Now that you’ve been here for a few months, what were your first impressions of Valtech Mobility?

I was pleasantly surprised by how far our company is positioned in agile working and agile management. The motivation of the employees, their helpfulness and their profound know-how made it very easy for me to get started. At the same time, VM has established itself in recent years as one of the competence leaders in the field of mobile services and digitization. I was impressed by the diversity and complexity of the solutions we deal with and master.

What did you do before?

I was technical director and spokesman of the management board of Digiteq Automotive in the Czech Republic for 4 years. Another Volkswagen subsidiary of CARIAD (51%) and Skoda (49%). Our focus was both on supporting Skoda’s vehicle ramp-ups and expanding our software competencies for CARIAD.

Why did you choose Valtech Mobility?

2 aspects moved me to switch to VM. Agility and mobile services/software update. Valtech Mobility has been working in the agile environment for years and thus has a long horizon of experience. To mirror and integrate this knowledge and their processes in the company management was one of the drivers. In addition, there is hardly a more interesting and innovative environment today than digitalization – including the possibility of a permanent update/upgrade capability. The aspiration to expand my technical knowledge here and to be part of this next transformation was the deciding factor.

Valtech Mobility is forming a joint venture with CARIAD. What does the cooperation model look like and, above all, how does it feel in practice?

First of all, not so much different than what I’m used to from the Group’s cooperation with a subsidiary. Of course, processes and reporting are different in a minority interest, but nevertheless the close connection and concentration in the support of the Group and CARIAD is the basis of our business.

More like competition or symbiotic partnership?

I would rather call it a partnership of equals. We have been working together as suppliers of the core platform for over 10 years. A deep trust in our capabilities and competencies has developed here. Positioning will once again come more to the fore. CARIAD in its transformation naturally occupies its own roles and topics, yet we are strategically linked to CARIAD and valued as partners in important developments. We will and want to drive this joint roadmap together.

What will be the defining issues?

We are facing a transformation of today’s platform. The question that always exists in a product business is: How much power and innovation do you put into existing, running platforms? This means that there will continue to be feature enhancements, but these will increasingly be scaled back and transferred to a maintenance mode. We want to be a reliable partner for both topics. Both in feature and service development, and as a service and DevOps partner. In addition, we are working on completing our portfolio up to client applications and business analysis.

What challenges do you see VM facing within this model?

Today, we are an efficient, agile development organization that can respond quickly to market demands through years of experience. We will maintain that. But due to the increasing requirements to also operate developments responsibly, or to ensure support for them, we have to adapt without losing our efficient development. We have to establish new roles in our organization and position ourselves for support requirements that also include other work models or networking across time zones. This is a big challenge.

Valtech Mobility is largely responsible for the networking of 15-20 million vehicles. How do you get such gigantic scalings under control?

Through clear interfaces, responsibilities and structures, reliable and high-quality software solutions and, of course, motivated experts. We are leaders in some of these areas. Especially when it comes to knowing and quantitatively evaluating not only our implementations, but also adjacent ones. However, there is still potential in collaboration within the system landscape, which has already been identified. Minimizing the interfaces and partners in the system landscape and reducing the number of responsibilities helps to address issues and implement solutions more quickly and effectively.

When we talk about services, could you give a particularly exciting example at the moment and outline the challenges, structures and solution strategies for implementation?

I personally find the topic of software updates the most exciting and also the most technically complicated. The vision that is already being undertaken today with software updates/upgrades and making the car available as another device for apps opens up new business models. Here, it is not only necessary to create the necessary architectural prerequisites, but at the same time to use them to fend off potential cyber attacks and to build a profitable platform across countries in order to be able to seize the business opportunities for all brands and countries. In addition to the technology, the corresponding business processes have to be established – a challenging task in a large corporation. Today, we are active in this technological environment with CARIAD and want to significantly expand the business area and add business-relevant topics.

What topics have you identified so far where you can contribute immediately?

In the process topics, there were and are some very related topics where I could immediately contribute my experience. One example: Increasingly, certification according to Automotive Spice is required in software development. We also introduced this process step during my time at Digiteq Automotive and have further deepened it. The topic also accompanies us in Mobility.

In the near future, major tenders and our offers will be on the agenda. Together with our partners, we will shape the future in line with our strategic objectives and implement further growth. Growth also means regularly reviewing our structures and, if necessary, adapting adjustments and processes to our size. I am very much looking forward to accompanying these steps and implementing further transformations.