Transformation as a driver of growth.

Historically grown challenges in B2B marketing.

The marketing landscape at Siemens Healthineers was typical for a company of its size, having “evolved organically” over time. This created a complex starting point. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, customer expectations for personalized experiences increased rapidly, while several structural challenges made it difficult to respond in a modern way. One of the most significant issues was the fragmentation of customer data across multiple, independent systems. As a result, Siemens Healthineers struggled to scale campaigns efficiently or reuse them effectively. Many campaigns were still created manually.

“The motto of many campaigns was simply ‘spray and pray – the more, the better’, which was also reflected in the performance metrics,” says Laura Paro. As Director of Digital Marketing for the US market at Siemens Healthineers, she provided an ideal starting point for implementation by making the data-rich US market available. This enabled Johannes’s vision to be realized in an environment that allowed for rapid, scalable impact.

In addition, siloed structures limited collaboration between marketing and sales, which often operated independently. Marketing teams lacked access to critical customer insights, as this data traditionally sat within sales. Together, these challenges clearly signalled the need for transformation. Workflows needed to become more efficient, and customer experiences more personalized, to meet rising expectations.

The data-driven solution: Adobe as a bridge between data and activation

To initiate change, Siemens Healthineers launched a regional minimum viable product (MVP) in its most important market, the United States, with the goal of creating a blueprint for a global rollout. The technological foundation was Adobe Experience Platform, supported by a stack comprising Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform for data harmonization and audience creation, Adobe Customer Journey Analytics for analytics, impact reporting, and insights into customer and account profiles, and Adobe Journey Optimizer for building complex, automated customer journeys. “As a highly regulated brand in the medtech sector, we operate within complex decision-making structures. The wide range of objectives and stakeholders, combined with required compliance reviews, extends our timelines. This makes it especially important to proceed carefully but with clear intent, particularly when introducing forward-looking topics such as AI,” says Paro.

The key success factor was the close integration of the enterprise data warehouse, Snowflake, with the CDP. While the warehouse acts as a central repository for historical data, the CDP standardizes and enriches this information with live interaction data to create a ‘digital twin’ for each contact, making it available for activation.

"With this new architecture, marketing teams were able to implement targeted approaches for different audiences for the first time. Radiology managers, for example, now receive information only about products that are truly relevant to them, such as new X-ray or MRI systems,” Goerg explains.

Building on the success of the MVP, Siemens Healthineers began developing a global, multi-tenant architecture. This includes a dedicated sandbox for North America, a global sandbox for markets such as the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Japan, and a separate sandbox for China. “The success of a global rollout depends on consistent standardization of the data model,” explains Georg. “We deliberately positioned our CDP stack as an IT-sponsored project, allowing IT to take the lead and enforce consistency across all regions. This approach enables us to onboard an additional country into the global sandbox – from data validation to profile availability in the CDP – in just a week.”

Global scaling, new channels, and the relevance of AI.

The teams are currently working on scaling into new markets while continuing to enhance established ones by adding new data sources and activation channels. The next phase includes integrating direct sales into the customer journey, with an initial sales channel set to go live soon, enabling Next Best Action recommendations to be delivered directly to sales teams.

At the same time, Siemens Healthineers is testing use cases to explore how AI can increase team efficiency and enable new, profitable applications in the future. The long-term objective remains the continuous development and support of markets through a robust CDP operating model and the delivery of continuously optimized campaigns.

Would you like to learn more about the successful transformation of Siemens Healthineers? In this Adobe Summit Breakout Session, you will discover how unified B2B marketing can drive measurable success.