A new, inspirational environment

For everyone at Miele X, one of the highlights of 2023 was moving into the company’s Community Space in Valley, Amsterdam at the beginning of the year. And it gave the company a strong focal point, allowing them to welcome Miele colleagues from nine key global markets and two Business Units during 2023. It was also the venue for eight Digital Growth Lab events through the year, helping to inspire digital sales and marketing collaborations.

The Operational Excellence and Information Management team played a central role in creating this inspirational work environment. And through the year, they continued to develop it, designing, building and configuring a fully-equipped Arena and Production Studio. This immersive, tech-enabled space has stadium seating for meetings, as well as everything you need to create audio and video recordings.

Improving online shopping

The innovative new environment inspired strong performance and results from many of the Miele X teams. The eCommerce team met all their ambitious targets for 2023 by building on their strategy for Miele’s own online shop. They continued to enhance the online customer experience and customer journey to reflect a premium brand. As well as introducing a new ‘Product Advisor’ feature in more than 20 markets, they added improved home, listing and detail pages and a guest check-out option. They also collaborated with IT colleagues to launch their first headless frontend application.

This momentum was reflected in the eCommerce B2B team through 2023, too. They introduced new ways of working, improved operational processes and identified clear roles and responsibilities. This helped to build collaboration and strengthened their relationships with both B2B retailers and PurePlayers, as well as Miele teams in different markets around the world.

They also refined, localised and optimised content for thousands of SKU, specifically focusing on B2B. And with the implementation of a central tooling strategy, they reduced costs, optimised the use of locally available tools and gave local markets access to the right tools for success.

Putting customers first

Meanwhile, the Customer Engagement and Performance teams continued to look at ways for Miele to connect with customers. As well as rolling out the Customer Engagement Platform (Bloomreach) in 10 new countries and various customer satisfaction measurements in 17 new markets, they went live with more than 200 marketing automation use cases. And they rolled out a new Legitimate Interest system and have plans to introduce a new global loyalty and Customer Lifetime Value concept.

Alongside this activity, the Data, Governance and Analytics team worked hard to ensure Miele X respected customers’ privacy. As well as introducing privacy risk assessments in all countries where GDPR applies, they implemented consent banners in a number of territories. And they automated the dashboard data pipelines, launching 15 live dashboards through the year.

To support all this, the team also focused on data quality. They introduced a new data quality framework and adjusted the way transaction data was collected to increase harmonisation between platforms and improve data quality. And they ensured that colleagues had all the relevant data knowledge they needed. As well as producing learning videos for the upcoming GA4 migration, they also conducted seven workshops to increase the awareness and use of data visualisation techniques.

Connecting with business customers

The Professional team looked at boosting Miele’s connections with business customers by centralising the Google Ads campaign performance data for more than 15 local markets. This was the result of establishing a full team of performance specialists in Amsterdam and working closely with different Miele country and product teams, as well as the Miele X Sales and Marketing teams.

We are also very proud our of collaboration with colleagues from Business Units Customer Service and Small Domestic Appliances, as well as Brand and Customer Experience and New Growth Factory. These collaborations significantly increased the number of leads generated globally.

Enhancing operational performance

Through the year, the Operational Excellence and Information Management team continued to strengthen the processes that enable colleagues to innovate and perform. This involved supporting the tracking and delivery of four strategic enterprise objectives, as well as visualising, optimising and mapping the value chains for four critical business processes.

During 2023, the team supported people across both Miele X and Miele by visualising, configuring and tracking 36,000 completed Jira requests. And they implemented a digital travel tool.

A strong technical platform

As the digital hub for Miele, Miele X relies on effective technical platforms. That’s where the IT team come in. During 2023, they rolled out SAP Commerce Cloud into eight new markets, which means that 82% of online sales are now covered by this strategic platform. And they oversaw the first migration from a local shop system onto the platform.

The team also introduced a new application monitoring stack and launched the ShopConnect 2.0 interactive e-commerce platform into more markets.

Enhancing our knowledge

The people at Miele X are always looking for ways to extend their skills and expertise, and the Learning and Development team do all they can to support them. In 2023, they supported colleagues to access over 1,770 LinkedIn Learning videos. And with 178 individual goals added to the Culture Amp, it’s been a busy year.

The Knowledge team also plays a role in people’s development, ensuring that specialist knowledge is shared across Miele and Miele X. Their mantra is: “Knowledge shared = knowledge squared”. And they lived up to this in 2023, with colleagues accessing over 150,000 pieces of digital expertise and insight through Skillbook, the team’s global digital knowledge platform. More than 400 colleagues also benefitted from digital skills training through the Miele Academy and in-house video training.

The team produced over 150 minutes of informative podcasts, with eight episodes involving 17 colleagues of 12 different nationalities, from eight different markets. And they organised five digital hub sessions during the year, where 200+ Miele colleagues from more than 20 different countries shared their local market knowledge.

Bringing people together

The Communications team had a busy year, too. They engaged with over 660,000 people through organic LinkedIn activity. And by creating 13 new blogs on the company website, they continued to share Miele X success stories. They also picked up an award for Best Recruitment Website at the Recruitment Marketing Awards 2023 in London.

In addition, the team supported the company’s commitment to sustainability by organising the first-ever Miele X Digital Clean-Up event. The aim was to reduce the company’s digital footprint and support green IT. And by reviewing, optimising and discarding files and data that were no longer needed, colleagues saved more than 48 kilos of eCO2 in just one hour.

The HR team also organised a range of events throughout the year that continued the company’s commitment to diversity. They celebrated everything from Lunar New Year and Diwali, to Pride Week, International Women’s Day and Mental Health Day. And they encouraged colleagues to use trains instead of cars, helping to save over 51 tonnes of eCO2 – the equivalent of 2550 trees.

Miele X colleagues participated in a number of sporting events through the year, too. As well as running a combined total of 584 kilometres in various 5K, 10K and marathon events, they took part in local football and basketball competitions, and park workouts.

Looking forward to 2024

Whichever way you look at it, 2023 has seen the Miele X and Miele teams truly come together as a performance community. And they’re excited to see what they can achieve together in 2024.

Well done everyone. Thank you.