We seek to build partnerships with customers that are aligned consistently with their needs and requirements. These partnerships are managed by account managers – sales and marketing professionals who look after a particular customer, region, or sales area. They are the primary interface between Siemens and its customer base, and their task is to identify and understand customers’ needs in detail. The greater the demand for overall solutions capable of efficiently networking systems and streamlining business workflow and processes, the more important effective account management becomes.

We want all our customers – everyone from major accounts to buyers of consumer goods like mobile phones and kitchen equipment – to feel that they are in good hands. To respond effectively to their needs, we operate a number of call centers that our customers can contact 24 hours a day.

Our Medical Solutions Group launched Genesis, a project designed to put customers in touch with a competent contact in the shortest possible time. In the future, the Group’s service centers, previously responsible for fielding technical inquiries and resolving problems, will focus instead on the entire spectrum of customer relationships. The goal is to foster more intensive communication and to ensure that customers receive the information and level of support they need.

Although product development cycles are becoming shorter all the time, customers need to be able to trust Siemens to consistently deliver quality and reliability. To sustain and strengthen that trust, we begin our quality inspections at an early stage in the product development process.

We go to considerable lengths to make sure our products – from mobile phones to power generating facilities to medical software to washing machines – are as user-friendly as possible. At usability labs in Munich, Princeton and Beijing, our engineers, IT specialists, designers, and psychologists optimize our products’ and computer software’s user interfaces, partly by observing test subjects working with our products and prototypes.

One way of ensuring that our products and solutions are exactly tailored to our customers’ requirements is to engage in shared development initiatives. Our collaboration with Reifenhäuser, a leading German manufacturer of foil extrusion plants, is a prominent case in point. As part of this partnership, we worked on developing a new custom high-torque motor for Reifenhäuser’s plastics extruder. The new motor is both more efficient and much quieter than the conventional motor/gearbox solution.

For customers building factories, we can do more than just supply high-quality control, building, and communication technology, we can also offer power-supply, instrumentation and control systems and can plan the entire project virtually on computer systems.

Siemens was among the first companies to qualify as a partner for Euro 2004, the European soccer championship, in Portugal. We played an active part in constructing nine of the ten stadiums, supplying, among other things, the electrical infrastructure, low- and medium-voltage systems, electronic safety and security systems, voice and data networks, and lighting systems. In total, six of our Groups were involved.
The Summer Olympics in Athens were another high-profile sporting event in 2004. Greece spent around €1 billion on security for the athletes and the spectators. Siemens succeeded in preparing an overall concept that convinced the organizers, as no other vendor was capable of supplying and integrating so many different systems – everything from surveillance cameras to systems for vehicle location and access control, and electronic networks to support the security forces. Siemens supplied 65,000 different products, systems, and solutions.

For many of us, mobility is a fundamental need. We want to be able to travel from one place to another as quickly and as safely as possible, and we are less and less willing to take delays in our stride – when traveling by air, road or rail. As air traffic volumes continue to expand, airport handling processes need to be as smooth as possible to keep airport users – airlines, freight forwarders, and air travelers – satisfied. This means airport operators need to focus on rapid handling, user friendliness, and cost efficiency.

Customers today can source the goods and services they need with vendors anywhere in the world. This means that simply supplying good products and systems is not sufficient to build strong and successful customer relationships. Instead, it’s essential for businesses to differentiate themselves from other vendors by being more responsive – by offering customer-specific solutions that create additional value.

Our Power Generation (PG) operating Group has scored a notable success in recent years by greatly expanding its service offering – to the point that services now account for 40 percent of PG’s net sales. Engaging customers in intensive dialogue has played a considerable role here. By asking them what they want and where they thought problems lay, our people at PG have been able to come up with new ideas for services and complete solution packages, time and again.

Our Transportation System (TS) Group is a full-service, turnkey supplier. Besides supplying 30 Desiro electrical multiple unit trains to Britain’s National Express Group, TS is also responsible for servicing and maintaining the units and is setting up its own depot in Northampton for that purpose. The 20-year full-service agreement covers an entire range of servicing, including the supply of spare parts.