End-to-end Focus pushes the Digital Transformation forward in Vestas

Vestas is traditionally known for designing, manufacturing, installing, and servicing on- and offshore wind turbines. With its nearly 30,000 employees and presence in more than 88 countries, the company founded in 1945 is currently the world’s largest wind turbine producer. But that’s not a reason for Vestas to rest on their laurels. Below the surface, an ambitious digital transformation is taking place in Vestas with the overall goal to ensure scalability and connecting the full enterprise. This has required a new organizational set-up and an increased end-to-end focus. Not only on technology – but on governance, people and culture as well.

“Vestas is a digital and data-driven company. We have captured and collected data for years. However, our way of organizing and using data in our underlying systems and operation models has not to a sufficient degree included an end-to-end enterprise type of mindset,” Martin Baastrup, Chief Business Architect, Strategic Business Architecture in Vestas says. The organizational focus in Vestas is strengthened to accelerate the digital transformation. A new function, Digital Solutions, is being established with the key objective of digitally transforming the business to enable a firmer customer focus, scalability, and profitability.

Customers will hopefully feel that we know them better, that we understand them better – and that we can serve them better

– Martin Baastrup, Chief Business Architect, Strategic Business Architecture, Vestas

Improve Efficiency in a Global Set-up

One proof point – and a front-runner project – on how to improve scalability and end-to-end focus is the Searchable Contract project. Microsoft partner Kapacity has built the solution based on Microsoft Azure Cognitive Search technology with the overall scope to automize search in massively complex documents with a variety of characteristics. “Of course, this project is not made for a single business unit or a single region. The overall scope is to utilize the built-in AI capabilities making it possible to search for specific contracts and keywords quickly and easily and across the entire organization,” Martin Baastrup says.

Searchable Contracts contain more value to be further exploited and it has some intriguing capabilities tapping into the elevated end-to-end approach in Vestas: “When fully rolled out we expect that the uniform data structure for contracts and other documents can save a significant amount of time for our employees, who will be able to search and find information across business units and regions more easily and much faster. Obviously, the project also opens new possibilities in other areas, where AI-based search tools can improve efficiency in a global organizational set-up like ours,“ Martins Baastrup says.

From Technology to Capability

Cognitive services are not new to Vestas and the Searchable Contract project is not the first of its kind. In various forms and levels of maturity, cognitive services are already both tested and in operation in Vestas. But in Martin Baastrups opinion it’s not only a matter of having access to the right technology: “The technology is rarely limiting us. It’s the orchestration of technology. We have access to all the technology in the world, but the organization needs to follow suit and that’s a focus we’re increasing now. Our journey is about switching from a technology focus to a capability focus,” Martin Baastrup says.

Our journey is about switching from a technology focus to a capability focus

– Martin Baastrup, Chief Business Architect, Strategic Business Architecture, Vestas

A Digital Backbone is Key in Meeting Market Demands

The enhanced focus on digitizing the business is for sure a way to meet increased market demands: “With the current industry projections, we triple the size of the company in the next decade. We need our digital backbone to respond in a fast manner to meet these demands and we need to review the way we look at data,” Martin Baastrup says and refers to the need for considering data an asset on par with glass fiber, steel, and manpower.

In his opinion that requires both new skills and new technologies. But also new ways of looking at governance, and a company culture that is designed to back this approach and leverage technology. “Our Searchable Contract Project is also about creating a cultural manifest for what’s doable in our organization. It’s important to have such iconic showcase projects to help move the organization forward and demonstrate its capabilities,” Martin Baastrup concludes.