Bosch appoints head of new digital unit

Stuttgart, Germany – Effective January 1, 2023, Ulrike Hetzel (50) is to become president of the new corporate sector Bosch Digital. In this function, she will be responsible for global IT services and support the digitalization of the Bosch Group’s divisions with technical, IT, and digital services. “Ulrike Hetzel has a lot of experience in transforming IT and digital business. She is a sympathetic and inspiring person – it will be fun to work with her to successfully implement such changes,” says Dr. Tanja Rückert, the Bosch Group’s chief digital officer. “We’re glad Ulrike Hetzel has so enthusiastically agreed to head up of new corporate sector Bosch Digital – she will tackle the issue that arise with passion, and is a valuable addition to our team.” Having previously worked in the company, Ulrike Hetzel is no stranger to Bosch. “Taking Bosch into the digital future and actively shaping the strategy of the new corporate sector Bosch Digital is an exciting task. I’m really looking forward to it,” she says. “I will be able to draw on my many years of experience in the field.”

Effective January 1, 2023, the Bosch IO subsidiary and the IT services unit are to be merged under joint management and, as a next step, realigned in the new corporate sector Bosch Digital. “With the planned reorganization, we will be merging the IT and software expertise of the two units. We want to develop a powerful organization in a modern work environment, and in this way to take the software culture forward throughout our company. You could call it an agile unit that will be working very closely with the divisions in the future,” Rückert says. “The aim is to provide our divisions with the best possible support in their digital transformation and with their connectivity business. At root, this means much more autonomy and P&L responsibility for joint teams at the interface between IT, digital, and business.”

Bosch wants to systematically further digitalize its core business and to open up new areas of business on the basis of software and services – without neglecting hardware. For Rückert, the future direction is clear: “With impressive IT, software, and services, we are in a position to get very close to our customers’ everyday lives. In other words, our digital solutions not only add to the “Invented for life” promise – they also bring technology into people’s lives.” The aim for the future is that all sales of digital products will generate revenue from services as well. On this subject, Bosch announced a digitalization campaign at Bosch Connected World in November 2022: the supplier of technology and services plans to spend 10 billion euros on digitalization and connectivity by 2025.

As CTO and member of the board of Dekra until the end of 2022, Ulrike Hetzel is responsible for services, innovation, and IT. She can look back on many years of experience in the area of IT and digital operations. Before joining Dekra in 2021, she worked for Bosch from mid-2015 to mid-2020, most recently as a member of the executive management of corporate IT. Prior to that, the structural engineer and business management graduate worked for IBM for 16 years, including a spell as head of its Infrastructure Technology Services unit.