BSH IT Vice President Berke Menekli stated that the issue of the availability of global cloud solutions in Turkey, unique to their sectors, should be explained, and that “there are certain systems that we have to keep in Turkey owing to the legal infrastructure.” We cannot use global cloud providers because they do not yet have their own solutions in Turkey, so we must offer some services with other alternatives. Because uncertainty has a direct impact on our investment expenses in many sectors, as well as our business decisions and project processes, this is the most crucial issue for us in 2021.”
Berke Menekli began his career in the Tekfen group in the Department of Information Technologies after completing his undergraduate study at Istanbul Technical University’s Department of Industrial Engineering and his master’s degree in the same department. Menekli continued his career with Coca-Cola, where he worked as the SAP systems manager, then entered the pharmaceutical industry in 2000 with the BMS Pharmaceuticals Company. Berke Menekli worked at GSK from 2010 to 2015. He was the Sales and Marketing Systems Director of BMS EMEA Group, spanning 26 countries, between 2008 and 2010. Menekli was most recently the Senior Director of Digital Transformation and Information Technology for the area, which covers the Middle East, Africa, and the Commonwealth of Independent States. Menekli has been with B/S/H Home Appliances since 2015 and is currently the Vice President of IT for the Emerging Markets Region, which includes 89 countries in Turkey, the Middle East, Africa, the CIS, India, and Southeast Asia.
We spoke with BSH IT Vice President Berke Menekli about their firms’ digital transformation, the incorporation of next-generation technology into their business operations, their goals for the future, and their strategic collaboration with NTT Data Business Solutions Turkey.
Many things have changed in recent years, from the manner they do business to the rate of digitalization. What changes did you require during this process?
We previously made significant expenditures in mobility. We have transitioned a big percentage of our workforce to the use of portable laptops and mobile devices. We also conducted research on the technical architecture required for our staff working outside the company to gain access to corporate systems. We’ve taken some steps to make our systems more accessible via cell phones and other mobile devices. As a result, we were not caught off guard for the final session. We were able to swiftly transition our entire crew to working from home. We were able to quickly integrate our approximately three thousand office staff into remote work by altering the equipment of our personnel, including our call center employees, who are always in the office.
To promote team togetherness, the IT team began holding virtual tea and coffee sessions with each group manager’s own team everyday or every 2-3 days as a substitute for socializing in the office. We also conducted virtual theater and virtual vacations inside the context of our firm organization. For example, our organization provided theater tickets, and we were able to get seats to a desired game and watch it online. On the travel front, we had the pleasure of touring Göbeklitepe with skilled guides via Zoom. We have taken steps to protect our social fabric through other groups comparable to these.
We discovered we needed extra tools after conducting evaluations with all of our employees in our department. As a firm, we were utilizing Skype, but we rapidly introduced the new generation Teams tool and products like Miro, which we will utilize for virtual workshop applications. We increased the VPN capacity that we utilize to connect to the company from 5,000 to 20,000. We held a New Year’s Eve party and a music broadcast over the joint broadcast that everyone joined while drinking tea or coffee from home with our colleagues as part of the IT team. We drew the team together and preserved the benefits of group work through such efforts.
Many companies in Turkey and throughout the world have begun to make the remote working model permanent. How is this procedure going for you? Do you currently have employees who work from home?
In Turkey, the Information Technologies department employs approximately 130 people. Almost all of these employees may now work from home. They only visit the office when there is a business requirement. For example, our factories are always running. As a result, our teams come to the factories as part of their jobs when it is necessary to support the production systems in the factory, when it is necessary to make any modifications in the office buildings, and when we cannot access the systems remotely; otherwise, they continue to work remotely.
How have your digitization processes advanced recently, and what developments have occurred?
We intended to create collaboration tools with the future generation, but we hastened the process. We have advanced the use of Teams, which we had intended for 2022, significantly. We already have roughly 3000 people in Teams, and we want to open it up to all users next month. We want to finish our makeover by September. Currently, 5000 people are using our Miro tool to arrange workshops. As the relevance of collaboration tools grows, we continue to work on identity management, which systems will utilize when connecting to these tools, and the workplace, which we strategically refer to as the user work environment.
We required to be at the office for certain administrative activities, such as signing. Our cost management software was also modified as part of the global project. We can now approve costs for work-from-home travel. We previously had items that could be used with mobile devices, but we modified them to provide a more comfortable user experience. Regarding the signature issue, we have also begun the e-signature system. We have made it unnecessary to come to the office to sign documents of official validity, such as contracts.
Turkey is the epicenter of the region’s rising markets. This rising markets region also includes the Middle East, Africa, Russia, former Commonwealth of Independent States countries, India, and Southeast Asian countries, in addition to Turkey. We also started a corporate digitalization project for all nations here. We’ve identified areas like the utilization of self-service technologies like Analytics, Reporting, Robotic process automation, and distance education tools that will help with both infrastructure and cultural digital transformation. Our training sessions are currently taking place in this area.
We address smart automation challenges such as robotic process automation, chatbot self-service or citizen developer, and analytical data science applications from Turkey. I believe we have accelerated slightly in this area. We’ve boosted both our training and the processes we’ve put in place, and we’ve implemented technologies that will aid and assist our employees’ home and remote working processes. The infrastructure that incorporates cultural transformation, which we term corporate digitalization for the region, is the core framework of these.
We had a very good year in all of the region’s countries. We have integrated apps relating to health, social distance, service, and team safety on the field, specifically for this era. With our global investments in infrastructure such as VPN, remote access, and collaboration tools, we have successfully finished the process both in Turkey and around the world. With the help of all of these efforts, we had a very successful year, finishing with a global sales turnover of approximately 14 billion Euros.
You mentioned data science, robotic process automation, and data analytics. Could you please tell us about your work in this field?
In fact, the pandemic had little further effect in these places. We had already reached a certain scale; these technologies were being employed in fields such as accounting, finance, and invoice entry, which is the traditional realm of robotic process automation and data science. We began using these technologies in research, development, and manufacturing processes 2.5 years ago. In our erkezköy factory, for example, we have so far introduced 29 processes. We also hold trainings and information sessions in all of our factories and divisions worldwide. We saved tens of thousands of hours of engineer work by putting waiting in specific places or automating procedures on robots.
For numerous years, one of our continuing efforts has been process mining. We are developing systems that can self-manage using data by integrating process mining and robotic process automation, which we call “data driven.” We are still conducting research on themes such as dynamically transferring mining data to robots and enabling robots to perform specific behaviors, but we do certain trials in collaboration with our suppliers.
Fraunhofer Industry 4.0 offers a 6-level Industry 4.0 maturity model. The Turkish Metal Industrialists’ Union follows the same model. This model steadily rises above the level of more island solutions from the very beginning, that is, from the portion where we do not know where the data is. The model brings it first to the sixth stage, when systems and all decisions can be made using data, and then to the seventh stage, where systems make their own decisions using data. Although we have not yet reached the sixth stage in the world, we have adopted this paradigm, at least as conceptual foundations. We have made investments in the field of IoT to collect data at this level. We are also experimenting with analyzing the acquired data in order to make the studied data actionable. We also have data science approaches for predicting this, not dynamically yet, but with nominal periodic frequencies. In other words, our engineers and citizen developers are taught in this subject, and around 200-300 engineers learn to utilize these tools with certain algorithms and to evaluate data produced by their own systems using their own knowledge, as well as to create certain optimizations. Because all of this is done by humans, they must be run on a regular basis and maintained. Our goal is to have it constantly re-executed and hence dynamically recalculated for every machine and every station at all times. As soon as we do this, the entire system will become self-managing and efficient.
Progress in maturity levels in this industry is not a problem that can be solved solely by increased investment. There is a process here that is tied to both culture change, user and IT employee competency growth, and system maturation. On this topic, for example, we did an evaluation study with a supplier that combines process mining with robotic process automation last year. We discovered several flaws in the product and informed our supplier about them. They stated that these issues will be addressed in future versions to be issued during the summer months. I believe we will be able to attain our goal in 3 to 5 years.
For example, in our erkezköy facilities, we presently have around 700 workstations where we collect and direct this type of Industry 4.0 information. Their number must increase in order to cover all workstations and the entire firm. This expansion is the result of both investment and user education. In Industry 4.0, for example, when our employee approaches the workstation and has his card read, the system checks to see if he has the requisite training to operate this station and authorizes him to do so if the training is complete. He warns that if the station is not finished, he will be unable to utilize it. It also warns about the items that should be used for occupational safety when working at the station. For example, he specifies the use of items such as spectacles and gloves. One of our goals is to get to the point where this is checked automatically. Progress in a variety of categories is required here. I can tell you that we have a 5-year process ahead of us.
What impact do you think technology like automation, artificial intelligence, and IoT had on the white goods business during the pandemic?
We organize educational workshops in several countries about what they may achieve in this field as the world’s smart automation center within BSH. We currently have approximately 50 processes built by our staff here, and our team in Turkey manages the operations. This should be considerably higher. Because assigning a work that an employee accomplishes 5% of the time to a robot isn’t always efficient, scaling typically necessitates a basic thinking method.
The idea here is to turn the jobs that our people can execute on a regular basis and that can be related to specific regulations into large bundles that can be sent to the robot. This intelligent automation not only makes it more efficient, but it also saves our personnel from a massive task and allows them to allocate their time to work where they can focus on their more intellectual competencies. In the current artificial intelligence development paradigm, artificial intelligence cannot match a person’s intellectual competence. I don’t see it happening anytime soon. There are numerous places in which people can apply their intellectual abilities and contribute their own interpreting capacity. It is more vital to devote more time to these and automate the issues that may be related to an algorithm.
We offer training and the required infrastructure to anyone who wants to obtain assistance in this area or who wants to accomplish something similar for their own firm. In this sense, we organize training courses by group and country. To reach a scale, all of our personnel must undergo a mental transformation. We’ve gone a long way since the beginning and will continue to do so.
Chatbots are used in our service desk and other internal procedures. We’ve made them self-service. If a user in any of our departments frequently receives queries from within the firm on a certain issue, he provides scenarios for that inquiry to the chatbot, and the chatbot now enters the picture. Because these are more about the manner of thinking, the last year’s process has had no negative or positive impact here. I can tell that in the last year, I have not seen any change in the trend. I believe that in the next ten years, robotic process automation will be used by everyone, but we have a long way to go.
What do you expect to happen in Turkey this year, both in your 2021 ambitions and in your industry? What do you believe are the important points that need to be addressed in Turkey in terms of the sector?
The primary objective for us in Turkey is to finish; to clarify the issue about the availability of global cloud solutions in Turkey; and to keep certain systems in Turkey due to the legal infrastructure in Turkey. Because global cloud providers do not yet have their own solutions in Turkey, we must address some services with alternative solutions because we cannot utilize them. We cannot always modify our global architecture to accommodate Turkey. This is one of the most important factors for us. However, several activities of various business and informatics world groups and structures are currently underway. I am hopeful that this issue will be resolved soon with the implementation of regulations in the legal infrastructure or infrastructure that global cloud service providers would develop in Turkey. This is the most crucial concern for us in 2021, because uncertainty affects our investment costs in numerous sectors, as well as our business decisions and project procedures.
As the region’s representative, I’d like to point out that this problem is being considered not only in Turkey, but comparable laws are being implemented in numerous places across the United States, most notably in Russia, India, and, most recently, California. According to a research paper I read, while just 10% of the world’s population is currently covered by a data protection law, this proportion is expected to rise to 68% in the next three years. As a result, I anticipate that cloud providers will view this issue as an architectural paradigm shift and develop an architectural solution appropriate for this new situation with the accompanying R&D studies.
Another issue that we are concerned about is Industry 4.0. As I previously stated, it will be a critical area in which we want to accelerate our own competencies by focusing and working on it. Furthermore, one of the most essential challenges for us is access to our consumers, particularly the acceleration of our procurement operations. We have previously been providing product delivery and installation services to our customers for years by promising a specific day and time period. Now we want to install solutions that accomplish this in a way that improves and extends the user experience.
We’d like to highlight your collaboration with NTT DATA Business Solutions Turkey. What was the impetus for this commercial collaboration?
Turkey’s information technology team works in three areas. First, we want to express our gratitude to the emerging markets region. Here, we assist our manufacturing and field activities. Last but not least, Turkey is the global hub for analytics, data science, product information systems, and after-sales service systems. Our global services extend not only to the emerging markets region, but also to the entire globe, from America to China. The third category is smart automation, which includes chatbots and robotic process automation. We also manage them as the global hub.
We planned to develop a model such as which jobs we will do with our own team and which jobs we will do with outsourced services when we founded the expertise center five years ago, and we wanted this model to be a live model. As a result, we looked for a strategic partner, and during our tender preparation process, which lasted a few months, we conducted an analysis and comprehensive planning about which services we want to acquire, how we want to receive them, and with which service agreements. We sought a supplier with the “one-stop shop” philosophy, with whom we could work with all of the technologies we used in the tender process, which lasted 6 months in total. We opted to proceed with Itelligence based on our appraisal at the end of the tender process.
We receive help from them here within the context of a service management framework, which we term managed services and which we split in a particular layer, both as systems that we use worldwide and systems that we use in the support we provide to the region. Itelligence has innovation skills because it is a subsidiary of Global NTT. They tell us about the R&D studies they conducted during a certain time span. For example, they introduced us to the concept of robotic process automation for the first time, and experts from their international connections informed us about it. This is how we implemented and advanced robotic process automation. It guides us in specific technologies because it is a huge firm working on technological R&D around the world.
“NTT DATA is now our largest supplier structure partner in this industry.”
What advantages have you earned from your strategic partnership with Itelligence, now NTT DATA Business Solutions Turkey, over the last four years?
We commit to provide the services I indicated in our own IT center throughout the budget planning period, within a specific service and financial dimension. We also commit to increasing efficiency each year. Each year, we have raised the efficiency of the services we receive to some extent. More importantly, we were able to ensure that the knowledge in this location was not lost, as technology is a field with a high pace of human transformation. This transition should not result in the loss of information. They have placed the responsibility on us by resolving their own information transfer processes within the human transformation circulation. NTT DATA is our largest partner in this field in our present supplier structure, offering a model in which we normally choose to engage with our stakeholders and suppliers within the framework of managed services.
