Digital Office: digital hub at NürnbergMesse

Three dimensions: infrastructure, technology, business models
Cooperation with ZOLLHOF - Tech-Incubator
Exhibitions and congresses: key forums for dialogue on digitalisation

The NürnbergMesse Group has created a hub for the digital transformation in the form of its “Digital Office”. For the CEOs of NürnbergMesse, Dr Roland Fleck and Peter Ottmann, this represents a new milestone: “Our Digital Office now lets us control the three core dimensions of the digital transformation: building up a powerful technical infrastructure, digitalising corporate processes and developing new digital business models.” A key aspect in this regard is that the tasks relevant to digitalisation are bundled and all affected departments are systematically included. “The digital transformation involves the whole company, which is why we have deliberately positioned our new Digital Office as a clearing and control unit,” says Ottmann. As the driver of the digital transformation in the company, the Digital Office works closely with external partners in research and the start-up scene. “Our region has vast amounts of digital expertise to offer,” says Fleck. “It is also the task of the Digital Office to identify the right ideas and technologies for our business processes and utilise them.”

From it-sa, Europe’s leading cyber security exhibition, to embedded world, the world’s leading fair for embedded computer systems, the experts at the exhibitions are all agreed: the digital transformation is a bringer of fundamental change, and it has only just begun. Making meaningful use of digital technologies and bringing established business models into the digital age – and also creating new ones – are the challenges facing the new Digital Office. “NürnbergMesse has made an early start on strategically building up digital skills in a range of fields,” says Dr Martin Kassubek, Head of Strategic and Corporate Development. “The task now is to bring these together in the Digital Office and create synergies.” Under Kassubek’s direction, the Digital Office brings together the various experts in digitalisation from the fields of innovation management, IT and ICT infrastructure: its tasks are to identify new, digital business models and applications, incorporate them into NürnbergMesse’s business processes and make the necessary infrastructure available.

Cooperation with ZOLLHOF - Tech-Incubator
A new laboratory for digitalisation is taking shape right in the middle of Nuremberg: at “ZOLLHOF - Tech-Incubator”, start-ups and trail-blazers in the field of digitalisation are working on new business models and digital applications. This is where NürnbergMesse wants to play its part: a collaborative arrangement between ZOLLHOF and NürnbergMesse will be launched in January 2018, with the goal of sharing knowledge and learning from each other. “We want to develop ideas for new services together that will enrich the exhibition experience for our exhibitors and visitors, and make it more efficient,” says Kassubek. The start-ups in ZOLLHOF will also benefit: they can work with NürnbergMesse and its customers to test and refine their applications. “Our collaboration with NürnbergMesse is giving the digital trail-blazers at ZOLLHOF additional impetus: the large scale that NürnbergMesse offers lets them test just how innovative their developments are,” says ZOLLHOF CEO Benjamin Bauer.

Comprehensive digital services for the analogue marketplace
The various exhibitions are already home to a large number of digital services that offer exhibitors and visitors valuable additional benefits in preparing their attendance at the exhibition, for example. NürnbergMesse exhibitors can use the stand configurator in a modular online system to design their individual stand with just a few clicks, and to engage NürnbergMesse and its service partners to construct it. Other services make the on-site exhibition experience even more appealing. NürnbergMesse is a trail-blazer in this regard with its “MyLocation” system, which makes it easier to find your way around the exhibition venue. “For an exhibition venue operator in particular, there are many different opportunities to make use of digital applications,” says Kassubek. “Our focus is on customisable, mobile services and on virtual and augmented reality.”

Growing exhibition portfolio for digitalisation
New digital opportunities raise further questions. The exhibitions run by NürnbergMesse are the ideal forums for dialogue on digitalisation. Net.Law.S – Konferenz für Recht, Gesellschaft und Industrie (“conference for law, society and industry”) deals with legal questions relating to the digital world (20-21 February 2018). It discusses the many ethical and legal questions on subjects like Industrie 4.0, Smart Mobility and E-Health. Cyber security is the focus of it-sa – by exhibitor numbers the world’s largest exhibition on the subject, and its accompanying congress (9-11 October 2018). The leading exhibition for embedded system development is the “embedded world Exhibition&Conference” (27 February-1 March 2018). For years now, both of these events have placed an emphasis on digital infrastructures and their security. Digitalisation has been a feature of the more than 170 events run by the NürnbergMesse Group for some time now. MT-CONNECT (11-12 April 2018), for example, discusses digital products and services for the medical technology industry: smart watches that monitor vital parameters and functional textiles that report an irregular heartbeat. New technologies are constantly leading to new exhibitions and congresses in this way: “Digital development is progressing so quickly that representatives from the worlds of technology, the economy and society need to have appropriate discussion platforms,” says Fleck. “As a result, we are constantly refining our event formats with an eye to the future.”

About the NürnbergMesse Group
NürnbergMesse is one of the 15 largest exhibition companies in the world. The portfolio covers some 120 national and international exhibitions and congresses and approx. 40 sponsored pavilions at the Nuremberg location and worldwide. Every year, over 30,000 exhibitors (international share: 41 %) and up to 1.4 million visitors (international share of trade visitors: 24 %) participate in the own, partner and guest events of the NürnbergMesse Group, which is present with subsidiaries in China, North America, Brazil, Italy and India. The group also has a network of about 50 representatives operating in over 100 countries.

Press and media contacts
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T +49 9 11. 86 06-83 53, -82 48
F +49 9 11. 86 06-12 82 48
press@nuernbergmesse.de

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