← Marketing Beyond with Alan B. Hart
Marketing Beyond with Alan B. Hart
24: Increase productivity with a digital workforce: Insights from TeamViewer Chief Executive Officer, Oliver Steil
00:32:14
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- [00:00]
A
Well, today on the show got Oliver style. He's the CEO of TeamViewer. And on the show today we talk about how TeamViewer is driving automation, productivity and AI and technology remote solutions through many different industries that we all benefit from. Even the global transportation of goods and services across industrial systems and much more. We also talk about the advent of AI and how humans play a role in that and where agentic solutions fit in. That and much more. With Oliver Style.
- [00:34]
B
Are you ready to go beyond the basics of marketing? I'm Alan Hart and this is Marketing beyond, where I chat with the world's leading chief marketing officers and business innovators to share ideas that spark change and inspire you to challenge the status quo. Join us as we explore the future of marketing and its endless potential.
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A
Oliver, welcome to the show.
- [01:01]
C
Thank you.
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A
Well, before we get talking about TeamViewer and business, this is your first time at Dreamforce? Yes. It's a zoo, right?
- [01:10]
C
That's a good description. Yes. I think it's you. You need to get used to the fact that it's more a show actually than it is a trade fair with B2B customer meetings. So it's many, many more things to see and experience, I have to say. But interesting. Very interesting. Very lively. Very lively.
- [01:28]
A
Very lively. And I was. This is also my first time. I was impressed by the scale of it, like how much space it takes up.
- [01:36]
C
Yes. I think especially before the keynote when you have kind of all these people trying to get to the keynote, that is a lot of people. And then the other thing is that people need to learn that plan. Your visit is that you should not have back to back meetings because it's by no means you can get to meetings in time from one place to the other. So a whole new experience, I would say, compared to other shows. But anyway, we're getting there.
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A
Yeah. Well, you are the CEO of TeamViewer. Where did you get your start in your career and how did you end up at TeamViewer?
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C
So I started actually as an electrical engineer and then I went to McKinsey. So 10 years of McKinsey as a business consultant in technical environments. And then at some point I started to work in the private equity space, started to expand from telecom to IT software. Then I worked on the investor side and the owners of TeamViewer. And then from there I voluntarily moved to TeamViewer to become the CEO and grow the business there. So I joined TeamViewer in 2018. Two years later we had the IPO and since then growing nicely internationally. So Fun, fun place to work.
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A
Yeah. A lot of experience. And even at TeamViewer, starting IPO now, growing, I'm sure a lot. That's quite a ride.
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C
It is quite a ride, yes. Also in between, don't forget this Covid in between. Right. Which for a remote company has, has some implications. So we went to, I joined in beginning of 2018 and then what you do, you come on what you launch certain initiatives, you grow IPO in 19. We were presenting our equity story around what we're going to do and then Covid came just a few months later, which obviously boosted the business, but also in a way crashes your longer term, medium term plan. So quite, quite a right. Yes.
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A
Well, what is the scope of TeamViewer? How do I think about the company and the solutions you guys offer?
- [03:31]
C
Yeah, so it's a 20 year old company founded in Europe, Germany actually, in the middle of the kind of industrial mainland Germany. And we started off providing remote connectivity, remote control, remote support, connecting to computers, helping other people. And we took that idea to expand into kind of a variety of use cases. So you can now still connect to a computer and provide IT help, but you can also connect to all kinds of other equipment, devices, machinery, and you can remote connect into it and remote control it. So really think of it like remote controlling a television set, but really to the core of the operating system. So you can reprogram, you can configure, you can reboot on all kinds of machines. That was the IT side. We've then taken that more and more into the industrial environment. Our customers started to think about new digital workflows whereby they don't need to send a technician to physical equipment anymore, they don't need to repair it, try to do as much as possible remotely. We then took it one step further and said, what if a technician is in the remote side? How we can best possibly support that technician using augmented reality, using data. So that was the other area then. And most recently we did an acquisition last year to get into proactive IT management where you don't wait for a problem to occur and then create a ticket and have somebody fix it, but you actually have a piece of software, an agent that runs on the machine and is constantly observing the machine and solving issues before they actually hit the user or occur for the user. So that was the latest addition. So we like to think about Internet of Things connectivities, like everything that is out there. We want to connect, but we also want to connect humans to the same platform and we want to do it in The IT environment for knowledge workers and OT environment all the way to technicians and logistics workers and the like. So pretty broad set of remote digital capabilities. Yeah.
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B
No.
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A
So first job out of college for me was working for industrial manufacturer postal automation equipment. Yeah, Some very big German names in that space as well. But part of my role was supporting service marketing for the field technician force. Right. In the US I think somewhere around 2000 service technicians. So the thought, I thought, when I thought I knew of TeamViewer, you completely changed my mind. So like, you know, and if I go back to my time at that company, you know, we would have the remote terminal. So you could, in using TeamViewer, I'm extrapolating use cases here, but you could, you could have an operator be able to remote in to help an operator, right?
- [06:23]
C
Correct.
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A
But you can also go to the point of remoting in and understanding what's going on in the system. It sounds like.
- [06:31]
C
Correct. Exactly, exactly. So we do both. So we do both and we do that from effectively any device to any device. So we have real use cases and obviously with COVID and the remote ideas that some of them really grew, but you can be in effectively on your tablet, on your sofa, at home and connect into a machine. So if you are a technician, if you're skilled and you can do a lot from the distance and we have these use cases where companies really making their workspace much more flexible because they allow engineers, technicians to work from different places to be faster, but also to just find the people and join the company. Because nowadays I think the expectation of I live somewhere and I want to join a company and do that highly skilled job, but I don't want to move. That's much more common than it was like 10 years ago. Right. And therefore it's a very interesting way to also create employee satisfaction.
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A
Yeah, well, so the tools that you're making, I mean, it feels like it's not only an aid to supporting equipment and keeping systems running as they should, but it's also changing the digital experience for the employees that are doing that work. How do you think about that?
- [07:48]
C
Yes. No. So we believe that there's a lot of value if you are able to bring the digital experience data, the right set of instructions and information to the specialist at work. Now, as it happens, when you think about the office environment where we all knowledge workers, I think fair to say that we have almost all information at our fingertips. Right. You have two different screens, three different screens. You have a tablet, you have a phone. So there's mostly Not a lack of information, but if you think about a frontline worker, people that are out there in the operations, to your example, where you were working, we always call them almost like underserved in this respect. They have often still paper or a device which is like a rugged device which has some basic application. And what we work a lot on is how can we get instructions and information in a easy to consume format to these type of people. And that is a game changer. So and then if you think about logistics or technical service manufacturing, if you are able to bring all the data that is available in the back office, like whether it's a PLM system or it's a CRM system, or it's a repository of manuals. So all this great information, if you bring that to the frontline, to a tablet or into AR glasses, and make it consumable within this context to that person, related to the kind of education and skillset of that person, that is incredibly powerful. And we work a lot on this because with the shortage of skilled labor, with a requirement to upskill people, this is really something where customers invest. And when we did the first acquisition in this area and this frontline worker space, we were a bit early maybe, but now it's really coming and gaining ground because companies need to deal with that problem well.
- [09:42]
A
So we've been talking about the, how you're changing the digital experience through tools and capabilities you bring forward into the field, so to speak, or into the environments that you wouldn't have normally seen them. And you also mentioned layering AI into the mix. How does that work in concert with all the solutions that you have and how do you think that changes work going forward?
- [10:06]
C
Yeah. So the way we, we look at AI is we want to make the workflow, the interaction between people, equipment, devices or people between people. We want to make that interaction better. And we're doing so by if the customer agrees to it, it's an opt in obviously in most markets of the world. But if customers agree, we are able to inspect the sessions that are happening between or in the interaction between a person, human being and the device. And when we then inspect the session, we look at the telemetry data that is being altered, changed settings, changes, and we try to link this back to the original problem or to the original task and the solution to this. So sounds conceptual, but in a way there's a problem on a device, on a machine, somebody locks onto this device and start to manipulate, search for issues, change configuration settings. When we inspect this session, we try to Distill and extract all these changes and all the information and out of this, then create code using AI to script what has happened. So this is an activity which normally if you think in the IT support world, the IT supporter would do this, right? So he would actually, I mean, if it's, if he's like looking to become more productive, him or herself, he would do the session. He would then recognize, okay, what have I done? And probably after the second or third of those tickets, write a script. That script would sit in TeamViewer and you can run the script when next time you have a. You have the same problem. So what we do now with AI is we inspect the session with AI rather than that person doing it. We do a summary of that session, we understand what has been happening, distill that code that as a, as a script or as an automation, how we call it. And we put, then add this to an automation library and we put this automation library on devices and we call that proactive IT or proactive issue remediation, where you say, okay, if I have enough automation sitting on a device, then I can in real time solve problems that will occur or might occur because I have seen them occurring in other places. So the typical environment, I'd say 10,000 people, there's always the first one is the first opening the computer in the morning and incurring a problem because there's a patch bin has been deployed or change of the setting has happened for the whole company. When we see this problem, try to solve it, but then very quickly out of this, create the automation so that when the next 9,999 employees open their laptop, that problem is automatically remediated, proactively remediated. So that doesn't occur. And that reduces the number of tickets, obviously a lot. So that's one example of using AI. If you take that to the OT environment, frontline workers, kind of the same concept. The technician does work, but you want to analyze, understand what has been done and then automate it in a way so that the next person doing the same task has perfect help or as much help as possible.
- [13:11]
A
Right. Well, I mean, if you continue to extrapolate this, I mean, you're building a digital workforce of tools, almost.
- [13:20]
C
Yeah, you build it. Yes. Other people would call it then agentic. Yes, but you will. You build automations or agents or sets of automations, which then like an agent for certain problems, for certain environments, certain machinery, whether it's in production, assembly or technical service. And you make that available and you try to really Push the boundary of when does a person need to get involved, a real person need to get involved. The more I can do automatically, the more I can do proactively, the more I can do remotely, the more I limit the number of cases where actually somebody has to go. And if somebody has to go, I'm trying to make information available and instructions, delivery to that person so that maybe a para expert can do the job rather than the expensive expert that would need to jump on a plane and fly across the country. Right.
- [14:10]
A
No, I mean, it's, it's phenomenal because if you think about the environments that you're working in, none of that historically existed. Right. Like one, the connectivity doesn't exist. So you're solving that to the ability to log and script and proactively create fixes. Yes, essentially. And now to be able to do that remote at scale using AI. I mean, from a workforce standpoint to your point, you're, you're elevating the knowledge worker and the technical support needed now in human form.
- [14:47]
C
Yes, right. Yes, exactly. And then, and obviously you need the processing power, you need the ability to really work with very large sets of data because imagine we have 650,000 customers globally. The number of sessions happening is huge. It's enormous. Millions.
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A
Right.
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C
And you need to be able to kind of process those, learn from those, and then create automation out of this. Only possible now since, since we have these technologies and the processing power available.
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A
I mean, I think most people that are listening to this are probably understanding the size and scope, but it's kind of blowing my mind a little bit because the types of environments we're talking about, if I just extrapolate, just industrial, all the goods in the world move on. Industrial systems.
- [15:32]
C
Exactly. Yes.
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A
And if you think about all of those manual, historical, manual touch points, I mean, this is a huge efficiency, productivity gain. I can see why you guys, ipo.
- [15:47]
C
And interestingly, many of these use cases then started to really grow only after ipo, because after ipo we had Covid. And Covid also changed the understanding of companies to think about remote. So therefore, when we were in our equity story at ipo, we were talking about, well, yeah, remote help, remote support, remote IT management, management. And we were talking about the fact that we should be able to transfer these concepts much more into the operational world, into the industrial world, into places where frontline workers run around and do more remotely. And at the time, I think we were probably one of the few companies saying that a remote first would be a good concept because it's so much more productive and faster and drives customer satisfaction. So your end customer satisfaction. But at the time felt like, yeah, we, but, but why? We have all these people, we have the business system, we don't want to do so much remote. We have the established service supply chain and the service partners. But then with COVID everybody had to adjust. So it's like we, and we have this great example of a big machine manufacturer that wanted then to deploy machines in India during COVID and you cannot, you just couldn't send anybody.
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A
Right.
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C
So that then changes the whole thinking of I need to, I need to also look into my operations and not just into my back office it. And for these companies, the operations are the most interesting part, not the back office it, if you know what I mean.
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A
Right, right, right, right. Well, you're starting to talk about partnerships. I mean, you've got so many different layers of companies and partner potential. How are you leveraging partners to help drive the business forward and contribute to your growth story?
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C
Yeah, that's clearly an important element. The more we use AI, the more, the more we speak about data and digital workflows, the more I think you come to the realization that for the customer, it only works as a digital threat, end to end, if you integrate with the right partners. Because from a customer perspective, digitalizing a workflow only makes sense if it's end to end, if the different systems of record that hold certain pockets of data speak to each other and are connected. So if you're manufacturing an asset, a physical asset, machine or whatever, you have, obviously the, the, you have the cut data, you have the PLM data, you have the machine data, the, the spare part data, all of that. You have your process flow, maybe you use salesforce in, in your kind of dispatching and, and scheduling and the CRM part of it. And then you want to touch the front end worker with step by step instructions how to do a maintenance job. And it, it all only makes sense if it's all connected because we don't produce any maintenance or any, any, any asset data. So we need to pull it from somewhere. But when the job is done, when the technical support has been done or the maintenance work has been done, we need to feed back data into the system of record again. So now that could be the teams, it could be a PLM system or it could be a CRM system, we don't care so much. But in any case, all of these systems that a customer has on site needs to be connected and that you can only solve through partnership. And I Think that's one of the things that nobody would claim, I guess today that you have, that you can master all these very different data sources. So therefore partnering is key.
- [19:15]
A
Right? Well, and even just managing your own partners in that regard, you must have to have systems to just harness all the complexity that it is. How do you think about your own ability to manage those partners at scale?
- [19:34]
C
I think the key thing is that it's. By now, I would say that there's a commercial element of it managing, working with partners, kind of commercial agreements. But what it really comes down to is you need to have good developers, good engineers to kind of come together from the different partners and kind of map out the use case and really think carefully how does it need to look from a customer perspective. So you need to be quite outward oriented, as in a development organization, to work with partners, which I think is a especially like I would say company of our size. And the typical European engineering driven company tends to be quite inward focused. And so we, we build tools, we build products. They are great. People should use it and they should figure out how to kind of use them in their environment. And I think over the years this has changed quite significantly. It's like there's much more value in, okay, how do we connect to an ERP system? How do we connect to an CRM system and then bring the developers together and have joint roadmaps and then build end to end products, integrated product that the customer, when using it, have very clear and easy customer journeys and user flow so that people feel, yeah, that is, that works from day one. So to say one of the questions you always get is, well, I like what you do in terms of remote, I like the functionality. Do you integrate with xyz? Because we happen to have XYZ and the answer has to be yes, we do. If you say no, then you're already in a disadvantage.
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A
Yeah, no, I agree. And it's this notion of going from, you know, industrial system design to ecosystems and ecosystem management. And to your point, you have to be open, you have to integrate with all the different partners, but you also have to, you know, be specific in the role that you play in that ecosystem. Yes, I would imagine, yes.
- [21:30]
C
No, 100%. I think you need to, you really need to understand the world workflow that the customer is thinking about. So you need, you need to have strong expertise in what you're providing. But you more and more, you need to have the domain expertise. And which environment are we working in? Especially when we, as we've been touching a lot is like the industrial world or the operations world, the warehousing logistics world. These are all different verticals. And I think one of the things you learn is if you engage there, it's a different, it's a different buying Persona. It's different processes, different challenges also in terms of data protection, the architecture. But that also builds a skill because the more you work in this environment you more. The more you build a new SP versus many other players that maybe stay very focused on. On back office or headquarter it which is a different ballgame. So I think compared to the, to our competitors some years ago, we have moved on into this field and that's a skill now and that's what we recognize for. Awesome.
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A
Well, one of the things I like to do besides talk about business is get to know you a little bit better. My favorite question to ask everyone that comes on the show is has there been an experience of your past that makes up or defines who you are today?
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C
Oh, interesting question. There's always many, many experiences that come to mind if you, I mean if you have a longer time and you move to different into different environments and work environments. There's. There's so much you learn and so much you absorb. I think it's probably shifting from a technical study. So being an engineer kind of being thrown into your first project consulting project in McKinsey and being in board level and being suddenly in a M and a carve out discussion to, to kind of do things you never heard about. Even, even especially like when you think about and being an engineer, I mean five years electrical engineering. I mean this tough, tough topics.
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A
Right.
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C
But the least thing you, you're exposed to is, is private equity is carve outs and M and A banking. Right. And I think that like within the first few months of, of a new job being in this situation is okay, there's, okay, there's, there's the thing I know by now, but there's so much more out there and I think that that kind of drives curiosity and, and also pushes you forward to just get to know more environments. And I think that's. That, that's fascinating in a way.
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A
Yeah, yeah. Some people think of that like consulting experience after undergrad is like a finishing school for business. I don't know if you've ever heard of that.
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C
Yeah, that's it. I mean 100% but it can be, it, it can be very different for different people. That's right. You can, I would say say you are coming out of a business school and then you Move to consulting. I would say in most cases you would have seen. Heard about most of the topics before. Right. And but if you're coming and maybe that's typical for, for like European engineering schools. This is very engineering. So this is not. I mean you've probably maybe half a, half a course in business and maybe half a course in law, but that's it. Otherwise you go very deep. So in that sense, for these type of people, the technical people, moving into consulting is like completely new world. And that, and that changes really the way also just what you want to do in life because you haven't. You didn't know before.
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A
Well, if you were starting all over again, what would you tell young Oliver? What advice would you have for him?
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C
I would say probably network even more, be more outward focused even more from the start. I think the world has, has changed so much now. If I look at our, our children and how they, how they interact, more of that would have been probably be even better for me at the time. But it's never too late.
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A
Well, is there a topic you're trying to learn more about today or you think people need to be learning more about?
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C
Look, I think we are. I'm very much into obviously into AI, very much into understanding the potential, the future there. And we've only scratching the surface. I think we've gone through waves of this massive innovation and disruption like with new economy and more that now it's another one. And I think again I'm seeing in, in many places hesitation, skepticism, more more negativity around it than actually seeing the opportunity. And I think that's, that's never good. It's never a good start. So I'm trying to kind of push myself and be open there as much as possible also in new adjacent technologies because it will be a facilitator for many other innovations which we all work on. Right. When it's like computing, energy, energy production, there's so many topics that we can scale so much faster in the engineering. When you use the technology which is available and therefore people being skeptical about using those technologies, it's probably not the right mindset. So we trying to push all ourselves myself.
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A
Is there anything you're just super curious about what's going on in the world today or trends or things that you're looking at.
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C
I'm following, I think there's always our business life clearly and then there's innovation, there's science, all the topics we were discussing. I do also follow international politics quite a bit. So I was always interested and It's a place obviously currently in this world where there is a lot going on, positives and negatives, and I think especially seeing the movement in some of the countries in Europe, also in also my home country, and trying to link it back to history. Okay, what has happened in the past? How has this evolved multiple times in the past? Are we on the right track? How do our big financial systems work? How can they still be influenced? That's an area which I'm following quite closely because I think these are very important problems at hand with aging, population, education, the way countries interact with each other. I think it's in quite a difficult place at the moment. And I'm following that a lot.
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A
I would say, yeah, you really start to see how interconnected all of the things that we're trying to do as a civilization are to each other.
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C
Yes, interconnected. And then also the kind of the pattern recognition of, okay, have we not been there before at some point? Has that not led to wrong turns in history, which we should avoid in our. We are we. Are we ready to avoid it, or are we making the same mistakes again? Sometimes? So this is. It's an interesting space to follow, obviously sometimes more frustrating than I could provide any solution or so. But I think we should all be very much aware of what's going on. And it's not an easy. It's not an easy face, I would say.
- [28:39]
A
What do you feel is the largest opportunity or threat facing business and marketers today?
- [28:47]
C
I think there is a huge opportunity to increase productivity very significantly on the back of data, on the back of AI. And so we can really rethink businesses. I think the innovation speed, the development speed in industries, which historically have been quite slow, not because people wanted to be slow, but it's just incredibly complex. When you design new products, when you design new processes, new chemicals, new medicines, and all of this can be much faster, much, much faster. And I think embracing that and increasing the speed, making us more productive and innovate for the better of the planet, I think is a huge opportunity. And people should embrace it. Especially the kind of engineers, scientists and business folks should embrace it. But at the same time, we will see lots of disruption coming with it. And we see the shift between different countries, between different economies. So I think the threat is really that there's so much change so rapidly that it will be much harder for companies to survive, to follow up, to kind of stay competitive. It is an ever increasing, ever speedier world with this, ever more competitive. And if you, if you're not alert you, you, you will stay behind. So I think it's a it, it is a very competitively intense place where you all see this like big companies, they really take share, they can innovate, they can speed, they can keep the speed and the innovation pace. But if they lose it, others come from the side, reinvent the technology, build it all new up and and you lose. And I think so. The, the constant of well, I if I have been a company that has been around for 100 years, I will also be successful the next hundred years, which I think is gone.
- [30:46]
A
Well, Oliver, thank you for coming on the show, sharing your thoughts and ideas.
- [30:50]
C
Thank you very much. Thank you.
- [30:58]
B
Hi, it's Alan again. Marketing beyond is a Deloitte Digital podcast. It's created and hosted by me, Alan Hart, and produced by Sam Robertson. We have even more cutting edge marketing insights headed your way. Be sure to subscribe to our channel to stay up to date with our latest episodes. I love hearing from listeners. Share your thoughts about the episode, the topic covered, or the show by commenting on this video or emailing me@marketingbeyondeloitt.com if you're interested in more conversations with industry visionaries, we invite you to explore other Deloitte Digital podcasts@deloitte floatedigital.com US podcast. There you'll find the Marketing beyond webpage.
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A
With complete show notes and links to.
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B
What we discussed in the episode today. I'm Alan Hart and this is Marketing Beyond. The views, thoughts and opinions expressed are the speaker's own and do not represent the views, thoughts and opinions of Deloitte. The material and information presented here is for general information purposes only and does not imply endorsement or opposition to any specific company, product or service.