Q: Please briefly introduce yourself, the B2B & Cloud Team in Samsung R&D Institute Poland, and the kind of work that goes on there. What projects are you working on?

My name is James Jongmin Choi, and I’m the head of the B2B & Cloud Team at Samsung R&D Institute Poland (SRPOL). The majority of the projects in my team are focused on providing the highest quality of support for sales subsidiaries across the globe, with the majority of the focus on the European market. The team is built around three pillars – Pre-Sales, Post-Sales, and Development. This setup ensures end-to-end support for Samsung’s B2B customers. Since mid-2022, my team has operated as support, being the subject matter experts from all of Samsung’s main business units for B2B which opens new opportunities to create synergies across different areas integrating their solutions. Such an organizational structure allows us to better address the new emerging direction – One Samsung B2B.

Q: Please tell me about the importance of your research field or technology.

Of the many B2B solutions which my team is responsible for, the one that stands out the most and happens to be Samsung’s very own B2B brand is Knox. In a nutshell, Samsung Knox originated as an Android-based solution for enterprise and government deployments, providing advanced security and industry-leading device management capabilities. It is a key element in the MX (Mobile eXperience) Business B2B projects, and also in the communication with the market, making Samsung a unique leader.

Today, Knox is more than one solution. It is an extensive portfolio of B2B solutions and services that can run solely or as part of a rich ecosystem of partners. Knox means B2B solutions, services, and programs under which we address the customers’ very sophisticated requirements.

Currently, we are observing that hardware competitive advantage is slowly shrinking. This occurrence is even more prevalent in the B2B area. Hence, this is one of the most important reasons why Samsung is constantly looking for solutions that can impact the B2B world. In addition, as mentioned above, Samsung is also developing services like Enterprise Technical Support (ETS) – a paid premium support providing quicker escalation paths and special treatment for enterprise customers. ETS’s main goal is to lock in the most important customers and enable Samsung to have better visibility of customers’ demands which translates into new upselling and cross-selling opportunities.

All of this is just a part of the entire team’s capabilities. Our subject matter experts specialize in other domains as well: B2B Solutions for visual display, development of the Mobile Wallet, Health SDK, SmartThings, Game/AR Backend Services, Ads Services, and so on. Each of them is a separate story with a vast portfolio of features and activities that differentiate Samsung within the B2B market.

Q: Can you tell us about the main achievement and rewarding moment in your research, or the episode?

The most satisfying achievements are those that bring value both to Samsung and the consumers. For starters, one of the most iconic innovations that have been developed and commercialized in our team is the anti-fraud solution. The aim of the solution was to resolve the market’s growing concerns about fraudulent incidents within the channel segment – mainly carriers. The problem with fraud was reaching staggering levels, with as high as a 20% fraud rate on premium devices. This sparked a discussion with a leading carrier in the local market and ultimately resulted in collaboration with one of the leading system integrators to develop a unique solution to address the problem. The anti-fraud solution enabled remote control over the devices and sending push notifications to end users, reminding them about due installment rates and in the most severe instances, locking the devices, making it difficult to resell or simply use them. After introducing the solution to the market, the fraud rates decreased to about a 2% level. This solution was recognized for its outstanding performance by the MX (Mobile eXperience) Business and was quickly adopted as a global B2B solution under the Knox Guard name.

Another highlight of achievement could be the opening of the Mobile B2B Innovation Center (MBIC) in Warsaw Spire (SRPOL office building). MBIC was established in 2017 and its main mission since then was to create a platform (a physical space of 250 square meters) to showcase Samsung’s latest devices, as well as B2B Solutions (Samsung’s and its partners’). Since the original opening, MBIC has had 7000+ visitors, 550+ customer and partner meetings, and displayed more than 50 solutions in total. On top of all of this, this space is a central talking point when it comes to mobile B2B Solutions in the EU. It is also great for networking and is often leveraged by local subsidiaries.

‘b.IoT’ (building integration solution & open platform based on IoT technology), which has recently succeeded in securing orders in the UK and Germany, is also a success story to be proud of. As the energy crisis continues to get more serious, particularly in Europe, we are now focusing on the launch of the new b.IoT energy solution together with the Suwon team.

Energy savings as well as remote maintenance provided by interlocking various devices and using AI-based algorithms are the key benefits of the b.IoT solution. We expect that this scope of the b.IoT solution will be expanded after integrating with Display, Mobile, and third-party products through the SmartThings solution in the future.

Finally, the most recent success was the innovation in the marketplace for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). The goal of this project was to automate the purchase process on the carrier e-commerce platforms for Samsung’s B2B Solutions which indirectly decreased cost per customer acquisition and enabled better SMEs market penetration where Samsung sales forces are not easily scalable. Looking at the future, we expect to see more and more innovations and tools being introduced to the SMEs and SOHO (Small Office Home Office) segments. According to the EC (European Commission), SMEs represent 99% of all businesses within the EU, with the average value that SMEs contribute to the EU economy at 56%. Therefore, it is absolutely critical to continue to remain innovative in this market.

Q: What is your vision for the future, and what goal would you want to achieve?

Organization-wise, I would like to bring different Business units together to work closely and look for inter-department initiatives to increase the synergy effect in the team. That direction has been already initiated in the middle of the year by reorganizing the team to bring the b.IoT and SmartThings together, which is also aligned with the general idea of One Samsung B2B and building a multi-device environment for an ecosystem where all our solutions can work together in a convenient and productive way.

On the innovative side, we will look deeper into the new B2B buyers’ profile and follow upcoming trends. It is about creating the best digital experience they could possibly have by unifying what they can experience as consumers, and we’ll do the same for big organizations. This has many aspects, of course, but one of the most important trends is automating buyers’ experiences and improving the customer journey.

<2022 Samsung B2B Technical Summit in May, SRPOL>