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[MUSIC PLAYING] JB WOOD: Hello, everybody. I'm JB Wood, the CEO of the Technology and Services Industry Association. I'm delighted to be with you all again today. And I'm delighted to have a great guest to discuss a lot of the trends that are happening, that are affecting manufacturing companies globally. So I'm here to welcome Ines Taverniers, who is the Business Controller at Melexis, in Belgium. They're a publicly traded 500 million euro provider of micro-electronics semiconductor solutions. A business that is growing, facing, I think, a lot of the trends that we've already discussed here this morning as well as just the need to really progress through this digital transformation journey. So Ines, welcome. INES TAVERNIERS: Thank you for inviting me to this great event. JB WOOD: We're all anxious to hear a little bit about the company and about you. And then I've got a few questions to talk about some recent things you've been doing in your digital transformation journey. So could you introduce yourself and the company a little bit? INES TAVERNIERS: Yes. So as mentioned, I'm Ines Taverniers, business controller. I work for Melexis, which is, as you already mentioned, a global supplier of microelectronic semiconductor solutions. So the majority of revenue comes from the automotive industry, but we also try to focus on other areas, such as medical, and industrial, and consumer sectors. And we have been supplying for ICs over 30 years now. And we do this with 1,500 employees in 15 countries with 20 branches. So as an engineering company, innovation is really crucial to stay competitive, and to remain a player of importance in the industry. And so my role, 0 a functional perspective as business controller, my presence here today has more to do with my role as a project lead for the CPQ implementation we recently managed to successfully close within Melexis. JB WOOD: That's great. One of the things we talk about a lot is that digital transformation is-- it seems like a lifetime journey, right. It is really about having the business capabilities that you need to take advantage of the trends in the industry and competitive pressures, and so forth. And that digital transformation journey really affects all parts of the company. You mentioned CPQ, which is really a critical business capability, I think, for many reasons. I'm curious if you can talk a little bit about what were some of the factors that influenced Melexis to make this investment in, not just in CPQ, but in sales transformation more broadly? INES TAVERNIERS: Yes. As you mentioned, the automation and the digital transformation, it will never stop. You always want to improve. Things are also changing every day, and you need to deal with that to cope with. And on the one hand, deal with the current themes and issues, but also take into account the challenges of tomorrow. And as you mentioned, in automotive, we don't have a crystal ball. We don't know yet exactly what the future brings. And as in automotive, as well, 10 years is nothing. So we really need to think really good ahead and plan ahead, and, therefore, we come up with a strategic plan, wherever we can still in an HR way make some changes here and there. So I think this is really a strategic plan with the ability to change and to pivot whatever you want. This is really crucial for a company as Melexis. JB WOOD: And it, specific to CPQ, I mean what capabilities do you believe this is going to enable you, I mean, obviously it's about faster and better pricing, but I mean, as you think about how this is going to benefit the company, can you give me a couple of the sort of major drivers, the few things you'd really like to see come out of this particular project? INES TAVERNIERS: Yes. So what the main reason to start this project was, of course, to play into the key pins of our internal customer, if we call our business creation community, so and their key pains were having lack with a decent administration and follow-up with the quotes to have really the integration to the Order Management process, and also to the CRM system. I think really the integration part is key, not only in this project, but also to future projects and implementation going forward. Also, like in COVID times, even more the communication part is also crucial, instead of just calling, it's really finding a good way and, therefore, CPQ was a nice tool to play into this communication part, and really to have the administration at the same time to really registrate the approval levels much better. JB WOOD: Yeah. You know, it's funny, we talk a lot about this emergence of the customer experience. And a lot of people, when they hear customer experience, they think about consumer customer experience. But customer experience is absolutely a real thing in B2B. And you know-- and I'm sure that your business creation community is trying, not only to make sure that they can price profitably, but also, as you said, to really improve your responsiveness to customers, right, to make sure that, I mean, again, in a perfect world, you're able to be both responsive to the customer, and accurate and thorough in your pricing. You can't really give on either one of those, right? You need both to have a responsive sales force, and you need to make sure, because you're-- I would imagine, you're living with these prices for a long time, right? So can you talk a little bit about those two factors of improving the customer experience as well as making sure that the integrity of pricing in a complex, as you said, a complex world, like automotive, how these two things are being affected by your CPQ transformation? INES TAVERNIERS: Yes. So, of course, having a real customer, making a real customer happy and serving them at the best way possible is crucial. Of course, this is for every customer. But I mean, the internal efficiency can only also make that happen. It goes, as you said, hand in hand. The CPQ project was not only about internal, it's also about distribution users. So that also helped them a lot in having a faster growth and a better efficiency. So that already was an improving factor towards our distribution community. So this is really-- we-- of course, it's too soon to measure the increased lead time, as I can call it, for the quotation, but I'm sure it will help the accurate price setting, and moving towards the administration will improve, and that will improve our support to our customers in the end, as well. So you cannot see it aside from each other there, no. JB WOOD: And you were saying, in the automotive business, 10 years is nothing, right? And therefore, when you make commitments to your customers, they-- I'm sure they are, a, well in advance of maybe even the final provision of the products to the customer, but that they are also fairly long-term commitments, because they need to know what the price of their bomb is going to be well in advance. So I can imagine that pricing for you is a super important thing. INES TAVERNIERS: Yes, because we also give prices for products, which we still need to develop, of course. And our development time is more or less two years. So, indeed, those long-term commitments need to be-- need to be put in place. And, therefore, I said the early modification factors that it's not just the Word documents somewhere floating around, but we really have it embedded in a system, and be able to follow it up all those years is really helping a lot on the visibility, of course. JB WOOD: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, as I was saying, I mean the businesses constantly have to evaluate the capabilities that they have, and the capabilities that they don't have, right, that they're going to need for the future. And as you said, it's a sort of a never ending journey, right? I mean, you can always improve, and you can always digitally improve. And it's very important to have partners who, solution partners, who understand the challenges of these industries. And one of the things that-- I mean, we almost-- we have to cover this topic of 2020, because it was so, so interesting in terms of how businesses manage through this last year, because, on the one hand, there were-- it was-- there was a lot of economic uncertainty. And there were some projects that sort of got put on hold with some companies who were involved in digital transformation. And then there were others that the last year made them realize they needed to accelerate in certain areas. Can you talk a little bit about some of the challenges of 2020 for Melexis. INES TAVERNIERS: Yes. So for this particular project, so we started the whole implementation exactly in the start of the whole pandemic. So it was in the beginning, a bit like hesitating whether we should commit, and start with it, yes, or we should wait. But then we realized, yeah, we should go for it now. We did the whole requirements. It's now or never, to say it like that. But I mean, waiting is no option. But during the project, it was really efficient to constantly work on it, not traveling. It was really, the focus remains. The only thing was that we should keep the teams efficient, because as long as you're in a really big teams, then it is, of course, more difficult from a virtual perspective. However, so for Melexis, in a broader sense for the digital, yeah, we see more and more the communication styles or CPQ, as such, became even more important, because your colleague is not sitting next to you to say, like, yeah, it's OK. You have my approval. I mean, now, they were forced from the beginning to register, and to really follow all processes. So in the end, it's really improved even the journey of this, and the adoption of this tool. JB WOOD: Yeah. I give you a lot of credit. I mean, there are a lot of datapoints out there that suggests that COVID just really accelerated a lot of business model transformations that were already underway. And there are some companies who hesitated, right? They said, now is not the right time to invest. Now is not the right time to go through transformation. And those companies who didn't make a move, now, as things come back to normal, they're competitively disadvantaged over companies who did. So I give you a lot of credit for not sitting on the sidelines once you saw what was happening, but plowing ahead with the project. And now you have got these new digital capabilities that you didn't have a year ago. INES TAVERNIERS: Yes. Correct. So we are also very happy we jumped into it. But it was, as every time with Melexis, whenever we face some difficulties, then is the time to react. And so we did that before to make some challenging decisions. But it has proven to be right. Yes. JB WOOD: The journey you've been on, which is part of a I'm sure a broader sort of sales transformation, sales and service transformation journey, what advice or insight could you share with us about making these projects successful? And as you look back, what might you have done differently in this implementation? INES TAVERNIERS: So for every process, I mean, really, the preparation step is crucial. We really spend a lot of time preparing for this. The whole requirement phase is, of course, crucial. People tend to rush into it, which is not such a good idea, because, yeah, it's really the foundation from everything. So and also, while it's not underestimate-- I mean, it's not just the tool, it's also touching data, processes, and organization. All those factors really should go hand in hand. And then, also, super crucial is to communicate that to all levels of people involved, from C-level to really key administrators, key data. So this communication, you spend a lot of time from an adoption perspective, it's crucial to do that, and to really spend a lot of time on that, from the requirements phase through really the support on the going life. JB WOOD: One of the things that we talk a lot about at TSIA is the need for suppliers to play a more proactive role in helping customers succeed with their solutions. And there are some suppliers who just like to sell product, and take off. And then there are others that really, because you mentioned, there are a lot of success factors in a project like this. And when you work with a company like Oracle, who's been through many of these implementations, they can be in a position to really do things like you said, right. You've got to manage expectations up and down the organization in this, around time frames, and costs, and challenges that you're likely to face. Do you do you feel like you got that kind of help? INES TAVERNIERS: Yes, yes, from the start. I mean, you really got a heads up on what was coming. Of course, it's a bit different for every sector and the kind of requirements and expectations you have, but, yes, the support was there from the beginning until, yeah, to the end, when in the success story there. JB WOOD: Where does Melexis go from here in terms of sort of evolving the transformation process that you've begun? And where are the sort of next opportunities for you to advance your digital transformation? INES TAVERNIERS: Yeah, for sure. It will not stop. It never stops in my opinion. So but with respect to the sales and business growth and automation, we want to go further, especially in the integrational, which is-- it's difficult, because until now you have-- we were all-- luckily we already have global implementation, which is not for every company there. So this is already a good step, the global optimization versus the local, which sounds obvious, but it's not always. And now we really want to grow further in like integrated reporting. And we really to have this BI there, and to not go for the big data, just from a reporting perspective, but also from really like wisdom, and not just data anymore. You really need to give or C-level people information, which is not just data. And that's really a big step to have this translation from big data to actionable items. This is a huge challenge. I don't think, not only for us, but for everyone. JB WOOD: Yeah. There's no doubt. I mean, the word agility is a kind of an overused word, but the reality is that technology is allowing-- is allowing, or forcing businesses to constantly change, to constantly innovate, and that means more projects, faster projects. Hey, listen, Ines, it was great to meet you, great to speak with you, Melexis is really on an exciting journey. And I wish you all the best in the next stage of your transformation. INES TAVERNIERS: Thank you for the invitation. Thank you. Bye-bye. 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