Four businesses and 4,300 people moved from Bosch into a newly independent company. The business still had to run while we built what came next.
As a member of the Extended Management Team (EMT), I worked through the Bosch → Keenfinity carve-out of a €1bn business: four businesses, 90+ locations, 50+ countries, and sales and marketing excellence for a commercial organisation of 500+ with a functional span of 530. Employee attrition stayed under 10% from announcement to close, and customer relationships held through blackout periods. Built the new group identity while strengthening the established brands, made an unprecedented licence agreement happen after three failed attempts with the CEO, and built the new corporate LinkedIn channel from zero to 15,000+ followers in under three months and nearly 40,000 in its first year.
Bosch wasn't on the radar for HMI, the human machine interface. We made the technology impossible to ignore.
Built a concept showcar with a small team in four months so customers could experience what slides couldn't explain. It drew crowds CES, the Consumer Electronics Show, could barely contain, helped drive a 50% increase in customer engagement over three years, and was followed by two more showcars and a show truck. Our products won multiple CES Innovation Awards every year during my marketing leadership.
The tools were there. Adoption wasn't.
Turned a digital mandate into adoption: Microsoft Teams at 98% across 22 departments in two months, and all of it before Covid, so when lockdown came the department was already working that way while the rest of the company caught up. Built an internal news community to 90% weekly followership, the most-read newsroom in the company outside the board's own, and turned an 11-person team into one known for marketing excellence.
Corporate had 120 specialists. Some countries had one communicator doing it all.
Gave 50+ communicators across 19 countries the skills, tools and access to operate at the same standard. Designed and built a 3-day communications training program whose original structure is still in use 15 years later. Along the way, led customer communications through the 2011 Japan tsunami and helped keep a 300-journalist automotive press briefing on air when an unexpected signal outage threatened the live event.
"Together, we organized several CES appearances at the Bosch booth... All of this would have, bluntly speaking, been impossible without Barbara. She was inspirator, driver, motivator and perfectionist organizer of everything."
Thomas Kropf, President, Bosch Corporate Research
