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BMW’s technology investment in South Africa is the focus in this edition of the Business Day Spotlight. Host Mudiwa Gavaza is joined by Jochen Goller, member of the board of management of BMW AG customer, brands, sales, and Peter van Binsbergen, CEO of BMW Group South Africa.The car maker recently celebrated 20 years of operating its local IT hub. The South African unit is the largest BMW IT hub outside Germany, manned by more than 2,500 technology professionals who manage everything from production line data to customer-facing platforms across more than 130 countries.It serves two main purposes for the group: First, the hub operates a 24/7 control room that monitors manufacturing plants globally. It allows for proactive troubleshooting, identifying when a plant system falls out of standard parameters and fixing it before production stops.Second, the hub is a major production centre for custom corporate software. This includes applications deployed across the entire business value chain, from design and production to sales, marketing, and financial systems, such as SAP integration.The hub is projected to contribute more than R4bn to South Africa’s economy.Join the discussion: Rather than outsourcing their primary infrastructure to third-party software houses, which leads to vendor lock-in and expensive upgrades, Goller notes BMW prioritises building and maintaining its core “mainframe” and sales systems in-house.Van Binsbergen says the local workforce is highly regarded for its debugging and troubleshooting capabilities. They focus on ensuring smooth software deployments so that transitioning from an old system to a new one does not disrupt or shut down business operations.The discussion highlights the investment in BMW’s IT hubs; South Africa’s importance for BMW; areas of growth; rationale for tech decisions; and the growing role of artificial intelligence (AI). On AI, the executives noted that it is pervasive across their sales, marketing and operational functions.Van Binsbergen ends off with a quote, saying, “AI cannot replace people. But people who use AI will replace people who don’t use AI.” Producer: Demi BuzoBusiness Day Spotlight is an Arena Podcasts Production.For more episodes, subscribe to Simplecast
