Last Updated on 2. April 2025 by mgm-marketing
From 20 to 22 February 2024, E-world energy & water, the leading trade fair for the European energy industry, will take place in Essen. mgm consulting partners will once again be presenting their consulting services for the digitalisation and transformation of energy service providers, municipal utilities and local authorities. In the interview, Frank Kneschke and Christian von Hammerstein report on the topics that will be in focus this year.
In conversation: Frank Kneschke (Founder and Managing Director, mgm consulting partners) and Christian von Hammerstein (Principal Consultant, mgm consulting partners)
Hosted by: Karsten Kneese, Marketing
Length: 10 minutes
Listen to podcast
E-world energy & water, 20-22 February 2024 in Essen
Meeting point: Joint stand of the Renewable Energy Hamburg Cluster in Hall 5
All information and registration: https://www.e-world-essen.com/de/
We are looking for reinforcements
Do you want to support established companies and new market players in the energy sector in complex projects for internal optimisation and structural reorientation? Then apply now as a senior consultant in the energy industry (m/f/d) and become part of our team.
Transcript
Karsten Kneese: Welcome to a new episode of ‘innovation implemented’, the mgm podcast on topics of digitalisation and transformation. My name is Karsten Kneese and I work in marketing at mgm. In February 2024, E-world energy & water, the leading trade fair for the energy industry, will take place in Essen. This year’s motto is ‘Focus on energy transition and heating supply’ and I think first of renewable energies, heat pumps, smart grids and similar topics. But then I think of our consulting projects for large energy suppliers and municipal utilities. And that’s exactly what I’m talking about today with my colleagues Frank Kneschke and Christian von Hammerstein. Before we get started, please introduce yourselves briefly.
Frank Kneschke: I’m Frank, Frank Kneschke, and I’ve been working in the energy industry since 2001. I’m also the founder and managing director of Consulting Partners.
Christian von Hammerstein: I’m Christoph von Hammerstein, and I’ve been with mgm consulting partners for a little over seven years. I’ve been working in the energy industry since then as well. I deal a lot with the topics of innovation management and process management for the energy transition.
Karsten: Thank you. You have been advising companies in the energy industry together with our colleagues for many years and I am sure you have different associations to the terms energy transition and heat supply than I do. So, what topics are you taking with you to E-world?
Christian: I’m taking a few topics with me. So far, it has always been the three big Ds of the energy transition: decentralisation, digitalisation and decarbonisation. I believe that these trends have now become reality. A few topics have been added since then. One is the new D of demography. How can municipal utilities deal with an ageing workforce? How can they manage to reorganise their processes so that they will continue to function well with new employees in the future? Then there is the issue of social acceptance. In recent years, the energy transition has shifted more from the large energy suppliers towards municipalities and municipal utilities, because the heating transition is finally being tackled and it affects citizens much more directly. This means that social acceptance has become much more important and is a task for public administration, municipal utilities and also local authorities. And that now also means digitisation, regulation and good communication there, how to manage it and implement it in such a way that it is easier for citizens to engage with it.
Frank: Thank you very much. That’s a very good summary of the topics. And on top of that, I’m looking forward to seeing the many colleagues who work in the energy industry and with whom we have worked over all these years. As mgm consulting partners, we have supported many organisational changes, many mergers, acquisitions and integrations, but also carve-outs. And the energy industry is also in a state of flux in terms of its corporate structure.
Karsten: Thank you, that sounds exciting. You have already touched on some topics from our service portfolio and would like to briefly explain to me and our audience once again what mgm consulting partners does and can do for the energy industry?
Christian: What we can offer the energy industry in terms of topics has been many projects in innovation management, especially in recent years. This is innovation management not only for new players in the market who want to join the energy industry with new products and new services, but also for existing companies that simply have to rebuild their service portfolio because they see that not much more money can be made with the old business models. This means that they also have to see how they can manage to survive on the market with new services and new products and, above all, what this means for their own organisation, because the core business has changed so much that the organisation is changing, has to change, to react to it.
And these are topics of organisational development that we can support. These are topics of change management that we can support, but also digitisation projects when it comes to digitally integrating new business into the old organisation and ensuring that it can be implemented there.
Another topic is supporting major transformations. This actually affects all energy suppliers. Then there is the SAP conversion to S4HANA, which we of course support, but we are also very happy to provide support in process management. As I mentioned earlier, many companies will lose a lot of good employees in the next five to ten years, so they need to think now about how to standardise their processes with the experts they still have now, who know the old processes well. And of course we also provide support in process management, in recording and documenting processes, but also in improving and automating them.
Frank: In addition to that, I would also like to say that, since the founding of mgm consulting partners, we have always supported IT departments and CIOs in modernising and meeting challenges. And one topic that I see across all industries is the topic of business agility. Agility has arrived in IT projects, but not yet in some companies, and not yet in some energy suppliers either. And here we also offer integrated models where we combine business agility from the strategic coupling of objectives to the coordination of these major change projects and support for the individual projects.
Karsten: That’s a lot of topics and good reasons for discussions at E-world. I have learned that the energy transition consists of much more than just networks and technology and that there are a great many organisational topics, organisational developments and skills involved. IT management too, of course. One final point. This year, we are attending E-world as a partner of the Cluster Renewable Energy Hamburg and can be found at the joint stand. Christian, how do you rate such clusters and associations in general for the importance of the energy transition?
Christian: I have been managing the cluster work for mgm for several years now and it is always nice because, of course, you meet companies from Hamburg, from northern Germany, with whom we can work together on specific projects. Of course, it is also about ideas on how to shape the energy transition, but then we also work on specific solutions. The cluster has already produced very good ideas for the progress of the energy transition, but also projects for the member companies, so I am always happy to be there, you can always learn new things, there is a good exchange and, of course, the network is maintained and expanded.
Karsten: Thank you. A clear call for more networking in this area as well. Do you have any final words? Is there anything you would like to share with our audience?
Christian: Last year at E-world, we saw a lot of standstill. We were in the aftermath of the crisis of the war in Ukraine. Many companies have refocused on their core business because they are afraid of the uncertainty. I hope that this year we will see more courage to innovate, more courage to try things out, to face this crisis, which has now passed, but also to face the energy transition. Because I believe that we now have to find the right path faster.
Karsten: Dear Frank, dear Christian, thank you very much for your time and for the interview. I have learnt a lot and I wish you and all participants a good E-world energy & Water in February. For more information about us, our mgm consulting partners and our services for the energy industry and, of course, other sectors, please refer to the show notes and our website. We say goodbye, look forward to your feedback here, on LinkedIn, by email or wherever you find us. See you soon!
