By Casey Neill
SEBN is urging Greater Dandenong’s business community to “be the change” next year.
Manager Sandra George announced the 2017 theme for the network at the SEBN Christmas industry breakfast at Bunurong Memorial Park in Dandenong South on Thursday 8 December.
She said businesses needed to be on the front foot instead of reacting to change or waiting for it.
Robert Bosch Australia president and chairman Gavin Smith also spoke about the need for businesses to be proactive.
He joined Bosch in 1990, was appointed president in 2011 and was recently added to the Prime Minister’s taskforce on Industry 4.0 and made chair of the Internet of Things Alliance.
Mr Smith told the breakfast that business disruption had never been more of a challenge than it was now.
He said that through the Internet of Things – everyday objects having network connectivity, allowing them to send and receive data – more than 50 billion things would be connected to the internet by 2022.
“That creates a world of opportunities but it also creates a world of pain if you don’t understand it,” Mr Smith said.
He said businesses needed to connect their factories to the internet to be competitive, and said they would be excluded if they didn’t.
“People are in control of this fourth industrial review,” he said.
“You are not alone. We are all in the same situation.
“We can’t just sit and wait and hope it will get better.
“It won’t.”
Mr Smith has helped automotive supplier Bosch to overcome disruptive changes to the sector.
“Our manufacturing footprint will never be what it was,” he said.
“But that’s a good thing.”
He said Bosch was now focused on manufacturing items that couldn’t be made elsewhere.
“Our business has changed. It had to change,” he said.
“If you put smart people to work and employ new technologies you can do the impossible.”
Bergent Marketing Intelligence managing partner and director and the Human Truth’s founder John Berenyi said figuring out what people really wanted was the key to good marketing and customer service.
“If you don’t understand what people really want you can’t give it to them, and if you can’t give it to them, someone else will,” he said.
Mr Berenyi said prospective customers often didn’t tell companies what they wanted because they didn’t want to, they didn’t know how to, or they didn’t know what they wanted.
He said it wasn’t about what something was made from or cost.
“It’s what it delivers from an emotional perspective,” he said.
“McDonald’s is all about socialising, it’s not about hamburgers.”
In his annual update, Greater Dandenong CEO John Bennie said this year’s introduction of rate-capping had left the council with less revenue to do what it needed to do.
“It causes us to be more innovative and look at new and different ways of doing things,” he said.
He said VicRoads had indicated that the Dandenong Bypass segment to be built between South Gippsland Highway and the Monash Freeway was the region’s next and highest priority.
Mr Bennie said he expected work to start in the next 12 to 18 months.
He urged businesses to “rise up and support us in our own advocacy”.
“The noise of business is very loud, very strong and very important,” he said.
“We need to speak up.”
