With the IBC still in our back, after a 9h drive from Amsterdam, the next morning we were already on the road again. This time we joined our friends at Apollon for their Innovation Day in Stuttgart.
Apollon is one of our youngest alliances and with their Software Online Media Net they are a very popular tool in the Marketing sector.
OMN (as it is called) unites PIM (Product Information Management), DAM (Digital Asset Management) and Channel Management functionalities into one powerful tool. But it is not only about the tool, also the implementation is thoughtfully done via a design sprint and tailored consulting — they really want to showcase innovation throughout their entire customer journey.
The Customer Experience was also the key topic of their 10th Innovation Day, that took place at the Porsche Museum. The location was chosen for a specific reason: Porsche is one of their biggest clients and orchestrates their customer experience, whilst buying e.g., a new 911, entirely in OMN.
With the first appointment in the showroom, your customer experience starts, everything will be tailored regarding your interest and your taste. With the offer from the car dealership, you not only receive a customized letter, but also a brochure with renderings of your very own car in various perspectives. Done in a virtual environment, the 3D tool gets all information from OMN and stores the finished renderings back in the system, where the printing company also has its integration.
The potential buyer now automatically receives a brochure with various interior and exterior renderings of his car, a picture of the car dealership on the last page and picture and business card from his very own account manager.
This perfectly shows, how important visual imagery has become. Thirty years ago, a handwritten letter by the manager of the car dealership was the benchmark, now you receive an individual brochure and an automatically generated letter or even a live rendering car commercial as, showcased by the Porsche company MHP for Aston Martin.
And Apollon is well aware of this trend – they already have a toolset of AI-based image optimization tools for processing large amounts of product image. Together with DeepVA, they want to gain more metadata in order to simplify the data management. During his OMN roadmap talk, Apollon CEO Norbert Weckerle showcased the Face Recognition which soon will be available.
Another highlight was the keynote of Jutta Kleinschmidt on Challenges and how a hard challenge can help you outgrow yourself. As the first woman to win the Paris-Dakar Rally and one of the most successful women in motorsports, she had many challenges to pass. Coming from the classic motorsport, where bigger engines were better, she now is an ambassador for sustainable motorsports and races in the first entirely electric offroad – race series Extreme E. Just as Porsche is also constantly evolving and now offering various electric and hybrid models.
The Porsche museum
Porsche wouldn’t be Porsche without their heritage. Therefore, the audience had the chance to take a one-hour guided tour through the museum and learn how an innovative engineer and his son laid the foundation to this worldwide known brand. Starting as an engineering service provider, they started building their own cars with focusing on racing and competition. The lightweight, small cars with round eyes DNA with their tail engine still lives today, although today there also is the big luxury influence in their production models.
Even not car enthusiastic guests showed a lot of interest into the cars and their history.
With over 700 historic cars in the collection, the museum shows only an extract of what Porsche engineers came up with the last 91 years. For the users it was an interesting day full of innovation and a lot of learnings. We are really looking forward into the projects with Apollon and their users.
As little takeaway we got a small chocolate 911, sadly he didn’t survive until the next day, since my junior spotted it in the fridge.
