Siemens Vietnam enters a new chapter

Just being back from a developed market, were the past six months in Vietnam a big challenge for you ?

I can say that the past six months was the most exciting period in my professional career. It is fantastic to directly work in an emerging and dynamic growing country such as Vietnam.

Comparing Vietnam to developed economies, in which I have lived and worked before, it is great to see how things are moving and changing nearly every day. Living and working in the key two metropolis of Vietnam, it seems to me that Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi never sleep.
    
On the other hand the global but also local economic environment was more than challenging. GDP growth of the key regions has been slowing down, so also in Vietnam. As an infrastructure solution provider, we feel the impact of the reserved investment attitude of our key customers due to a more difficult business outlook and access to financial liquidity.

Many key projects are delayed, postponed and in the worst case even get cancelled. At the same time, the competition through regional but also more local competitors is getting tougher and tougher. This requires a careful adjustment of our strategy. In the past six months, I have spent the majority of my time to meet with key stakeholders and customers from the public as well as from the private sectors.

This allows me to understand their challenges in providing key infrastructures such as energy, industrial automation, transportation or health services as the backbone for the growth of the Vietnamese economy.  Culturally it is very enriching to work with many experienced and talented colleagues in my organisation and to learn the Vietnamese way of approaching solutions.

Do you have any tactics to cope with such challenges?

Prior to this assignment as the CEO of Siemens Vietnam, I had a chance to take over responsibilities and to gain deep experiences in a broad spectrum of Siemens businesses in Germany and the USA. These experiences are now very helpful for my current position.  I have no doubt that Vietnam’s economy will be back to the dynamic growth track and Vietnam will become an industrialised nation in the years to come.

Besides the industrialisation trend, Vietnam has to cope with other megatrends such as urbanisation, increasing demographics, energy or resource efficiency, which require technological answers. With our comprehensive portfolio of solutions, we are very well positioned to help Vietnam to resolve these challenges. At the same time I have a very good team with an appropriate mix between experienced and young talented professionals. With tailwind deriving from the megatrends and together with this team, I am quite confident and optimistic that Siemens Vietnam will contribute to strengthen Vietnam’s infrastructures and that we will enter a new chapter of growth.

So what are the differences of Siemens Vietnam’s strategy under your leadership?

We will concentrate our activities in our core competencies in energy, industry, healthcare, and infrastructure and cities. We will carefully analyse the market potentials of our covered markets and identify new promising market segments. Based on this we will develop for each of the businesses a strategic plan that we will consequently execute.

At the same time, customer proximity is a key priority and thus we will strengthen the relationship to our customers in order to better understand their needs in order to be the supplier of choice for infrastructure solutions and products. We will continuously work on improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the organisation and team through optimisation of structures, processes and costs. Last but not least we want to be an employer of choice not only for young talents, but also for experienced professionals.

What are your views about the Vietnam market as the national economy situation is expected to be more difficult this year?

As mentioned earlier, in the last year the global and local economy was challenging. However, Vietnam has managed to limit inflation and achieve a GDP growth of about 5 per cent, which is still a good growth rate in comparison with other economies in the region. Yet, the “cool down” of the GDP growth from the level of 7-8 per cent in the past years to now around 5 per cent, is a consequence of a more reserved investment attitude of foreign firms, but also local investors due to market uncertainties in Vietnam.

The government has recognised these uncertainties and thus has initiated and prepared many structural reforms, e.g. in the banking sector. The impact of these reforms will take time, but it will help to gain trust back to the market. Thus for 2013, I expect a stabilization of the economic environment and thus we can expect similar GDP growth to last year.