Audi 2012 Annual Report Download - page 101

them themselves, so driver assistance
systems are especially important.
In China, those customers normally
have a chaueur. So they are more
interested in how comfortable the rear
compartment is. One option we oer
them is business class seats like those
you’d find on an aircraft, that you can
recline electrically. The entertainment
options are obviously very important,
too: video, TV, hotspots for the com-
puter, smartphones and consoles. In
the United States, on the other hand,
our customers really appreciate ease of
operation, plus the very sophisticated,
wide-ranging features of our assistance
systems.
Dr. Brandt: That’s yet more clear
evidence of how customer require -
ments are changing. In our industry,
as well as optimized processes cus-
tomers nowadays want to be able to
evaluate business-relevant data and
initiate processes whenever they wish
and wherever they are. Our innova-
tions make that possible. In an eort
to develop optimum solutions for our
customers, for some time now we have
been using what is called the design
thinking method. Interdisciplinary teams
observe the user’s needs and develop
solutions hand in hand with them so
as to build, test and improve prototypes
to the point where they are operational.
This approach speeds up our develop-
ment cycles and boosts customer
satisfaction, because the user is closely
involved in the development process.
Strotbek: I firmly believe anyway
that development is what drives our
industry. In 2011 we spent around
2.8 billion euros on development, and
the figure was more than 3.4 billion
euros in 2012. That dynamic growth
underlines how important this activity
is to us. “Vorsprung durch Technik”
needs to be continually advanced if
it is to remain just as successful in
the future. We achieve this with our
eective team and by working in
partnership with a large number of
outstandingly well-qualified service
providers. We even go so far as to
integrate some of them when we
want to build their expertise into the
development processes for our core
technologies.
Dr. Brandt: Our industry does something
similar. At SAP we have what we call
our partner ecosystem, which spans
partners from the hardware, technology
and implementation areas. In our
experience, when we recruit one em -
ployee, that creates ten new jobs
throughout our ecosystem worldwide.
Strotbek: That’s interesting, because
it illustrates very well how economic
systems and also major corporations
are deeply interconnected on a global
scale.
Dr. Brandt: I think interconnection
is one of the key ideas here, and
the prerequisite of future viability.
Connectivity is becoming ever
more important. Our world is more
connected than ever. Against the
“Design thinking speeds up our development
cycles and boosts customer satisfaction, because
the user is closely involved in the development
process.”
Dr. Werner Brandt
P H O T O S | E N N O K A P I T Z A
Fuel consumption and emission figures at the end of the Annual Report
My Experience
104