"Partnership agreements ensure profitable customer relationships"

00:00:00: Hi colleagues, what do hospitality and trader customers expect from Metro?

00:00:05: Of course, customized products at fair wholesale prices.

00:00:09: And their want is smooth and yet inspiring buying experience, regardless of whether they

00:00:13: purchase their products from us in-store, by delivery or online.

00:00:18: But what they want above all is a reliable partner who listens to them, understands their

00:00:23: needs and offers solutions to help them succeed in business.

00:00:27: That's exactly what Metro wants to be.

00:00:30: And because this is such a broad topic, I have turned it into two podcast episodes.

00:00:36: So find out in this episode and the next one how we at Metro managed to be a strong partner

00:00:41: for our customers.

00:00:42: Have fun with it.

00:00:57: As part of our score growth strategy, Metro aims to strengthen customer loyalty by offering

00:01:02: attractive prices and building a strong partnership.

00:01:06: How we become top price leader and how we build long-term relationships with our customers

00:01:11: on a solid basis with strategic partnership agreements, that's what you will learn in

00:01:16: this episode of More Podcasts.

00:01:19: Hold safe.

00:01:20: To the next.

00:01:24: A warm welcome to all of you.

00:01:25: I am Bernd Röder from internal communications at Metro AG and responsible for this podcast

00:01:30: about Metro's score strategy.

00:01:33: My guest today represents the digitalization of our business processes like no one else

00:01:38: at Metro.

00:01:39: He joined our company in 2014.

00:01:41: In 2018, he took on the role of director digital transformation.

00:01:46: Then he spends some time as chief marketing officer at Metro Markets.

00:01:50: And since October last year, he has been customer and sales officer at Metro AG.

00:01:56: Welcome to our podcast, Matthias Bühler.

00:01:58: Thanks for having me.

00:01:59: Glad to be here, Bernd.

00:02:00: Great to have you here, Matthias.

00:02:02: In your relatively new role as Metro's CSO, building close relationships with our customers

00:02:10: is certainly more important to you than ever before.

00:02:13: And that brings me to the question, have you already planned your next score work out?

00:02:19: Or your next chance to spend a whole working day supporting a customer in his day to day

00:02:24: activities?

00:02:25: Yes, I have.

00:02:26: I will actually do it hopefully still before my vacation, which is in five days.

00:02:31: So I will either do it this week or immediately when I'm back from vacation.

00:02:37: And I most likely will actually go back to the customer that I did my first score work

00:02:41: out two years ago, because I want to also see the procurement part of his operation.

00:02:46: So basically, how does he shop with Metro?

00:02:49: What are the challenges?

00:02:50: Because when I did my first score work out, I did everything from being serving the customer

00:02:57: to cooking in the kitchen, preparing for the evening.

00:03:00: So I actually spent, I think, roughly 14, 15 hours with him, but in his day to day operations.

00:03:07: And this time, I want to also see how he procures his goods, because obviously that is what

00:03:13: is very relevant to us as well.

00:03:16: And yeah, so I want to combine him with his shopping at Metro, but also to his other suppliers.

00:03:22: That is my current plan.

00:03:23: Okay.

00:03:24: And I'm sure you will find out more about our customer's business and his or her needs.

00:03:31: Today, we want to explore how Metro intends to become the price leader in wholesale and

00:03:35: thereby an even better partner for our customers.

00:03:38: And also what advantages our contractually defined partnerships agreements bring for

00:03:44: our customers and also for Metro.

00:03:47: We will hear your thoughts on our Metro fundamentals, Matthias.

00:03:50: And at the end of the second part of our episode, we'll hear your sound souvenir, the sound

00:03:55: you associate with something particularly motivating or inspiring.

00:04:01: Matthias, in your role as customer and sales officer at Metro, you are responsible for

00:04:08: a full truckload of topics with you in the driver's seat, so to speak.

00:04:14: We certainly cannot discuss all the topics in your field today.

00:04:18: In our pre-meeting, you mentioned that you are responsible for two of our seven main

00:04:23: score KPIs, which are?

00:04:26: Well, you obviously have the strategic customer share, given that it's customer and sales

00:04:32: officer.

00:04:33: So the strategic customer share is a KPI that I feel responsible for.

00:04:37: And the second one is the digital sales share, because obviously all of the digital solutions

00:04:42: that we offer to our customers predominantly MShop is also in my area of responsibility.

00:04:50: And these KPIs are more or less all factors that indicate whether we are targeting the

00:04:56: right customers, how often they buy from us, and also in the end how satisfied they are

00:05:01: with Metro.

00:05:02: I think there's one particular topic that is very relevant for all these points, but

00:05:08: which many people might not initially associate with your area of responsibility, the topic

00:05:12: of pricing.

00:05:14: And that's what I'd like to start with.

00:05:16: Matthias, which activities are the most important ones you are undertaking to provide support

00:05:22: to countries in terms of pricing?

00:05:25: In the end, there are three areas how we're supporting.

00:05:28: The first area is the tooling.

00:05:31: And that is probably the one that is right now the most visible one towards the organization.

00:05:37: We are rolling out a new pricing tool from Simon Kucher.

00:05:41: It's called Dynamica.

00:05:43: And it replaces a whole lot of other tools that we are using across countries.

00:05:49: And the team has given itself a quiet, ambitious timeline.

00:05:53: And I'm super happy right now to say that we're so far being able to adhere to that

00:05:58: timeline.

00:05:59: So the tooling part is one big topic right now.

00:06:03: The second part, and obviously it normally comes before that, but I go in terms of visibility

00:06:09: towards the organization right now, the strategic frame.

00:06:13: In the end, it's a very, very small team.

00:06:15: But this very small team has quite an impact on the organization, giving the frame how

00:06:20: we do pricing locally.

00:06:22: Because of course, in the end, pricing is done locally because we compete locally with

00:06:28: our competitors.

00:06:30: We have our customers locally.

00:06:32: So pricing, how prices are set, is obviously done locally.

00:06:37: And we, from a central perspective, also co-creating with the countries, are providing a frame.

00:06:43: Things like Buy More, Pay Less, EDLP, and the likes.

00:06:47: And that is, so to speak, the fundament.

00:06:50: And then the third thing that we're providing is analytical support.

00:06:54: So we provide certain analysis on a monthly basis, be it things like, okay, what's actually

00:07:00: our CIP share?

00:07:02: So the share of customer individual prices that we provide, or how does our BMPL actually

00:07:08: work?

00:07:09: What's the accessibility of those BMPL tiers that we're setting up?

00:07:13: What's the share of BMPL sales?

00:07:16: And if we do changes, and that's something that I think is also appreciated by the countries,

00:07:21: if we change the BMPL setup, we also provide some KPIs on, okay, is it working or is it

00:07:29: also not working?

00:07:30: Yeah, let's directly stay with this topic, BMPL, so Buy More, Pay Less, and Everyday

00:07:37: Low Price, EDLP.

00:07:40: So volume discounts and general price reductions, how do your efforts contribute to BMPL and

00:07:48: EDPL in order to achieve Metro's goal of price leadership?

00:07:52: So as just mentioned, so the one thing is setting a frame.

00:07:56: And in the end, providing guidance in terms of like, for which categories or which type

00:08:01: of products, does it make sense to do BMPL?

00:08:05: And for which products, is it a better advice to do EDLP, so Everyday Low Price products?

00:08:11: And then the analytical support on the back of it, and I'll just give you a very practical

00:08:16: example.

00:08:17: So if we have a product and for that product, we set the tiers, so the Buy More, Pay Less

00:08:23: tiers in the country, we then look at, did the reduction in price between tier one and

00:08:30: tier two, and tier two and tier three, are those reductions relevant enough in order to

00:08:36: change the behavior of the customer?

00:08:39: And if it is relevant enough to change the behavior of the customer, does it actually

00:08:43: make economical sense for us?

00:08:45: Because it might be that customers buy more, but after all, Metro has less absolute income.

00:08:53: So we will support with analytics to say, look, here it might make sense to reduce the gap

00:08:59: between tier two and tier three, or tier one and tier two, or maybe also the bundle is

00:09:04: not the best bundle possible.

00:09:07: And that's something that we support the countries.

00:09:10: And since you are the person who have the best overview, what is your assessment?

00:09:14: So how well do these concepts already work in the Metro and Marco countries?

00:09:20: As most of the time, it depends.

00:09:22: So in the end, I think generally speaking, it's fair to say that they work and that they

00:09:28: work for us as a wholesaler.

00:09:30: And we can see that also a bit with a crying eye, because we can see that competitors are

00:09:37: copying our efforts in selected countries already.

00:09:41: And that basically tells us we're doing the right thing.

00:09:44: And then the next question is, how can we keep it sustainable in the long run?

00:09:49: Because obviously, we don't want to start a race to the bottom where we need to go more

00:09:54: and more aggressive step by step.

00:09:56: So what is the right balance between being aggressive in the market and also being funded

00:10:01: by suppliers, which is very, very important, an important part of the exercise.

00:10:06: And at the same point in time, also keeping it sustainable and not deteriorating our margin.

00:10:13: And are these examples also, what you would name as the problems which are still existing

00:10:18: in the implementation and also the execution of BMPL and EDPL?

00:10:24: So I would say to be fair, the biggest challenge is if we blindly copy things from one place

00:10:31: to the other.

00:10:32: Because there is a frame, but there still needs to be intelligence put into the implementation.

00:10:39: So you cannot do the exact same thing in, let's take two extreme examples, in France

00:10:46: that you do in Romania.

00:10:48: As the concept per se work in both countries, yes, but obviously local realities need to

00:10:54: be taken into consideration.

00:10:57: So I would say generally speaking, the concepts work and they are applicable across all countries,

00:11:05: but they need to be locally adapted in order to be relevant for the market and also for

00:11:12: the starting point of the country.

00:11:14: And if you put intelligence to that topic, do you speaking about human or also artificial

00:11:21: intelligence?

00:11:22: Well, to be fair, up until today, I talk about human intelligence, I talk about all of our

00:11:27: colleagues that locally work in the pricing teams, in the buying organizations, obviously

00:11:32: also the central team around Lalit, because I mean, in the end, they're the experts on

00:11:37: the topic.

00:11:38: And obviously we're looking into how AI can help.

00:11:42: To be fair, we all know that right now AI is quite a buzzword, I would almost say there

00:11:47: is a lot of things that we can do already with advanced analytics that we're not doing

00:11:51: as of today.

00:11:53: But yes, we're also looking as part of this general AI acceleration initiative, we're

00:11:58: looking into how can we also leverage that for pricing.

00:12:02: Yeah.

00:12:03: And what would you say, what role will digital tools play in pricing in the future?

00:12:10: Twofold.

00:12:11: We're always careful because in Metro, we tend to, and it's a generalization, but we

00:12:16: tend to always talk about going to the moon and we forget that we first need to walk and

00:12:22: run where we are.

00:12:24: So we've seen in the past, we try to do a lot about pricing optimization, using price

00:12:30: elasticity is optimizing the long tail, implementing tools that do that automatically for us.

00:12:37: And we're now on purpose going away from that and basically saying, no, what our customers

00:12:42: need is wholesale pricing, because the whole price elasticity optimizing the long tail

00:12:48: is a classical retail topic.

00:12:51: And we on purpose said, no, our tools are BMPL, EDLP, and of course we still also optimize

00:12:58: the long tail, but there is limited point in putting that as a priority.

00:13:04: So that's the one part.

00:13:06: And the other part is within the tools that we've chosen, so BMPL, EDLP, of course, there's

00:13:14: a lot, a lot of things that we can do in terms of optimizing decision making, optimizing

00:13:20: step by step in order to find the right quantities, find the right discount levels.

00:13:26: There's no discussion that there is a lot of opportunity.

00:13:33: Half-whole-tail prices are a key factor in convincing our customers to buy from Metro.

00:13:39: And I guess they play also a role in the partnership agreements that we have with our customers.

00:13:45: Matthias, could you start by explaining what these partnership agreements involve?

00:13:51: Absolutely.

00:13:52: And it's a pleasure to explain it because I think there's a lot of different understandings

00:13:57: and we'll probably cover that in the next couple of minutes as well.

00:14:00: So I start with what we aspire it to be, and then we should probably also investigate a

00:14:06: bit like what it is today.

00:14:08: So what we aspire it to be is basically a one-to-one agreement with our customers.

00:14:14: So you have with every customer an agreement where you cover various topics that define

00:14:23: our relationship and it's things like...

00:14:25: It's a contract.

00:14:26: It's a contract.

00:14:27: In the end, it's a contract.

00:14:28: It's an agreement where we basically say, okay, which is written on paper, which is written

00:14:33: on paper, which is signature in the end, where we basically define things like the CIP.

00:14:38: So what customer individual prices do we provide to you?

00:14:42: What are potential discounts that you get on top of these customer individual prices?

00:14:47: Do you get credit terms, yes or no?

00:14:50: And other benefits that the customer might get, but what is also and equally important

00:14:55: is what does the customer commit to in return to getting all of these benefits?

00:15:01: So how much sales will the customer do with us?

00:15:04: Also in which categories?

00:15:06: Because if we, let's take an example, only have a sales agreement and the customer then

00:15:11: is an FSD customer and buys predominantly low value per kilogram articles.

00:15:18: We might actually lose money.

00:15:20: The customer fulfills his commitment.

00:15:22: So we need to be also one level more precise on, okay, what do you commit towards?

00:15:27: Which categories do you commit towards us in which timeframe and what do we again commit

00:15:32: against on the other side, like delivery windows and service levels and so on and so forth.

00:15:38: So in the end, it's an agreement that defines our collaboration and one of our colleagues

00:15:44: Always says I'm watching

00:15:46: happy to give half of the benefit to our customers. But the other half also needs to go to Metro

00:15:53: because otherwise it's a non-sustainable situation. And that's what a partnership agreement is

00:15:58: supposed to be. It's a contract with our customer. It's a one-to-one contract that defines this

00:16:04: individual customer relationship. Yeah, maybe we can do this a little bit more concrete and to the

00:16:09: point. So what advantages do they offer these partnership agreements to our customers and

00:16:15: also to Metro? Let me start with Metro. So to Metro, it number one ensures that our customer

00:16:25: relationships are profitable by design. Because one of the challenges that we are seeing and I mean

00:16:29: Christian Gottz and team do specifically in the FSD area do a fabulous job in making it transparent

00:16:36: via the customer matrix, which of our customers we actually earn money with. And there are also

00:16:43: still a lot of customers that we actually don't earn money with, where we basically have higher

00:16:51: costs than income in the end. So for Metro, it's better planability. And at the same point in time,

00:16:57: it's also better planability for the customer because the customer knows exactly what he or she

00:17:03: needs to do in order to get CIPs, in order to get year-end rebates, in order to get other subsidies,

00:17:11: sales for support, all these type of things. So the benefit is mutual to be fair. As of today,

00:17:18: very often we provide the benefit to our customers and are not strong enough in asking for the

00:17:26: benefit that we need on the flip side. And that is something that we can also see in our results,

00:17:33: despite the fact that we obviously also see already quite a lot of positive improvements

00:17:38: in these customer profitability. What are the overall strategic objectives we are aiming at

00:17:45: with the partnership agreements, particularly for the growth of our FSD business?

00:17:49: One thing is the growth of our FSD business, because that's one of the things that the colleagues

00:17:56: also keep on saying. And I can 100% agree to that we have so much potential within our existing

00:18:03: customer base to grow sales and to grow sales, thereby sustainably. So of course, sales growth

00:18:11: on the one hand side. And on the other hand side, it's the improvement of profitability and not only

00:18:18: total income profitability, but in the end cash profit or contribution margin per customer and

00:18:23: then in total. Are there specific targets for this business year, for example, of the

00:18:31: enhancement of these partnership agreements? So there are specific targets on the FSD P&L.

00:18:36: There are no very specific targets on the partnership agreements. And that comes towards

00:18:42: what do we define as partnership agreements? Because if you would ask how many partnership

00:18:47: agreements do we have today, it very much depends on what we count as a partnership agreement.

00:18:52: I'll give you an example. So we have a very successful country with Marco Spain right now

00:18:59: that has a program that is called Macro Plus. Now, depending on who you would ask,

00:19:04: either Macro Plus, every customer that has a Macro Plus contract, because it's also a contract,

00:19:10: it's also signed by the customer and by Metro or Macro in this case. The question now is,

00:19:14: is that a partnership agreement? Or is it a general agreement with a customer that doesn't

00:19:21: cover all of the characteristics that I defined at the beginning? So in my perspective, it is a

00:19:27: very, very good starting point. But it's not yet a partnership agreement because it's not one-to-one.

00:19:33: There are a lot of rather general agreements where you have a big group of customers that have the

00:19:38: same agreement. And we want to really go to a one-to-one approach with our customers. And

00:19:44: then we have countries piloting the partnership agreement, as I defined it before. Portugal

00:19:51: is piloting, Ukraine is piloting, there are a couple of other countries also piloting. And there,

00:19:57: we first need to learn. It's relatively new to Metro and also to our customers that we do this.

00:20:04: So in the end, what we agreed also with the commercial board was, it is a priority this year,

00:20:09: it is a priority to define the concept that has happened. And we've signed off, yes, this is what

00:20:15: we mean when we say partnership agreement. But we also said we now need to go country by country,

00:20:21: understand what is the starting position, because sometimes you might be able to leapfrog from

00:20:27: having no partnership agreement whatsoever to immediately the target state in other places,

00:20:32: where, for example, given in Spain, where you already have a kind of partnership agreement,

00:20:38: you don't want to lose that benefit that it gives to you and your customers by now forcing,

00:20:44: going into something different. I'll talk just by, like in German, I don't know whether it's

00:20:49: English saying, by order de mufti, like by top-down saying, by obligation, you now have to do this.

00:20:54: So we don't want to do that. So it's a country by country topic.

00:20:59: So we have some kind of standardized partnership agreements from corporate. And then you try,

00:21:05: of course, to roll out. And to be fair, it's a bit like with the pricing. It's not a standardized

00:21:10: partnership agreement from corporate. These are the dimensions that should be covered. But for

00:21:14: example, it should cover the general terms and conditions of the collaboration. That is something

00:21:19: that the local legal teams will provide. It's not something that I provide or is a central team

00:21:26: provides here. What we provide is saying, like, look, this is what in the definition of a partnership

00:21:31: agreement should be included. Another example, CIPs, we already talked about a number of times,

00:21:36: for CIPs, what we're saying is like, look, it should be mentioned that there is an appendix

00:21:41: of CIPs. But partnership agreements typically have a duration of six to 12 months. So it gives us

00:21:47: planability and the customer planability. CIPs might not always be six or very often not six

00:21:54: to 12 months long agreements. So there's an appendix saying there are CIPs, and then we adjust them as we go.

00:22:01: Hey, guys, have you already heard about Metro's Super Scorer campaign? Every day,

00:22:12: our colleagues put their heart and soul into making sure that everything runs smoothly at

00:22:17: Metro and Macro, whether in our stores, in the depots, in Salesforce, customer service,

00:22:23: or in administration. With who is your Super Scorer, we want to say thank you to these

00:22:29: everyday heroes and put them in the spotlight. My personal Super Scorer candidate is my colleague

00:22:36: Eva, who always comes up with such great campaigns and implement them with a lot of creativity and

00:22:43: even more passion. In doing so, she spread our Metro fundamentals worldwide among all Metro people.

00:22:51: And now it's your turn to nominate your silent hero, team player or role model. Simply click

00:22:57: on the link in the show notes, write two sentences explaining your choice and send it in by 29th of

00:23:03: August. Let's go. Show us who gives their all at Metro. A trusting partnership and reliable

00:23:15: teamwork are not only extremely important to our customers, but also to us as Metro people.

00:23:22: Our Metro fundamentals contribute to this in particular and play a key role here. And Matthias,

00:23:29: let's find out what you think about our corporate values with our little fundamentals questionnaire.

00:23:35: Are you ready for it, Matthias? Yes, I am. Then let's get started. Here is the first question.

00:23:41: Which of the five fundamentals is your favorite one? My favorite fundamental is one Metro. Why?

00:23:47: In the end, one Metro helps all of us to bridge the gaps that we're having. I'm with Metro now for

00:23:57: 11 years. And one of the things that I always tell people also when I interview people for joining

00:24:05: Metro or when people ask me why are you with Metro for 11 years is that I tell them that generally

00:24:10: speaking in Metro, nobody's ill intended. I had the opportunity seven years to work as a consultant

00:24:19: before and I worked in various different companies. And one of the things that is really strong about

00:24:25: Metro is that the and it's a bit politically incorrect, but the quota of assholes in Metro is

00:24:32: lower than in other companies, at least in my experience. And that does not mean that we don't

00:24:38: disagree at times. That does not mean that there is friction between people. But in the end,

00:24:46: we always want the same thing. And that I think is something that this one Metro spirit really

00:24:51: encompasses. And it's something that helps us even though it was to a certain extent, it was there

00:24:55: before, but it helps that we can make it outspoken. And if there is conflicts that we can reference

00:25:03: back to, look, I understand that from your perspective, and from your country, your function,

00:25:08: or whatever's perspective, this would be best for you. But let's take a step back and look at it.

00:25:14: What's best for us overall as a company? And there are examples like we in the area of Tino,

00:25:21: Tino Heltas, marketing automation, we have now have a joint provider for SMS. And obviously,

00:25:30: the prices for every cent SMS differ per country. And we might have countries or not, we might,

00:25:36: we will have countries that suddenly have higher costs. But if you look at it for total Metro,

00:25:42: the costs go down. And then being able to reference back to saying like, look, we understand that

00:25:48: this is frustrating for you as individual country that you now have a higher cost. But overall,

00:25:55: we have a lower cost. And the same can be true for common sourcing, the same can be true for

00:26:01: various areas where if we take a step back and look at it, we realize, if we think one Metro,

00:26:08: what we're doing makes actually a lot of sense. Yeah. And we keep in mind that the quarter of

00:26:14: households at Metro is much lower than maybe another company's. There's another one. And I

00:26:21: use that with team, there's this, that the more political correct one is the people that you

00:26:26: would like to drink a beer with. I think the first version is perfect. Okay. Where in your

00:26:34: working environment do you think simplification is most needed? I think there's a lot of areas where

00:26:40: we can still do a lot of simplifications. My feeling is that we're trying to track and report

00:26:49: too many things. That is something that it's always a balance to strike, because I can understand

00:26:56: from a managerial perspective that you want to be more in control. And specifically in times when

00:27:02: things are not going so well, this need for being in control gets bigger. At the same point in time,

00:27:09: it obviously also burdens the organization, the more tracking, the more reporting one needs to

00:27:16: provide. So from a simplification perspective, I think sometimes we are steering too many KPI's

00:27:22: that in the end kind of target the same thing. So simplifying our KPI set is probably one of

00:27:29: the things that would help. At the same point in time, it's again one of those things where

00:27:34: we as one metro need to then also agree on what are the KPIs. One example that I always like

00:27:41: to give is when I joined, rejoined Metro AG, my team in the sales excellence area shared with me

00:27:48: that they tried to collect the main KPIs to be displayed in San. And they came up based on

00:27:56: surveying the countries with 125 different KPIs. And then you can obviously say, well,

00:28:02: if those are because KPI is key performance indicator, if you come up with 125 key performance

00:28:09: indicators, that's probably a bit too much. And then trying to get to a common agreement,

00:28:15: what are really the key performance indicators will help all of us.

00:28:21: And then let's go a step further. What would you like to abolish because it had no impact so far,

00:28:26: maybe beside the many KPIs? I abolish.

00:28:31: I have to pass on that one. I need to think about it a bit. I will come back to it later.

00:28:38: Okay, yeah. Fair enough. Then next one, how do you create an open working environment

00:28:45: where your colleagues can bring our fundamentals to life?

00:28:49: So one thing that I always try to do is I try to delegate responsibility to people.

00:28:55: I know also that I can be a pain to my colleagues at time because I'm rather detail oriented. So

00:29:02: I want to understand things. So yes, I delegate, but I still want to understand the things.

00:29:07: So in terms of open and innovative work environment, I would say I provide freedom.

00:29:15: And at the same point in time, I also provide sparing so that people can actually discuss

00:29:20: content with me. And so if they need help, they know where to find me.

00:29:25: Okay, then coming back to the first question and your favorite fundamental,

00:29:32: which three words best describe one metro to you?

00:29:37: Togetherness, fun, progress. Okay, perfect. Yeah, Matthias. Now we know what's important

00:29:48: to you in terms of our matter of fundamentals and how you deal with it. Yeah, but that's not

00:29:54: enough about you, of course. We want to find out a little more and therefore we will listen to

00:30:00: your sounds of a year later in the next episode. But now we already have a quick listen to make

00:30:06: it a little more exciting. And once again. Okay, yeah, that sounds interesting.

00:30:16: So normally, I would now refer you, dear colleagues, to the resolution of our little

00:30:26: mystery of Matthias sounds of any at the end of this episode. But with one eye on the clock

00:30:31: and the other on my list of questions, which still has so many topics we need to discuss,

00:30:36: I would like to say, let's finish here and save the rest and also your sounds video, Matthias,

00:30:43: for the next episode. Okay, with you. Very well. Then I'd like to thank you, Matthias, very much

00:30:49: for joining this episode. Thanks for now. I'm looking forward to the second part when we talk

00:30:54: about the digitalization of our business and sales processes and also Metro's digital marketing.

00:31:02: Dear colleagues, you will find the second part shortly as usual on United and wherever you listen

00:31:07: to podcasts. As always, if you have any questions or feedback, please feel free to contact me via

00:31:12: Teams or email. Thank you very much for listening. Goodbye and take care.