Siemens 2013 Annual Report Download - page 217

253 D. Consolidated Financial Statements
357 E. Additional Information
245 C. Compensation Report, Corporate Governance
statement pursuant to Section a of the
German Commercial Code, Takeover-relevant
information and explanatory report
246 C. Siemens AG ( Discussion on basis of
German Commercial Code)
250 C. Notes and forward-looking statements

The quality management organization is well established at all
levels of our business. Some , employees in our continu-
ing operations actively provide quality management and quali-
ty assurance within our operational units. We believe that it is
particularly important to ensure that quality is measurable and
transparent.
The quality of our products and processes depends strongly on
the capabilities of our employees. Training on quality is
therefore an integral part of our corporate culture. Training op-
portunities are made available to all employees. This applies in
particular to quality managers who, as experts in their fields,
must demonstrate expertise with the relevant quality tools.
Professional development options include web-based solu-
tions, training plans specific to particular target groups, and
on-the-job training. We regularly expand the portfolio of our
training courses to complement traditional areas of the
Siemens Quality Management approach. Courses include top-
ics such as quality management in projects, inspections and
audits, and quality tools. We develop training courses in coop-
eration with experienced internal personnel and experts from
universities and partner institutions. This approach seeks to
ensure effective transfer of expertise within the Company as
well as to and from external specialists.
Product safety is an essential aspect of product quality and an
element of technical compliance. For this reason, product safe-
ty is also a strategic objective of the entire value-added pro-
cess. Safe product design encompasses the safety of all prod-
ucts and services developed, manufactured and sold by
Siemens. It involves and defines requirements for just about
every function in the Company and addresses the entire lifecy-
cle from development, production and maintenance / repair to
enhancement / modification until final disposal. Accordingly,
we consider legal requirements and relevant standards as well
as the current state of science and technology.
C.. Distribution and customer relations
Our Sectors, Divisions, Business Units, and SFS have global re-
sponsibility for their business, sales and results. They are able
to support customers around the world directly from their re-
spective headquarters, especially for large contracts and proj-
ects. However, most of our customers are small and medi-
um-sized companies and organizations that require local sup-
port. To address local business opportunities with them, we
are able to draw upon a large global sales force steered by our
regional companies. They are responsible for the distribution
of the Siemens portfolio across our Sectors and Divisions in
their respective countries. This keeps us close to our custom-
ers and positions us to offer fast and customizable solutions to
their business needs. We are currently selling products and
services in around  countries. Because of our long-lasting
local presence we are often perceived as local citizens. We
founded our first subsidiary in Russia in , opened our first
permanent office in China in , founded our Brazilian sub-
sidiary Siemens do Brasil in  and founded our first Indian
subsidiary in .
Sustainable customer relationships are the basis for our long-
term success. We employ a structured key account manage-
ment (KAM) approach throughout the Company to take care of
our key customers. This means that we seek to tailor our prod-
ucts and solutions to their size and regional site structures. We
also aim to ensure that our key account managers continually
develop and maintain relationships with them over the long
term. This approach is supplemented by our Executive Rela-
tionship Program. In this program, members of the Company ’s
Managing Board stay in direct contact with selected customers
and maintain an ongoing dialogue with them to familiarize
Siemens with their needs.
Our business success is strongly dependent on the satisfaction
of our customers. For this reason, we measure customer satis-
faction in every unit of the Company using the Net Promoter
Score (NPS). This internationally recognized and commonly
applied managerial performance indicator, which we deter-
mine annually on a worldwide basis by means of customer sur-
veys, measures the referral rate of our customers. The NPS for
fiscal  was based on the results of more than , inter-
views, compared to more than , interviews in fiscal .
In fiscal , our company-wide NPS once again increased
compared to the previous fiscal year.
To ensure the high quality and continuous improvement of our
customer support, we have developed our Account Manage-
ment Excellence Program and our Sales Management Excellence
Program. We carry out strength-and-weakness analyses as well
as training and qualification measures under these programs,
aiming to ensure consistently high standards in our worldwide
customer relationship management. In fiscal , we success-
fully enlarged the number of participating Key Account Manag-
ers in our KAM Certification Program to ensure high quality and
consistent standards at our customer interfaces.
An elementary component of all our global marketing and sell-
ing activities is compliance with applicable laws and internal
rules and regulations. For example, Siemens values and com-
pliance are an integral part of our training program.