Brisa

About Brisa

Brisa’s foundations were laid with Lassa, which was founded in 1974 on the initiative of Sabancı Holding and its partners. In parallel with the developments in the tire industry globally; Brisa adopted its current name in 1988 as a result of the partnership between Sabancı Group and Bridgestone Corporation, the world’s largest tire manufacturer. Today, it is the leading player in the Turkish tire market.

Brisa’s Kocaeli Production facilities are one of the largest single-building tire factories in the world. The Aksaray factory, on the other hand, is the industry’s first factory equipped with smart applications. Lassa branded products produced in these factories are found in vehicles all over the world, with 80 distributors in more than 80 countries and 610 stores with signage.

In its bid to provide for the Turkish economy as well as care for the social development of the country, Brisa approaches its sustainability activities in a way that contributes to the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations.

Some of Brisa’s foremost initiatives include “Let Cranes Always Fly”, where it contributes to biodiversity, “Brisa Academy” and “Brisa Members Education Support Association”, where it contributes to education, and “Brisa Museum”, which adds a cultural flavour. The company is among the leaders in the fields of “Climate Change” and “Water Security” in CDP Turkey and is on the global leaders list in “Supplier Relations Rating”. Announcing a 56% reduction in direct emissions by 2030 and a net zero emissions target by 2050, Brisa became the first company to have its long-term emission reduction targets set according to the 1.5 degree scenario approved by the Science Based Targets Initiative.

Brisa, Bridgestone, Lassa, Dayton, Kinesis, Firestone tire brands, Bandag coating brand, Lastigim, Otopratik and Propratik service points with their main brands, Lastik.com.tr internet sales site, Mobilfix mobile maintenance service that provides on-site maintenance to commercial vehicle fleets and Profleet service package, Probox mobile sales and service point and Tire Hotel tire storage services all contribute to the Turkish economy and its development. In the area of ​​sustainable mobility, the company partners with Arvento Mobil Systems to add value to its fleet customers by bringing together tire, service and telematics business lines.

How did you decide to adopt a DMI service?

Our digital transformation journey started with a vision announced by Sabancı Holding in 2018. A comprehensive survey was conducted with middle group managers of all group companies, aiming to understand how prepared the companies were for this journey in terms of infrastructure, human resources and databases. We learned our position among the group companies by getting certain scores with a question set similar to the one offered by DMI, and as a result, we prepared our Digital Transformation roadmap. Since 2018, we have implemented a number of works in accordance with our roadmap and we continue to do so. However, while making these changes during our digital journey, a need arose to measure our steps by framing them. Because the journey ahead is long and the definition of digitalization in 2018 was very different to what it is today. The company’s maturity levels also evolve over time. When we searched for companies that deliver the services required both on a global scale and in Turkey, we noticed that there are not many companies in this field that operate with the assistance of a tool, and the tools commonly available are not suitable for the sector. Afterwards, we met with Mr. Halil, and we started our partnership by choosing the solution developed by Digitopia in terms of both industry-specific suitability and the opportunity to tailor the services to our company.

We completed our first study by holding sessions in 6 categories with the participation of approximately 130 employees in total.

What were the benefits of having received a consultancy service to learn your DMI score for Brisa?

Today, when it comes to digital transformation, the technology dimension is what springs to mind, but it also offers the customer dimension, operations and management. Thanks to DMI, without neglecting these areas in our digital transformation journey, we have seen where we are positioned and how we can further our progress towards our goals with a more comprehensive evaluation.

One of the benefits of the consultancy service was calibration. DMI has given us an advantage in terms of meeting different departments on common ground and progressing in line with one another. We can say that DMI measurement is a self-assessment that represents the whole company and is adopted by the whole company, creating a collective awareness.

In addition to these benefits, Digitopia’s service offers us a framework, even though it is actually a self-assessment, it provides us with calibration support from an outside, impartial perspective, developed and customized specifically for our company. These are the greatest benefits of DMI for us. DMI offers a structure that is both sufficiently customized and flexible and comprehensive enough to make global comparisons.

What would be different for you if such a study had never been carried out?

At Brisa, we express our company strategy through the metaphor of a sailboat. For the last two years, we seem to be sailing on rough seas. The sea is so rough that it is difficult to think about moving forward, when it is difficult to even survive. However, waves present not only a risk but also an opportunity, if properly evaluated. If you navigate the wave correctly, it will accelerate you forward. We consider the digital transformation as the wind that is driving this sailboat forward. And the Digital Maturity Assessment is a lighthouse that guides us through these heavy seas. We needed a beacon that would guide us and ensure our journey remained safe: a stable and constant guide amid the changing world, customer behaviour and competitor dynamics. Therefore, yes, without DMI, we would have managed to keep moving somehow, but thanks to this measurement, we can better see the opportunities and risks, set the right priorities, and prevent erroneous investments.

Are you considering renewing the DMI service? If so, why?

We have been renewing the DMI service on a regular basis for 3 years. This year, we plan to include more DMI results in our action plan by pulling this study earlier in order to evaluate DMI outputs and determine company strategies according to these outputs at our strategy meeting. We will continue to renew DMI to keep seeing where our strengths lie and also the muscles we need to strengthen, and what we have achieved in the last 3 years in our digital transformation journey.

In which dimensions have you seen more progress in these 3 years, and in which ones do you think you fell behind?

Where we have made the most progress in the last 3 years has been the Innovation dimension. Innovation at Brisa is managed by a separate team. This team operates in a variety of ways both internally and externally, such as developing new ideas within the company, rewarding and implementing these ideas, following up with routine meetings, as well as establishing collaborations with venture firms. In 2019, we received first prize in the Innovation Organization and Culture category at the Inovalig Innovation Leaders Award Ceremony of the Turkish Exporters’ Association. Therefore, we can say that the innovation category is one of the fastest growing dimensions as a result of taking very concrete steps.

Technology is also developing rapidly. We can exemplify this rise by implementing the Carbon Data Lake project and taking steps on the side of AI and RPA. According to the last report you shared, we see that we are the leader in the sector with the points we have achieved.

We are also making positive progress in the Human dimension. Before the pandemic, we made an infrastructure change regarding remote working compatibility, which allowed us to quickly adapt to the new way of the world when the pandemic hit. We recently received an award from IDC for the BriWhere application we developed to facilitate remote working.

We are currently working on the new working model within the scope of the Future of Work project, which we designed with an agile working system with more than 90 Brisa employees in 7 different dimensions. With this initiative, which allows us to consider different aspects from the mental health of our employees to the hybrid working environment, from the competencies of the new period to the adoption of new management approaches, we are reconstructing the way we work. As a result of these concrete steps, we hope to see big leaps in the Human dimension in the next measurement.

On the other hand, although we are seeing a positive trend in the Customer dimension, we can say that this is the dimension where we need to see the biggest improvement since we are not a retail company. At the end of all these evaluations, I can say that Brisa is the leader in the sector with its current digital maturity score.

Is DMI a KPI for your company?

Yes, DMI is a KPI that we follow, and our DMI score serves as a framework in order to evaluate and compare all actions for digital transformation. I can say that it is a KPI that we use while shaping our digital transformation roadmap.