive brands in Europe In Sweden and the Netherlands we are already among the top six based on the number of units sold So it is no wonder that IT continually has its hands full making the necessary basic services avail able for this growth That is why the centralization of IT has had a very key role in my strategy right from the beginning along with system standardization clearly defined responsi bilities and uniform processes In the meantime we are clearly looking forward We have entered the value creation phase What exactly does that mean Backend servers that function reliably day in and day out do not interest anyone anymore People expect IT to facilitate greater value creation and make a measurable contribution to a company s success Our management does not see infor mation technology as an operating cost but as a trailblazer in new dynamic value creation networks In the last few years IT has clearly become more relevant at Kia and that is a good thing Kia has completed a transformational phase from a South Korean automaker to a successful global player This is not something that occurred behind closed doors at the head quarters in Seoul but in an open process involving the active participation of all the regions The requirements that land in information technology are accordingly extensive Can you meet all the expectations Yes we are positioned with the staff and organization to sup port the globalization of the company in a purposeful way Kia traditionally has had a high share of in house production for example we produce our own steel subsidiaries build the buildings that we use and we also have an in house IT service provider the Hyundai AutoEver Europe GmbH in Offenbach Our colleagues there provide us with very efficient IT services relating to the infrastructure and core systems such as SAP and CRM This gives us the time to concentrate on strategi cally important tasks Let s take our computing center here in Frankfurt as an example Kia has not followed the trend of transferring basic services to external suppliers but has in vested in a new state of the art data center in Offenbach All of the region s main IT systems are consolidated there includ ing production control at our European plants Kia wants to sell 500 000 cars a year in Europe by 2020 What are the implications of this for IT In 2014 Kia Motors Europe organizationally realigned its sales after sales and marketing areas and added the custom er quality function to supplement them We wanted to look at the complete customer process across departments and orient it to the vehicle s lifecycle Among other things our IT is very strongly integrated when it comes to dealer systems We want to display the entire retail process based on a new SAP portal starting with lead management to ordering and the sales con tract all the way to financing and insurance This will greatly accelerate and improve the work on site Registrations on dif ferent systems are eliminated and customer data are no longer collected redundantly In December of 2014 we went live with the first pilot and since then the feedback from our 20 test op erations has been extremely positive Kia has extended the usual three year manufacturer warranties for its vehicles to seven years which is un matched in the industry and an advantage in your mar keting Do you trust yourself to that degree in the hard ware and software areas In fact our internal customers even enjoy a lifetime product and service guarantee and this is the case because we con tinually monitor the entire IT landscape and take action to up date it and keep it functional whenever necessary on a daily basis through our change management process As in the vehi cle arena we are convinced about the quality of our products and solutions  Interview Strategie      11 automotiveIT 05 2015 Fo to s C la us D ic k Mueller right explains Kia s business approach to automotiveIT s Hilmar Dunker left and Ralf Bretting Photo Claus Dick

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