When you think about Bosch, you may think about dishwashers and washing machines, or maybe drills and other power tools, but that isn’t how Bosch started out and that isn’t all they are today.  Bosch began in the early 1900s by building car engines and fuel injection systems, then windscreen wipers and radios.  Automotive products have long been Bosch’s main focus, and they are still the #1 Automotive supplier in the world, so if you have a car there’s a pretty good chance there’s something made by Bosch inside it.

Bosch is actively preparing for the future by completely readjusting their strategy and business structure, to become a “Hardware Plus” company, by aiming to make all their products web enabled in the coming years and become a leading Internet of Things company. 

People are changing the way they get around by increasingly using a variety of mobility concepts such as using a combination of public transport, shared vehicles, their own cars and increasingly electronic cars.  Bosch is being proactive rather than just reactive and getting ready ahead of time for these new trends and behaviours of consumers.  The traditional mobility market is constantly being disrupted by new business models, innovation and new players entering the market, due to society’s needs to more connected and environmentally friendly cars.   In fact, Bosch is partnering with the government and VicRoads and has the most advanced Tesla in the Southern Hemisphere at the Clayton Head Office, as well as other connectable and futuristic car technologies such as keyless entry. As well as working on their mobility sector, Bosch is investing in making all areas of the business connectable, and working on not only the cars, tools and appliances themselves, but cloud-based infrastructure and apps that will be ready for consumers whenever they are.

Even though right now you may not see a need for being able to control your oven with your phone, the software and hardware has already been built into all of these appliances, and will launch when the Australian market is ready and when the usage situation arises for consumers. Once it does launch, marketers can then use the data from these connected appliances to analyse trends of what features customer use the most, what time of day they use their appliance, what areas use what features and so much more. They can then use this information to dictate what they should focus on for marketing campaigns, and to gain a richer insight into their customer base.

Bosch is future-proofing all areas of the business by reorganizing it’s departments, such as getting rid of soon to be outdated sectors like gas and diesel systems with future oriented ones like Power Solutions with more environmentally friendly options, and investing early in growing areas like smart agriculture.  By making areas of their business connected, Bosch is well and truly ready to capitalise on and be a leader of the Internet of Things space.

What do you think of having all your home appliances part of the Internet of Things? Can you think of other organisations that would benefit from making their products and services connectable? Let me know in the comments below!