DATA IS THE NEW OIL
“ IF I HAD to sum up our focus in one slogan that would be it ,” says Jan Brecht , CIO at Daimler . That slogan – data is the new oil .
Brecht is witnessing change in the automotive industry that is unprecedented in terms of speed . Having already spent the best part of two decades at the German car , truck and bus manufacturing giant , it is this tectonic shift in gears in the automotive tech space that brought him back to Daimler in November 2015 ; this after six years at Adidas .
“ If you ever wanted to be in the car industry in IT the time do it is now ,” he insists . “ We are seeing more changes now than we have seen in the past 20 or 30 years combined .”
Daimler uses CASE ( connected , autonomous , shared economy and electro mobility ) to summarise and approach such changes . All four elements are disruptive in their own right , but the fact they are all occurring at once presents a huge opportunity for Daimler to diversify and lead from the front . For Brecht , this means utilising all of the company ’ s IT expertise and assets spread around the world . “ We have more than 8,500 internal IT employees across all divisions , half of whom are in Germany ,” he outlines . “ We also have IT teams in all the major markets we operate in , from New Zealand to Canada , and strategically we are building delivery hubs outside Germany in the likes of Turkey , Portugal and India .”
No longer a builder of cars Roughly two years ago a strategic decision was made to reposition Daimler as a ‘ provider of mobility
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