Shortly after starting at dormakaba, I picked up my daughter from school and drove to Zurich Airport for a well-deserved daughter-mom weekend. That's the best weekends, by the way. While boarding the plane, it suddenly struck me, or again and again, over the course of this afternoon, I had seen and used dormakaba products. I remember sharing this with my daughter on the plane. She was proud. After this weekend away, I started paying much more attention in my daily life. I saw our products in many, many of the places I visited, many places that matter to me, and it makes me proud as well. Ladies and gentlemen, a warm welcome to our Capital Markets Day, a day where the team and I will explain how we will create value through focus and growth. A quick overview of the agenda.
First, a presentation of our strategy and of our ambitious and achievable midterm targets. Second, Bernd Brinker will give more details how we will generate value for our stakeholders. Then Alex Housten will walk you through the turnaround plan for our U.S. business. Jim-Heng Lee will present our Asian success story. No further regional deep dive is planned, as we have spoken extensively about our successful European business in previous earnings release. Last, Alexander Bradfisch will talk about our EntriWorX solution. He will show how we will differentiate ourselves from competitors through digitalization and domain know-how. Of course, in between the sessions, there will be plenty of time for questions and answers. Let's get started with our strategy. In my presentation, I would like to share the following points with you. Our strategy is a growth strategy. Our strategy will help us deliver our vision.
Our strategy builds on our strengths as a global leader in access solutions. Our strategy takes advantage of the industry we operate in, one of the most attractive markets in our industrial goods sectors. Our strategy captures our potential for improvement. Above all, our strategy accelerates profitable growth while differentiating the company further from the competition. We are confident that this is the right strategy to achieve our ambitious and achievable midterm targets. A new strategy requires ownership by all our employees. This ownership is key for success of the execution. Execution is key. This is why we first reflected on dormakaba's purpose. What holds the company together? What is dormakaba unique contribution to society? This purpose will be the North Star of our transformation. I'm very happy to introduce our purpose to you.
Humans are social beings. We create buildings and cities, places where individuals come together and build communities. These are places to connect, stay, and love. Places to care for the generations that came before us while welcoming the next. Places to let our children grow and learn, to experience amazing moments, to step into new adventures. We are where our communities come together. Places across town or across the world. Places that matter most to all of us. We provide safety, security, and sustainability to these places for people to move seamlessly and shape their lives. This is what our societies require. This is what has driven us for more than 150 years. This is why our customers put their trust in us.
For every place where we learn or rest, for every place where we get inspired or create memories, for every place where we build a career or start a new chapter, for every place that shapes a community. For every place that matters.
For every place that matters. Our vision is to be the trusted partner worldwide for safe, secure, and sustainable places where people can move seamlessly. A vision which puts the customer and our customers' customers at the center, where we highlight how we want to differentiate ourselves from the competition with digitalization and with sustainability. Who are we today? A global leader in commercial access solutions. We will build on our strengths. We are one of two truly global players, creating value for customers from more than 130 countries. We are proudly leveraging our brand, which enjoys a strong reputation. These master brands enriches the value of a portfolio of endorsed brands like Best or Alvarado in the U.S., like Kaba in Australia. For specific product clusters, we deploy independent brands to improve our channel penetration, notably in the U.S.
We support our customers with a broad portfolio of commercial access products and solutions, as well as Key and Wall Solutions, plus the related services. We provide support directly or indirectly through all existing distribution channels. We take care of our largest customers with dedicated account management all over the globe. We are honored to enjoy long-standing customer loyalty thanks to the quality and the added value of our offerings, thanks to our unique domain know-how in specific verticals, and thanks to the partnership we have with our customers. Customer loyalty translate into iconic references that we are proud to share. References such as the Galaxy Soho Office in Beijing, what you see here, or the One World Trade Center that you maybe recognize in our purpose movie. Over time, we have achieved a strong market position in many geographies through organic growth as well as acquisitions.
We have a balanced footprint all over the globe, and this balance is also found in the revenue split between new build and aftermarket. Aftermarkets account for the bigger share. We focus on the higher margin segment of the access solutions market, the commercial segment. These segments includes multi-housing. We only go into residential opportunistically when we can leverage our commercial portfolio in an accretive way. One example would be Australia with the recent acquisition of Helba. Behind all these trends are 15,000 skilled and passionate people. Here are some of the faces of dormakaba. They speak for themselves. I am really grateful for the continued resilience and commitment of our employees, especially in these challenging times. They have kept their focus firmly on our customers and on ensuring business continuity. We differentiate ourselves from the competition through digitalization.
We started to invest significantly in digitalizations early on, years ago. Our cloud-based access solutions illustrate our leadership. With this solution, we generate value for dedicated verticals. An example is Resivo for multi-housing. We successfully deliver complex projects where we deploy our portfolio. The example you can see here is from The Circle where we are today, and those of you who attended the guided tour hopefully saw how we can ensure cross-selling. I would like to summarize our strengths with a quote from a customer that stuck with me because it went to the heart of my beliefs: dormakaba is a company worth fighting for. Turning now to our market. Let me quote one of you: One of the most attractive markets in industrial goods, and I agree, of course. What makes this market so attractive are the following factors. High resilience, high barriers to entry, pricing power.
Our market is at an early stage of digitalization. The leader can disrupt and set the standard. We are in a fragmented industry where only very few companies can drive consolidation, and dormakaba has room for growth, contrary to others. This market is supported by very strong, sustained tailwinds. Tailwinds from megatrends such as the new normal for working and living. Tailwind from building technology such as sustainability, and even tailwind from our own industry, such as the shift to electromechanical solutions. As a result of these strong tailwinds, we see the market for commercial access solutions growing by a strong 3.5% annually until 2027. In particular, we believe that North America will pick up speed while the more mature European market will grow at a slightly slower pace. China will maintain strong growth, notably thanks to shift to electromechanical access solutions and to digitalization.
We are leader in commercial access solutions in a very attractive market, and we have a clear direction with our vision. Now let us turn to our targets. These targets are ambitious and achievable. We must act. Looking at these graphs and the evolution of organic sales growth and EBITDA margin, we must act. Here are the main areas for improvement. Organic growth, customer centricity, operational excellence, U.S. performance, return on investment in innovation, and process and IT landscape. We must act, and we will. We will accelerate profitable growth to achieve a 3%-5% per annum over the medium term from this fiscal year. 16%-18% adjusted EBITDA over the medium term from fiscal year 2023-2024. We will come back to the details of our mid-term target later on. We will achieve these targets through our strategy, Shape for Growth.
Shape for Growth, our strategy to accelerate profitable growth. The strategy will rest on five pillars. I already showed this pillar first of September. First, focus the company. Focus on our core businesses with the fastest growing markets, the highest margins and best service potential. Focus on our core countries where our right to win is the strongest. In other words, with this focus, we are departing from the strategy of becoming a global one-stop shop for access solutions. Second, focus on customer centricity and be closer to the markets. This requires a change in our operating model and investments in our specifications and sales capabilities as well as in process and IT landscape. Three enablers will help us strengthen the core. That's the three on the bottom of this slide.
Operational excellence, all along the value chain to better serve our customers and offer a best-in-class customer journey. Effective capital deployment, in particular to better leverage our significant R&D investment. Last but not least, culture, because a successful transformation requires performance, customer centricity, accountability, and ownership. Let me give you more details, starting with the pillar: focus on accelerating growth. Focus on global core, growth services, focus on core countries, and turn around U.S. business. Going forward, we will focus on our global core. This is the result of a deliberate portfolio segmentation. The global core, as you see here, enjoys the highest market CAGR at 4%-5%, the highest gross margin at 45%, and represents roughly 70% of Access Solutions net sales. That's the global core. The global core also has the highest service potential. In every of these elements, you have service potential.
See you later. For the global core business, our ambition is clear. Reach or maintain a leading market position. By leading market position, we mean our target is at least a number 3, which means number one or number two or number three. Nothing else. We will focus our R&D on global core, and this is where we intend to differentiate through digitalization and domain know-how. This is also where we intend to engage in targeted M&A to step up our value proposition and close existing gaps. Besides our global core, we have the local enablers. Local enablers support our global core, and they are key as well. They are key complements to our portfolio. Two example would be master key systems in Switzerland or architectural hardware in the U.S., which is needed to be successful in the door closer business, door hardware.
We will manage this portfolio locally to fulfill local standards and norms, and this portfolio will benefit from our global R&D. We will avoid duplications and increase the number of reusable modules in our platforms and across the globe. We will therefore gain speed. In a nutshell, we will be globally scaled and locally capable. As you know, Key & Wall Solutions have different set of stakeholders and customers. We will maintain our leadership position and continue to manage Key & Wall Solutions as a global standalone business. We will invest selectively in this business to increase the financial value of this asset, and we will keep strategic flexibility. Now concretely, what is our global core? The global core is made of these clusters: entrance systems, door closers, access control solutions, our EAD, our previous EAD lodging business together and digital and services.
These clusters are not only the fastest-growing and most profitable clusters, but also stand out through their resilience and their sustained growth during the pandemic. As you see here, it's truly remarkable that throughout the crisis, these product clusters, except in North America, have been continuously growing by 2% and access control by 6%. All these product clusters are already back to pre-COVID sales level. That's our core. As part of Shape for Growth, we will expand our services business by increasing conversion across the global core portfolio, conversion of our install base, increasing penetration through targeted M&A, expanding capabilities through servicing the install base of third parties, e-spare parts or digital services. This expansion goes hand in hand with the transformation of our products from hardware to connected components. Connectivity, connected components.
We aim to increase our share of net sales from services from 15%-20% by 2026, 2027. We will also set a geographic focus. The selected focus countries make up a large majority of group Access Solutions net sales, 85%, with high gross margin 45%. In these countries, we have a strong market share in our global core and the largest potential for expansion, especially in profitable services. Here too, our ambition is to maintain or reach a leadership position. Remember the one, two, three. Focus implies also defocus. We will defocus in other countries if we do not see a profitable path. In North America, we will become a strong number three. We will achieve this through a turnaround of our U.S. business. In addition, we will divest Mesker. I mentioned in September that we are evaluating all strategic options.
We have now narrowed down these options and have started to prepare the divestment process. At the same time, we continue our restructuring activities. More to come from Alex Housten on the turnaround later and from Bernd Brinker on Mesker later on. Now coming to the second strategic pillar, focus on customer centricity. With the four topics that you see here. These are the priorities, the new customer-centric operating model. Increase specification capabilities, selected solutions for vertical, and sustainability. Now I start with operating model. Our operating model will drive customer centricity. Regions will focus on sales, on services, on business development, on customer. The PNL remains in the regions. The regions will be supported by global functions to capture synergies in product development, so R&D, in product management, in operations, for instance. All global functions will be bundled across regions. This is important.
Before the lunch, someone talked about matrix with me. It's not a matrix. The regions are strong, close to the customers, and they are supported by global functions. The R&D functions, for example, is led by one person, the R&D head, which is our CTO, by the way. In terms of physical locations, all resources, including those of the global functions, will remain and sometimes even be built up in the regions. They will all be close to the market. Globalization does not mean centralization at headquarters. The future operating model will bring significant change. Until now, every region was run like an independent company. Every region having its own product development, its own product management, own procurement, own manufacturing. On top of this, there were complex interdependencies between the regions. For example, global businesses were run by individual regions with inadequate focus.
All in all, scale was not fully leveraged and synergies were not entirely exploited. Furthermore, regions were not focused enough on the customer due to the number of tasks that they had. This will change in the future operating model. Importantly, this will be a major driver for growth. So far, we have been operating in four regions for Access Solutions. In the future, we will have three customer-centric regions, Americas, Asia Pacific, and Europe and Africa. DACH and EMEA will be merged. Each region will be built around project and solution sales, indirect sales, and services. This will guarantee a strong focus on customers, on distribution channels, sorry, and on services. The main levers will be an increase in specification capabilities, a development of dedicated solutions for selected verticals, and an expansion of our services offering.
We will enhance our direct sales channel with a strong push on specification capabilities. I'm talking here about the support provided to architects and planners when it comes to detailing the specifications for access solutions. We have observed a strong correlation between project win rates and our specification capability. For instance, in the Middle East, we have a win rate, sorry, of about 60%, thanks to a strong specification team. We will build on the success and learnings from some teams, notably in Middle East, as mentioned, or in APAC, and Jim-Heng Lee will add more color later on. Concretely, be very concrete, we will start by hiring specification FTEs. We will increase specification resources by 50% in our top six countries. At the same time, we will invest in digital tools for specification.
We have to do both. Beyond specification, we will focus on developing dedicated solutions for selected verticals. Our customers require more and more solutions that answer the specific pain points of the vertical. For instance, boarding route management for airports, touchless entrance system for commercial buildings, enabling access and flow. Few companies, if at all, can offer this combination, access and flow. We have the domain know-how and the customer intimacy to co-develop these dedicated solutions with our customers. We will focus on those verticals with the stronger tailwinds in terms of megatrends, with the best profit pool and the highest service potential. For the first time, we are giving you more transparency about our exposure to selected verticals, as shown on the left side.
You see our exposure on verticals, and you see that industrial is the largest revenue for us, with 15%-20%. You can see on top that our exposure is balanced. Now, sustainability. We have valued sustainability for a long time. It is part of our commitment to society. It is also core to our business model, a focus of our R&D and innovation efforts, and a driver for growth. Indeed, we notice increasing interest in environmentally friendly products and expect the related market to grow annually by 15%. We are proud to be the first in our industry to have targets approved by the respected Science Based Targets initiative. We are committed to continuously increase transparency about the environmental impact of our products. We have now more than 100 products classified with environmental and health product declarations.
To drive sustainability and be held accountable for our progress, we have defined a detailed framework. This framework covers all dimensions, planet, people, partnerships, and it has set the bar at an industry-leading level overall. You can see a selection of the most important targets here, just to quote one or two, Reduce by 40% our own CO₂ emissions by 2030. One in three managers are women by 2027, and assess all high-risk suppliers for their sustainability management by a third party, especially when you think about child labor. We will enable our focus on growth and on customers through three pillars. That's the three pillars below, on the bottom. The first one is operational excellence and scale, where our company has improvement potential. The future operating model will unlock operational excellence.
It will go live, by the way, first of January 2022, and the expected benefits are as follows: significant increase in customer centricity, as already described, significant increase in scale and operational efficiency, and significant increases in transparency and accountability. A few words on transparency and accountability, which will be reviewed in more details in Ben's presentation. We will be able to steer the right priorities for the group. What do I mean? We will be able to set priorities based on the total margin contribution of products. Let me give you an example. In the past, we were very successful, and we are still in our lodging business in America. All manufacturing sites for lodging were in North America. All manufacturing sites were profit centers. Therefore, the profit was mainly in North America. Why were we not successful in China, for instance, with lodging?
Because in China, lodging was dilutive for the profitability. They didn't see the total margin because a big part of the margin was this North America in the factories. Yeah. They didn't have so much interest to sell lodging in China because of the dilution of their margin. We will change this, and this will be a driver for growth. Every country will have the same incentive to sell every product and not only those produced locally. This will be a game changer. Now to scale and operational efficiency. We have major improvements planned across all the key value chain steps. Let me deep dive on procurement, manufacturing, marketing and sales, and IT. Procurement. Procurement is an area with potential. So far, we have had, as mentioned before, a very fragmented approach with local procurement teams and more than 25,000 suppliers.
Our direct and indirect procurement volume is CHF 1.2 billion and offers potential to contribute to our margin uplift. We will exploit this potential through a global sourcing and procurement approach and active supplier consolidation. We see a potential of 1%-2% year-over-year net savings from procurement spend starting already in this fiscal year. Manufacturing. Within manufacturing, our key objective is to optimize lead times and delivery and to increase our competitiveness. To achieve this, we are going to optimize material flows through our network, including reducing the complexity of our logistics. We have a very complex logistics due to our setup. We will also aggressively drive lean and continuous improvement at our sites, and we have already started. More than started. Increasing connectivity and digitalization of our assets will support this effort.
As I just mentioned, no regret activities are already ongoing in this area. In terms of network optimizations and best cost countries expansion, we are currently looking at a broad range of options for improving our competitiveness, and at the same time, we are looking at leveraging our existing capacities for growth. With the arrival of our new Chief Operating Officer, we will pick up speed, and we will provide regular updates every six months. Marketing and sales. We will strongly upgrade our marketing and sales capability. One key area of attention, and is already, by the way, a key area of attention is pricing. I'm really satisfied that early management attention has allowed us in the current financial year to fully compensate for the inflation of raw material price increase. This reflects our good relationship with customers and the ownership shown by our sales team.
Looking ahead, we will further anchor pricing excellence in the operational routine of our sales organization, and this will be a major focus. IT. In order to reduce internal complexity and unlock our full growth potential, we must accelerate our internal IT transformation. The main areas are ERP consolidation, where we still have 70 ERP systems today, e-commerce, master data, as well as IT infrastructure. Bernd will give more details later. These IT investments represents an additional annual investment of CHF 35 million. We consider IT to be one of our most important business enabler. IT will report directly to me in the future operating model. Effective capital deployment. In our exchanges, many of you have questioned dormakaba's R&D return. It will be a priority.
The main levers for higher R&D productivity are the following: Priority for the global core, and this, yeah, seems obvious with what I explained before. One R&D pipeline, one R&D pipeline to avoid duplications. One example, our electromechanical locks have been developed in parallel in each and every region. The underlying technology could have been developed once and reused. If you think as well about the mobile reader, there is no reason to have a different one for lodging or for access solutions or for different regions. You saw it today in The Circle. Global R&D approach. With more software business, scale is getting more and more critical. In the software business, scale is everything. To better scale our software business worldwide, we are striving for unified software platform with open interfaces and reusable modules. This will be much more efficient for maintenance as well.
Many of the underlying technologies have become global standards. For instance, cybersecurity, cloud technology, artificial intelligence, low-power wireless technologies for identification. They should be reused systematically, and will be. At the same time, the platform will allow adaptations to meet local norms and regulations. This is key as well. We will further differentiate ourselves from the competition through digitalization and domain know-how. EntriWorX lies at the core of the differentiation. EntriWorX is actually the door that you saw outside. This is far more than a door. This is an intelligent door embedded into an ecosystem. For our customers, EntriWorX provides very tangible benefits, and we should always start with the customer benefits. For us, EntriWorX will foster cross-selling, enable solution selling, and improve the stickiness of our offering. Stay tuned for the presentation by Alexander Bradfisch at the end of our day.
We will increase the pace of digitalization by focusing on partnerships and ecosystems with partners and suppliers. This is key for the future. I'm really, really, really excited by the MoU that we just recently signed with Latch. Latch is a leading U.S.-based company, a provider of building management solutions. We intend to combine our cloud-based management system, resivo, and our smart products with the LatchOS building automation management platform. This partnership would create an attractive value proposition for managed residential buildings in Europe. We are actively engaging in value-adding portfolio management. In the recent weeks, we have acquired three companies to expand our global core presence. You see these three companies, and what you see on these slides is all these acquisitions fit already with our strategy. Global core, tick. Focus on key countries, tick. Focus on services, tick.
To increase our focus, we realize one divestment of our interior glass systems, and we are planning the divestment of Mesker. Culture. I would like to stress that Shape for Growth is a growth strategy. Yes, we focus. Yes, we improve operational excellence and capture synergies. Above all to accelerate growth. This growth will require new skills and capabilities. It will require further investments in innovation, digitalization, specification, and people development. Therefore, I expect an overall headcount to increase. To increase in a purposeful way in line with our business. These are pictures for real dormakaba people from our talents. Culture eats strategy for breakfast. Culture is indeed a key success factor. This is why we will transform our culture and build a culture to strengthen customer centricity, performance orientation, and accountability. A culture to ensure stringent execution and implementation through rigorous transformation and change management.
By the way, you have to invest as well in rigorous transformation and change management and focus. This culture will be driven by a set of incentives. We will introduce a new incentive plan effective 2022, 2023, so effective next July. This will be simple, target-based, and with target-based, I mean the target will relate to our performance relative to the market. Relative to the market. Target-based. It will be directly linked to our main three financial KPIs. In a nutshell, we will ensure pay for performance. We will introduce an ESG target for our long-term incentives in two years at the latest. We will ensure transparency and accountability through transparent execution linked to KPIs. For each strategic pillars that you saw before, we have two main KPIs.
For instance, to measure effective capital deployment and R&D return, we will track our innovation power with the share of new products in net sales. The progress of each KPI will be communicated periodically to our stakeholders. I am pleased to introduce the team to you in their new roles. We have two new faces, Mathias Mörtl, our future COO, Chief Operations Officer, and Frederick Jeske-Schönhoven, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer. One other great piece of news, our Chief Technology Officer, Andreas Häberli, will be co-based in Shanghai as of early 2022. This demonstrates the importance of the Chinese market and the whole APAC market for us and for our growth potential. Bernd Brinker will step down from his role as Chief Financial Officer as of April 1, 2022 to take on a new challenge outside the company.
I would like to use this occasion already to thank Bernd for his outstanding commitment and contribution to dormakaba. He will be with us some moments until first of April, and I wish him already now all the very, very best for his professional and personal future. This team, the entire dormakaba community, will deliver on our financial midterm targets. Let me summarize how our strategy translate in value creation for our shareholders and how it translate into our new midterm targets. Our focus on accelerating growth and focus on customer centricity will translate into 3%-5% organic growth every year as of this fiscal year, as of 2021, 2022. Our focus on operational excellence, including the turnaround of our U.S. business, will translate into an adjusted EBITDA margin target range of 16%-18% from 2023, 2024 onwards.
Our focus on effective capital deployment will be ensured by the introduction of a return of capital employed target. The target will be to reach at least 30% starting from 2023, 2024. Our focus on sustainability will come through our industry-leading ESG commitments. Stringent execution will be steered by a rigorous transformation and performance-driven incentives. It is all about value creation through focus and growth. Thank you very much. With this, I will hand over to Bernd to give us more details on how we will generate value for all our stakeholders. Bernd, the floor is yours.
Thank you. A warm welcome from me too to our capital markets day today. Let's continue to talk about dormakaba's potential for value creation through focus and growth. Let's start with our financial targets. You have already seen from Sabrina's presentation how we expect our new strategy to deliver on our vision and midterm targets. Driven by stringent execution, we expect to achieve the following ambitious and achievable targets. 3%-5% organic sales growth from financial year 2021-2022 on. Second, an adjusted EBITDA margin of 16%-18% from financial year 2023-2024 on. Number three, a return on capital employed of more than 30% from 2023-2024 on. The following slides provide details of how we are going to meet those financial targets. The reference point for my next set of slides is the bridge showing the development of our adjusted EBITDA margin.
It gives an overview of the largest contributors to profit improvement as we move from the last financial year's 14.2% to our target range of 16%-18% in the financial year 2023-2024. The turnaround of our U.S. business is an integral part of our financial plan. Not yet included, either from a cost or from an additional margin potential, are any initiatives to further optimize our global factory network. The first two building blocks have already been addressed by Sabrina in great detail. Focus on the global core and our ambition to grow service along the global core, as well as our growth strategy and differentiation in selected verticals. I will highlight where we will change compared to today, i.e., what we will do different to the past. As you will see, this will combine two elements.
Cost reduction, mostly based on self-help measures, and second, value-creating investments that helps us benefit from attractive market opportunities and remove internal inefficiencies. Execution of our strategy will go beyond financial year 2023-2024. We expect a year-on-year financial performance improvement until financial year 2023-2024. We already expect to achieve our EBITDA margin range in the financial year 2023-2024. Let's start with the first lever in more detail, which is pricing excellence. I would like to start by sharing our situation earlier this year. Like all industrial companies, we were facing significant increases in raw material prices. At the same time, we had just started our internal discussions about the new strategy, which also included quick wins, quick win potential. It was quite obvious that this huge challenge was also a major opportunity for a quick win exercise.
We aligned methodologies, targets, and execution throughout the entire organization. At the end of this process, we were able to successfully pass on around CHF 30 million to our highly loyal customer base via extraordinary price increases, which are expected to fully offset raw material price inflation for the financial year 2021-2022. This is equivalent to an average price increase of roughly 3% on average on our portfolio. What does this mean for our pricing excellence strategy? It clearly shows that we have pricing power in our markets. We need to capture this potential more effectively by applying the right pricing strategies. Consistent execution with a clear focus on pricing excellence methodologies will be key going forward. Unlike in the past, we will now implement strong internal pricing governance to track status, progress, and execution.
There will be a clear focus on value-based pricing, i.e., we do not only want to compensate for inflation, but focus on a positive margin contribution. We expect a positive contribution from pricing excellence of up to 0.5% on net sales starting next financial year. The next important building block is procurement. What have we done since early 2021 when we started our strategy review? On the one hand, we had to deal with a major risk for our supply chain. On the other hand, we have again looked for quick win opportunities. Increased raw material prices and the availability of critical components created a major supply chain challenge for us. We organized a cross-regional task force and set up a war room to address the issues. This has proved very successful.
We have so far managed to secure supply of critical components without any major business interruption. In parallel, we worked on quick wins in procurement. We introduced e-auction for certain raw materials, for example, which delivered very strong savings even during challenging market conditions. Interestingly enough, in some cases, our e-auctions generated savings even though the supplier stayed the same. What does this mean for our procurement excellence strategy? We have already started to implement a global procurement organization. Unlike in the past, we will address not only direct spend, but indirect spend as well. Together, direct and indirect spend represent a total of CHF 1.2 billion and offer opportunities to contribute to our margin uplift. Process design will be harmonized across the organization and will be supported by global procurement tools.
Significant savings potential is available due to an unfavorably high number of active suppliers. You have already heard the number. Currently, we have more than 25,000 suppliers. In addition, and beyond pure savings potential, we will focus on the redesign of critical parts to improve availability and costs. We expect procurement excellence to deliver net savings of 1%-2% of procurement spend year-over-year, starting already this financial year. Our current SG&A cost structure compares unfavorably with benchmarks. We have identified three main levers for improvement. The first lever involves adjusting our operating model to reduce internal complexity and eliminate duplicate functions across regions. The consolidation of today's AS DACH and AS EMEA segments into one segment, Europe and Africa, will help here definitely. The second lever is to increase our span of control to between six to eight which we consider to be best practice.
Our span of control is currently only five on average. The third lever is process standardization across functions and regions, which has not yet been achieved in many areas because of the current operating model. We expect the design of our future operating model to induce a headcount reduction of more than 300 positions over the next two years. This will lead to sizable savings of around CHF 30 million per annum. The full amount of savings is expected to be available in the financial year 2023, 2024. Due to the global setup of our business and our integrated supply chain, we consider IT to be one of our most important internal business enablers.
At the beginning of our strategy review early in 2021, we decided to perform an IT health check to assess the maturity and stability of our current business applications, our IT infrastructure, and our e-commerce and master data foundations. This did show that we made significant progress since our merger in 2015, when we combined two predecessor companies that had very fragmented and very decentralized IT structures. The overall outcome of the IT health check was crystal clear. We need to catch up. We need to accelerate our efforts to complete IT harmonization and enable state-of-the-art digital capabilities. This will help reduce internal complexity and remove internal inefficiencies. It will be an important enabler for profitable growth. The underlying rationale for our acceleration is revolution instead of evolution.
Instead of continuing our current path of stable run rate investments year on year, we have decided to accelerate and to catch up. We now want to realize our target IT picture in just five years, i.e., by financial year 2026, 2027. We have defined a clear IT roadmap for realizing this ambition. Instead of a longer time horizon with run-rate investments on the scale of the last financial year, we have decided to accelerate our efforts and investments. We have shortened the time horizon for additional investments to only five years. We will increase investments by an average of around CHF 35 million per annum, which is an increase of 30%. CHF 20 million will be OpEx, while the remaining CHF 15 million will be CapEx.
A major part of this acceleration represents catch-up investments to close IT-related foundational gaps that go beyond normal course of business. It is not one huge IT project. Instead, there are many different IT projects in different countries based on a consistently applied global template. Not a big bang, a step-by-step approach where the risk profile is limited and where we can integrate learnings for future steps. Consistent execution of this IT roadmap will be ensured by, among other things, the commitment and management attention of the Chief Executive Officer and the entire senior management. To properly manage resources and skill requirements, we will consider onboarding system integrators to standardize rollouts in some of our countries. By system integrators, I mean external ERP consultants. We will put much more focus on effective capital deployment.
This will be implemented in our financial framework and steering concept by introducing a return-driven KPI. This will be ROCE, so return on capital employed, which reflects efficiency in the use of capital. Transparency will be guaranteed by building on data that is available as part of our regular financial disclosure. How will we derive the ROCE? The nominator will be reflected by adjusted EBIT. Due to goodwill accounting under Swiss GAAP FER, which is different to the impairment-only approach under IFRS, the capital employed does not include any goodwill. This is in line with other publicly listed companies in Switzerland with reporting based on Swiss GAAP FER accounting standards. Just to further explain why we decided not to include goodwill. Total goodwill in our accounts represent around CHF 2 billion. This is twice the remaining goodwill. Sorry, it is twice the remaining capital employed.
50% of this CHF 2 billion goodwill was generated by the dormakaba merger in 2015, which was executed based on a relative valuation without any net cash outflow. Incorporating such technical goodwill amounts into the financial steering of our company would not make sense at all for us. Our ROCE target is set greater than 30% starting in the financial year 2023/2024, meaning that it is synchronized with the EBITDA margin target. ROCE will already become part of our short-term incentives as of financial year 2022/2023, so from next financial year on. This will help align effective capital deployment in our daily business, improve internal awareness, and it will create impact. Now I would like to provide an update on Mesker. Please note then that when we talk today about Mesker, we are only talking about its hollow metal door business.
The other part, the design hardware business, was internally transferred to our Best company in February 2021. Design hardware, which has been transferred, is a profitable business. The performance of the remaining Mesker business is still negatively impacting our financial results. For financial year 2021, so last financial year, Mesker was impacting the EBITDA margin of our AS Americas segment by -240 basis points, while the impact on the total group was -60 basis points. The performance of this business was basically unchanged for the first three months of the current financial year. As indicated, during recent weeks, we performed a full strategic review of the Mesker business and came to the conclusion we are not the best owner for this business. Consequently, and with the full support of our board, we decided to start preparing a divestment process.
In parallel, we are continuing our restructuring activities to improve performance and to support the divestment case. Our future operating model will not only support growth due to customer centricity and improved operational excellence, but will also clearly improve financial steering, and it will improve internal and external transparency, as well as strengthening accountability. First of all, we see very beneficial internal aspects. Today's operating model mainly focuses on local margin contribution, while the bigger picture, which is the consolidated margin contribution for all parts of the organization, gets only limited attention. An elimination of this weakness will also trigger a stronger emphasis on cross-selling opportunities going forward. Today, intercompany pricing discussions between different parts of our organization absorb a lot of attention and resources. We will eliminate this piece of the equation going forward.
By clearly differentiating our financial steering along our company's value chain and aligning it with the objectives of individual roles, we expect much greater internal focus. Plants will be measured on production efficiency and sales organizations on profitability and market share. All in all, we expect accountability to significantly improve due to clear roles and responsibilities in our global setup that serve the best interests of our company and thus deliver value for customers and stakeholders. This brings external benefits as well. Transparency will not only increase internally, but externally as well, as future segment reporting will reflect the full profitability of revenues. In the past, profitability from plant contribution, which is always the bigger piece of the cake, was allocated to the segment that the plant belonged to.
The best example is the profitability of our former segment or today's segment, AS EMEA, which looks rather low as this segment consists mainly of sales organizations which only receive a certain sales contribution. Our future operating model will become effective January 2022. We will report for the first time based on the new structures when we will release our full year results for 2021-2022 on 31 August 2022. This will include a restatement of our financials for the first half of the current financial year, as well as for the previous year. Let's move to the next agenda point, which is financial targets and trading update. I would like to provide some additional financial guidance in certain areas to complete the picture. The first area is our financial leverage.
We continue to feel comfortable with the financial leverage of up to 2.5x net debt to EBITDA. The upper end of the target range is 3.5x , in short term, even higher. We consider our financial flexibility to be strong based on our current leverage target, our strong cash flow profile, and the availability of additional portfolio options. The second area is our income tax rate. Our expected income tax rate as of June 2021 was 25.2%, while the effective tax rate was more favorable. We expect our income tax rate to stay within the 25%-26% range. Thirdly, CapEx. Our underlying business requirements for CapEx is around 2.5% per annum.
To drive our new strategy and to enable profitable growth throughout the organization, we expect to increase CapEx for the next three to five years to around 3.5% of sales. This already includes investments in IT acceleration and digitization, as well as in global tools to support new skills and capabilities. It does not yet include potential investments to adjust our global footprint, which we will only pursue if we identify very attractive business cases. Shape for Growth is a growth strategy. Consequently, it comes with targeted investments to close gaps in our current setup and to capture attractive market opportunities. I would like to explain the expected impact on our PNL going forward. The first pillar reflects what I already highlighted when I explained savings induced by the introduction of our future operating model.
Related one-time costs are expected to be in the range of CHF 25 million in the current financial year. The second pillar is IT costs. I highlighted how we intend to catch up in the area of IT by accelerating our efforts and to achieve our target picture in five years from now. The third pillar combines investments in new skills and capabilities. This will require upfront investments. For example, we will hire additional specification writers, and we will invest in people, skills, and processes for procurement and pricing excellence, as well as in master data management and strategy acceleration. Some of the investments will qualify for adjustments to EBITDA, which we call items affecting comparability, and which are highlighted on the slide. In addition, in the upper part of the slide, you can see when we expect the indicated costs to become cash flow relevant.
In terms of cash flow, I would like to share additional information which is relevant for the current financial year. We have seen an increase in inventory for the last three to four months due to current issues in the availability of certain components due to safety stock and logistic issues. While this reduces available cash flow, it also supports our ability to deliver to our customers without major disruption. In addition, we have seen the impact of higher volumes on our net working capital. As a result, we expect lower net operating cash flow for the first half of the current financial year. How will our strategy translate into dividends to our shareholders? Let's start with our dividend policy, which remains unchanged. Dormakaba envisages a payout ratio of at least 50% of consolidated net profit after minority interests.
This policy has been consistently applied since the merger, as you can see from the chart on the bottom left side. Total dividends paid to shareholders have always been financed by a strong net cash flow from operating activities, as evidenced by the chart above. Going forward, we expect our strategy to result in attractive and higher dividend potential for our shareholders. Given our strong cash flow profile, we expect to finance such dividends as part of our net cash from operations. Additional cash flow will be available for investments in our strategy of value creation through focus and growth. I will conclude my presentation with an update on current trading based on the first quarter of the financial year 2021, 2022, so July until September. We were able to achieve a solid organic sales growth of 7%.
All Access Solutions segments, including AS Americas, contributed positively to growth. Within the Access Solutions segments, growth was particularly strong in AS APAC despite a negative impact from COVID-19 in some countries such as Australia. You are familiar how important Australia is in our country portfolio. Key & Wall Solutions also contributed to growth, though this was driven by Key Systems, while Movable Walls was still impacted by weaker project business, especially in the North American market. We are still on track to compensate raw material inflation in the current financial year with higher sales prices. At the same time, supply issues continue to be an area of concern and high attention, but so far remain under control. What does it mean for our guidance for the current financial year, so for financial year 2021-2022?
We are raising our guidance for organic sales growth from moderate, which was our guidance so far, to a range of between 3%-5%. At the same time, we confirm our guidance for adjusted EBITDA margin, where we expect a slight increase on the last year's level of 14.2%. With that, I conclude my presentation. We will now go into our first Q&A. For that, I would like to welcome Sabrina back to stage, as well as our Head of Investor Relations, Siegfried Schwirzer.
We will now begin the question and answer session. We will start with some questions on site and then switch to the online and phone queue and back on site again. Anyone who wishes to ask a question via phone may press star and one on their touch-tone telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered a queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use only handsets while asking a question and are kindly asked to speak slow and clear. Webcast viewers wishing to ask a question may dial in via telephone by composing the number +four one five-eight three one-zero five zero zero. Anyone on site who has a question or a comment may now raise hand.
Anyone on the phone who has a question or a comment may press star and one at this time. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good afternoon. A warm welcome from me as well. You know, we have a hybrid format for the Capital Market Day, and we're looking forward to your questions. We are looking forward to the remote questions as well. If you want to participate, please follow the advice of Maria and dial in with your telephone number. You can't ask questions via if you're just in the webcast. It's a short introduction and then the usual IR disclaimer. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up question so that everybody can participate. Now who will start? You please.
Yes. Hi. Thank you for the presentation. I'll start with the margin target and the thinking behind the 16%-18% target. If we look at the last normal year, back in 2018, 2019, you've already or almost achieved the low end of that. I'm just thinking about how ambitious or how conservative you view that 16%-18% EBITDA margin, please.
We see this as ambitious, yeah, to answer your question, and achievable, I think that's very important. We are here in a growth strategy. We want to build a solid foundation in order to enable growth. I think that that says a lot of things, yeah. You saw the investments that we need to do in order to build or to further strengthen this foundation. We need to do these homeworks. With these homeworks, we will increase year after year our adjusted EBITDA margin and our reported as well. We plan maybe an additional information already, next year, not this fiscal year, next fiscal year, to have a reported EBITDA margin which will be higher than last year. Yeah.
Just a follow-up. So your Access Solutions division are different to that of your main peers in the sense that they're based on product clusters. At the same time, you stated that regions have full responsibility of PNL, and yet regional managers will be held accountable for costs that are outside of their jurisdiction. I'm just wondering how the product cluster-driven division is adding transparency and accountability to the model.
Thank you for your question. Very important point. The PNL will be in the regions, yeah. I strongly believe that the regions will be accountable and responsible for the PNL. Why? Because they will drive the growth, they will drive the sales, they will drive the pricing strategy, and they will drive the product mix as well, yeah. They will be the one who will drive the product mix. The solution, the product and solution division or global division will be held accountable through another virtual PNL, if you want, where we will be able to look at every profitability of every product and drive our business as well with this second level of information, if you want, yeah.
This will be key, yeah, because we will focus on the right products, yeah, in terms of growth and in terms of margin.
Charlie Fehrenbach, AWP. Concerning the divestment of Mesker, you mentioned the process has started already. Can you tell us something about the potential interest? Are you in talks to possible buyers already? Thank you.
We have started the divestment process. We have engaged a reputed third party to support us in this process. I cannot say more at the moment. Please understand that I cannot say more at the moment. What we are doing as well in parallel, we are working on improving the business, yeah. We have installed a general manager for this business. This business is standalone now, and we are improving in parallel this business in order to get the best process that we can have.
Hi, Emrah Basic from Baader Helvea. My first question would be regarding your pay-for-performance plan. The reported EBITDA margin, is there a target for that as well in terms of incentivization that needs to be reached?
Very good point. Our pay for performance will be based on the three KPIs that I shown before, and it will not be the adjusted EBITDA target. It will be based on the reported EBITDA target, as you rightly noticed. This target will be defined every year during the budget and the targeting process, where we will set a target to us because we want to have a focus on the reported EBITDA as well. With this, we will ensure the focus on the reported EBITDA. This will be established every year in the budget process. As I mentioned, we want to establish targets relative to market. We will look at the market, and we want to outperform the market for sure.
We will establish our growth target with the market information and our reported EBITDA margin target with our evaluation.
Okay, thank you very much. The second is in terms of M&A. Do you have any ideas to increase your net debt ratio to the comfort zone?
Do you want to take?
Okay. I think we, as in the past, we are continuing to work on our M&A pipeline. As you have seen in the course of the last months, we have done, and we have executed three transactions where we believe, and you've seen that they tick all the boxes which are important for us, and we continue to work on the pipeline. With regard to our comfort zone, I think there is plenty of room to come to the upper end of our range. Therefore, I think we can even speed up to work on our M&A pipeline.
Thank you.
Carolyn? I think the lady was first.
Thank you.
I have it all.
Okay, good. Thank you. First question would be on your return on capital targets. When you're evaluating an acquisition, knowing that the goodwill will be written off, I mean, are you? Because that obviously makes it easier to achieve such targets. How do you avoid there being a perverse outcome?
Maybe general acquisitions. Yeah. We will set strong targets on acquisition in terms of strategy. Yeah. These acquisitions will have to fit with the core, yeah, what I explained. We will put targets as well in terms of attractiveness financially, yeah, for sure. This will be very focused and very performance focused. Under ROSI.
Yeah. You're absolutely right that, within the framework I've described, this question is an important one. What we will do is, as part of any assessment of any M&A opportunity, we will take into consideration also the goodwill element. It will not become part of our incentive scheme going forward and of our reporting going forward. It will be an integral piece of our assessment of any M&A activity.
Follow-up? My follow-up question is, you talked about you use the term catch-up in IT. My question is catching up to what? It kind of assumes there's been a lag. In your sort of talking about your costs going forward for the next three years and the cash costs, they look over those three years, they're roughly equal. It doesn't look like there's any write off of IT. I'd just like if you could elaborate a bit why you're talking about catch-up. Thank you.
Okay. The catch-up relates to our position against benchmarks. We are not yet on benchmark levels, and we need to do significant steps in order to catch up with benchmark. That is the catch-up element. At the second element, you are right. Our statements do not anticipate any depreciation on or any, let's say, impairment on IT. It's as much more that we intend to accelerate investments.
Both for CapEx as well as OpEx in the IT environment in order to execute on this catch-up initiatives.
Dan Bosshard from Vontobel. You are guiding for sales growth, organic sales growth this year of about 3%-5%, and you mentioned that price increases will contribute for about 3%. The implicit volume growth you're targeting this year, 0%-2%, which is not massively impressive in a world which is recovering from the global lockdown last year. What is holding back your growth still? Is it the still challenging situation in verticals like hospitality, offices, shopping malls? What is it? Thank you.
Thank you for your question. It's a cautious guidance. You are right. We want to deliver what we promise. You know the situation where the world is in at the moment with a lot of challenges in the supply chain, in the freight, so many challenges all over the world. We want to give a guidance that we will achieve. That's why we stick to this 3%-5%. We had a lower guidance. We gave a lower guidance three months ago, so we felt strong enough to upgrade this guidance. We will see half year what we will do.
At the moment, we think that it's still ambitious and realistic, and that we will deliver on this if nothing really, really bad happen in the world. With the current situation, we are quite cautious. Yeah. You saw the 7% that we had in the first quarter, but which is based on a previous year, which was at a very low level. Yeah.
Maybe switch to remote participants. Moira, do we have anybody in the line?
Yes, sir. We have a question from Martin Flueckiger from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks for taking my question. I'll start off with, again, the adjusted EBITDA margin guidance, the range of 16%-18%, from 2023, 2024 onwards. I was just wondering, the 16%, the lower end of that target range, what is the scenario that, you know, made you consider that 16% in the first place? That's my first question, and I'll come back with the second one.
The scenario, then the end, I didn't understand.
Which scenario is linked to 16%?
Yeah. A range is a range, yeah. We want to be in the range. That's how I would answer this question. Maybe one additional information to complete what Rishi asked before. It's a range, yeah. We will be already in this range in 2023, 2024, which is two and a half years from now. Yeah. We feel comfortable to come into this range. The full benefit of our Shape for Growth program will come later, yeah, in the year later. Yeah. Yeah.
Okay, thanks. Secondly, I would just like to come back on the topic of acquisitions. About a couple of weeks ago, you announced the acquisition of Fermatic in France. Just wondering what makes France an interesting market for dormakaba to strengthen its presence there? And what are the concrete cross-selling opportunities to the group's entrance systems and Electronic Access and Data businesses? And if you could also provide some indications on the company's profitability, that would be much welcome.
For sure. I'm not sure I'm the one, the best one to comment on France, but I will comment. First of all, this acquisition fits with our strategic project and strategic priorities. It's about services of entrance systems, of automatic doors and garage doors. It's in a country where we are strong. Yeah, one of our biggest country. This fits perfectly in terms of our strategy, focus on the core, focus on services, and focus on core countries. Second, France is an interesting market because in France, the price level are quite interesting. I will not say more. That's an interesting market which is growing and quite big. Too, you wanted more about the companies.
It's a company which makes CHF 30 million revenue roughly per year, which was growing during the pandemic. Even during the pandemic, there were some very good growth. Again, services, automatic doors, and possibility of cross-selling through multi-housing verticals and the verticals where we are present.
Moira-
Are we talking about above average growth compared to dormakaba or below?
This company? Above average in the last year. Yeah.
Okay, perfect. Thanks.
Thank you, Martin.
It's quite big. The volume for a service company, it's quite a significant volume. Yeah.
Maria, are there any other remote attendees in the line, or should we switch to the audience again?
We don't have any further questions at this time. I remind participants wishing to ask a question, they may press star then one.
Okay, we shift to the audience again.
It's good to have people.
Yeah, thanks. It's Patrick Graf at UBS. The first question will be on the midterm growth. You talked about sustainability being a differentiator, and these products growing at 50% rate in the market. You also mentioned your 100 products with such declaration. I'm wondering, are you know, striving for better growth than these 15% in this segment? How much of your revenues is that today? Just trying to figure out what you're assuming for non-sustainability products as a growth here going forward.
Today, we don't segment the product with green products or non-green products, yeah. Why? Because it doesn't really exist yet, yeah. What we do is what I explained. We support our customers and the building owners, because the building owners, for their certification, they have to have the information concerning the environmental impact from our products, yeah. That's why we push this environmental declaration or product declaration, because with this information, the building owners can certify their building, yeah. Because of the need of more and more green buildings and certificate, as you know, then we think that there will be an interesting potential for us. That's one part. The other part is we push innovations in sustainability, and we push innovative solution to consume less energy in a building, for instance, yeah.
As you know, buildings represent 40% of the total CO2 emissions worldwide, so 40. 28% is operations. When you think about entryways, where we are with our doors, if we are working on innovation in order to make sure that the doors stay open the time they should stay open, the width they should stay open. Because if you have only one person which goes quite quickly, you know, you don't need to open fully the door. We are working on these innovations in order to be, to differentiate ourselves and to be, at the front of the development. If you ask me today how much do we do, it's difficult due to this segmentation which is not done yet.
What I can do, we will follow up in our R&D what are the products who can differentiate ourselves in terms of sustainability, and our target will be to increase the percentage of sales of these products. If I have a figure today, no, because it's very difficult, but it's a good start, I think, and we go in the right direction.
If I can follow up on your procurement savings. It's the biggest element in your bridge that you showed. How should we think about the distribution across the reporting segments? Is there any that benefits disproportionately from this or under proportionately? Thanks.
With regard to procurement, savings, I think there is no reason to believe that there is a disproportionate allocation within the portfolio. As we've had very decentralized procurement structures in the past, we believe that the benefits will come across the entire organization.
Fabian Kripp, UBS Asset Management. I have a question on your organic growth target of 3%-5%. You mentioned it is a rather conservative target, but you showed a slide that the blended global average growth in building access market is exactly about 3%-5%. You basically, your ambition is to grow in line with the market. What I haven't heard any single timeline in the presentation is market share wins. Is winning market share in this industry, even though investing over proportionally being one of the top three player, so difficult, or what's your view on that topic? Thank you.
Thank you for the question. Very important question. Just one thing I would like to precise. I said conservative for this year, because we have the catch-up effect, the 3%-5%, and the question was on this fiscal year. If you look at our target, 3%-5%, it means that we will outperform the market and win market share. Why? If you look at our revenue split and you do the math with the market growth, then you will see that we will grow more than the market because we have 50% of our revenue in Europe, and the European market growth is lower than in North America and in Asia. We will grow more and we will outpace the market, and that's our target.
If you remember the curve that I showed with the growth of the past, yeah? If we manage to come back to the 3%-5% steadily, yeah, and win market share and implement our strategy, then let's see what come next.
Thank you. Martin Hüsler, Zürcher Kantonalbank. I have a question on Key and Wall Solutions where you say that you want to manage this segment as a financial asset and invest selectively to provide strategic flexibility. Can you maybe elaborate a bit more what this means concretely, and if there is also a possible divestment in the cards and what could trigger a divestment?
Key & Wall Solutions is a business where we are very successful. We like this business. It's a global business. We are a global leader in this, in key system and wall solutions. We enjoy a strong position and strong market-leading position. We kept this business standalone because it doesn't make sense to integrate with Access Solutions, this business. We want to continue to grow this business and make it more profitable. That was the remark on the financial asset. We want to invest selectively, of course, we will increase the financial value of this asset, which is, I believe, what you expect us to do. For the rest, I would not speculate anything.
Maybe to the remote participants, are there any questions? Moira, is anybody on the line?
There are no questions at this time.
Okay.
It's a sign that there are many, many people here. That's good.
Yeah. Given the impact and the size of the announcements today, I would have two questions on the corporate governance. Maybe to start off with the easier one. Do you think it's still appropriate to have an important part where you don't own the 100%, i.e., having to give up basically half of the operating profit in an important area?
It's not in my responsibility to judge this. It's the responsibility of the board. Thank you for your understanding.
To continue maybe with the more difficult question that is also not in your reach. Do you think it is appropriate to have one of the largest boards with 11 people, most of them having been responsible for what we see today for the last decade?
I will give the same answer if you allow me.
Tobias Stettner,
It's a little bit personal question to Bernd Brinker. I don't know. I should do it off record. Obviously, you were heavily involved in this planning strategic plan, and now you are leaving the company. Just a little bit surprised. Are you not so convinced of this plan? Or just why not you stay to implement the strategy, new strategy?
Yeah. Thank you for the question. I think it's a good question. First of all, I've served for more than six years as a Chief Financial Officer for dormakaba, which is an honor. I've done that always with great fun and I think it was also we proved to be successful. I worked, and I still work in a great team, and I have a great team. Second, I was part of the strategic review, and I'm fully behind the strategy which has been presented today. But at the same time, I thought it's now really good time to move on. I want, as I said earlier, I want to do something different in the future, and I think now it's a very good time, once we have defined the strategy, to hand over the execution into other hands.
I want to use the opportunity again to thank Bernd for his outstanding dedication and commitment to dormakaba.
Thank you.
Thank you for staying with us to help the transition.
Next one, Tobias Stettner from Jefferies, please.
Okay. Tobias Stettner from Stifel, hello. On sustainability and your longer-term targets there, you've provided a target showing carbon neutrality by 2030, which I understand should be linked to your own operations. Now, if we look at your Swedish friends, they are providing even a target for all scope data until 2050. They wanna become carbon neutral overall. Do you have any figure for your operation here when it comes to all scope data?
We have figures. We didn't put on purpose all our figures. We can provide this to you. We have a target to be net zero by 2050 latest. That's our target. By 2030, carbon neutral.
Okay.
And-
Which includes Scope 1 and Scope 2.
In our operations, we have already started. We want to improve the energy efficiency of our operations. We have started with energy efficiency programs. We have started with putting, for instance, solar panel on roofs of main locations. We are buying green electricity. We have a plan for our European fleet to bring it to an electric fleet, yeah. Such kind of actions, and we have really detailed actions in order to meet the targets that we set ourselves.
Next, Rishi.
Yes. Thanks for the follow-up. Just on the M&A, Sabrina, perhaps your appetite for large deals, are you open to them or the model would be just focusing on small bolt-ons? Do you also see any white spots in the portfolio currently? In terms of financial targets, why not cover it up with an inorganic revenue growth target? Does the 16%-18% EBITDA margin include any dilution from M&A?
Thank you. In terms of M&A, we want to focus our M&A on the core, yeah. We want to focus on either strengthening the core or strengthening the gaps that we would have, yeah. If you ask me about the appetite, I would say if there is a target which fits to our strategy, to our focus, which would fill a gap, yes, I have appetite, yeah. You see that we have flexibility, we have financial flexibility as well. That's the first part of the question. You ask if we have white spots. I would not say that we have white spots, but I think that we should do more in access control and Electronic Access & Data, our previous Electronic Access & Data.
That's where there are strong growth potentials in, so in every market, yeah, and in the market where we want to focus on. I believe here in the opportunities that we would have in this field and some of the gap, we would need to fill them probably inorganically if we want to be fast. Then if our adjusted EBITDA include M&A? No. It's no. The question of inorganic was the-
Inorganic.
Why not inorganic? Because why? Because I want to focus on organic growth. I think that's an area where we can do better, we can do much better, and we did not do so well in the past. That's why I want to have really a focus on organic growth.
I'm afraid we're running out of time. Maybe a final question and then we go for the break.
Can you see it? Okay, thank you. I'm just wondering where the Saflok business fits into your global core, local enablers or maybe other categorization.
The Saflok business, very good question. Thank you. Forgot to mention. Saflok business is a very good business that we have, very strong business. We are market leader. We are strong in term of profitability. We have a footprint in best cost countries with Mexico, with Nogales. So all good with this business. We want to keep this business standalone, a little bit like KWS, in order to continue to drive this business in a profitable way. We want to use the synergies as well that we could have in R&D. Especially with our access control solutions, in term of software. We will benefit from this. We want to keep this business as standalone as it is, as it is today.
My follow-up is, what do you think, in terms of your production capacity? I know you've talked about, you know, the discussion today hasn't incorporated what might be achieved through further optimization. You know, how much additional volume, let's say excluding the software aspects and service, but in terms of the volume of products, do you think that the current footprint can handle?
Thank you. It's difficult to give a figure in total, but what I can say, I looked at the utilization of our factories, of course, and you can think of utilization in a different way, because it depends with how many shifts you run, yeah. What I saw and what we have room for more utilization. What we need to do as well, we need to optimize our capacities, yeah. We can optimize our capacity with the shift optimization and the network optimization first, yeah. Here, there are potential as well, yeah.
Okay. Let me add my voice to a warm welcome to dormakaba Capital Markets Day. Hello, my name is Alex Housten, and my role is to lead the Americas organization to growth. Americas is a must-do market for dormakaba. This afternoon, I'm gonna share how we will transform and leverage scale over our core products, integrate and simplify our business, improve customer service, activate our selling activity, and in doing so, change our trajectory. The Americas is an attractive market for access solutions. In fact, it's the world's largest, offering a $12 billion opportunity, with robust growth rates and strong profitability. It is a vital market for dormakaba. In North America today, we have a meaningful business, with 3,100 employees across a variety of sites.
However, our performance trend over the past few years is not acceptable, with declining revenue and profitability even before the pandemic, and we have the need for a deliberate and focused turnaround, backed by disciplined execution. We have not taken the necessary steps to reach our potential in the Americas, and the business has not been operated the way it needs to be operated in order to grow and to thrive. It begins with scale. We have not sufficiently extended the global scale of dormakaba to the Americas, and we run the business today with too many local solutions. This has resulted in the product portfolio lagging in competitiveness, especially in the high-tech areas supporting access control solutions. Our business also remains complex, a collection of integrations with unfinished integration work.
We must simplify our activities by integrating our businesses, harmonizing our systems, standardizing our work, so our technologies, our people, and our data can support efficiency and high performance. The present state of complexity has made execution a challenge, and this contributes to our performance trend. Our commercial processes have lagged behind best-in-class sales techniques and must be enhanced with improved sales organization structure and activation processes, assertive pricing practices, and by implementing infrastructure and systems to provide exceptional customer journeys, loyalty, and trust from sales engagement all the way through after-sale support. Our past efforts to improve performance were not holistic enough nor executed with adequate commitment, discipline, and focus. We must deploy proven transformation practices and sustain our turnaround execution all the way through to success.
As a result of all these factors, we are underrepresented in key growth-driving areas, like the higher education and healthcare vertical markets and the electronic security integration channel. Gaining traction in these areas gives us access to the fastest-growing part of the Americas security market. Our approach to addressing these opportunities is transformation, with relentless and disciplined execution. Our transformation will begin by building on our greatest strengths. We have several proven and trusted brands which are seen as leaders in their respective areas. We also have several key product leadership positions, especially within the lodging, electronic access, and entrance systems product lines. Most importantly, customers are seeking dormakaba and eager to be part of our success as the preferred choice in the access solutions market. Reaching our potential in the Americas requires a comprehensive turnaround activity.
First and foremost, we will leverage scale, putting the full capability of dormakaba behind our efforts to succeed in Americas, including product platforms and procurement and manufacturing scale. We will be relentless with execution, setting performance metrics, executing, and measuring to ensure success. We will be committed to focus on the key growth products, such as access control solutions and entrance systems, and streamlining in other businesses that today require too much attention and keep us from progress in the most important areas. By taking these steps, we can achieve sustainable, profitable growth, including revenue growth of 4%-6% each year for the next three years, and improvement in our profitability of 400-500 basis points of EBITDA margin over the same period. To be clear, the first step is scale, and I would like to share where this transformation will take us.
Beginning with R&D and product, we will advance durable and adaptable product platforms without expensive duplication and redundancy. Our local capabilities will take those platforms and adapt them to specific and competitive market needs, rather than starting from scratch every time we see an emerging product opportunity. This reduces waste and improves speed in the region. In procurement and operations, we will leverage greater scale for improved input costs, supplier partnerships, and more efficient manufacturing, while at the same time maintaining market proximity and close cooperation with partners. In support functions, we will use our global scale to implement standardized, highly capable systems and processes, enabling local teams in the Americas to be focused on providing excellent customer journeys that result in loyalty and growth, rather than managing service exceptions and relying on numerous dated and disparate systems and processes. Let me give you an example.
In 2020, we maintained over 200 specific telephone numbers and email addresses for our customer service and tech support functions in the U.S. Our service vans in every city carried different contact information for our company. Our call center associates in certain locations transferred on more customers than they served to issue resolution. This year, we deployed 1-866-dormakaba and have rationalized our customer service numbers to just 10, with a plan to go further, all in an effort to simplify the process for our customers and leverage our scale. This strategy is to embrace scale for robust and standard processes and in turn, reduce complexity in the region and support high-performing local customer-first activities. The Americas access control market is a high-priority focus. I'd like to give you an example of how our transformation will support our progress in this area.
Today, our access control product line is entirely North American, all local product, and it's spread across five distinct organizations within the Americas. To enhance growth in this area, we'll bring our global access control components platform to North America, localize it, and immediately elevate our access control solutions offering. We will leverage this platform to improve related components in lodging and multi-housing and even extend to other core products, especially entrance systems. This approach addresses a vast opportunity in the American market for an access control product lineup that is software system agnostic and therefore open to allow us to address the full market, interoperable with compatibility and consistent installation and use practices across readers, credential formats, electronic locks, and even automatic entrance systems, simplifying the work and eliminating key pain points for security integrators and building owners.
Enduring, designed to support advancement in new technology from the start, addressing a key customer concern, how to future-proof an access control infrastructure investment. The American market seeks an access solutions product line that is open, interoperable, and enduring, and dormakaba is equipped with the technology to meet this need. The transformation in Americas is an effort of cooperation with global work streams across product and operations, enabling product competitiveness and focus on sales growth in the region. Americas will lead specific efforts in rationalizing our processes to simplify the business, realizing top line, and improving our cost, all in the interest of simplicity and focus and customer centricity. The execution in the Americas is critical and will be run with the full commitment of the leadership team.
We will have a dedicated transformation management office with a head of transformation on the leadership team and reporting to me. We will deploy rigorous and disciplined execution and realization tracking. The management team in the Americas is fully committed and highly passionate about this plan. We seek to change our trajectory and make genuine, sustained progress to reach our potential. These six work streams on the bridge drive our growth and performance. With a priority focus on the top line drivers, backed by disciplined execution of our cost levers and supported by complexity reduction in business integration cleanup, we will improve 400-500 basis points of EBITDA margin over the next three years. A little about the work streams. Work stream one is focused on the core, especially advancing our access control solutions and entrance systems offering. Work stream two is vertical solutions.
This is ensuring that our electronic products are compatible and interoperable so that we can offer full solutions. Work stream three is commercial excellence targeted to growth. This includes pricing and the rationalization of more than 15,000 pricing programs, as well as further customer service and tech support tools, like an issue management and ticketing system for customer and tech support. One particular area of focus will be account stratification. Let me give you an example of this. In our door hardware business alone, we have around 2,500 customer accounts. A little more than 10% of our accounts drive nearly 60% of our business. We have some fast-growing accounts in the middle and then lots of little accounts.
Yet until recently, we treated all of them the same, and our salespeople, regardless of their level and capability, were assigned to these accounts based on geography alone. Now we have account classification, and our best sales players go to the most important accounts for defending and growing business with a focus on driving new demand and providing exceptional customer service through key account management for the very top growth customers. We're developing our sales force to drive these high-touch accounts with specialized value-added consultative selling, supporting these accounts to be more successful in their own businesses. So far, our top 50 sales producers have now been through six months of an extensive training process on these techniques, facilitated by a reputable outside sales activation firm. We have medium touch accounts, and we're providing them with solid sales coverage with our performing and developing sales associates.
In the last nine months, we've advanced the account plan creation and execution competencies of the 200 sales professionals that focus in this area. That's with a formal training plan and led by the same outside firm. This has led to the creation of 1,700 specific account plans, all oriented to growth. Over the next year, we'll transition the sales account coverage for the smaller low touch transactional accounts to a newly formed inside sales team who will not only support this business, but facilitate the basic transactional activity across all account categories. The end result of all of this is we leave our best sales resources focused on selling to our most promising accounts for even more of their time, and that generates growth. This is powerful, but it's only the start.
We can still deploy digital self-service tools and go to the next phase in our customer satisfaction journey. Work stream four is procurement and rationalizing the more than 14,000 suppliers we have supporting the Americas region, so that we can simplify our sourcing activity and focus where we can reduce input costs. Work stream five is streamlining our organization. That means role clarity, elimination of redundancy, focusing on the core products, our most important brands, and of course, the effective selling structure. Work stream 6 underlies all of this and supports all of these initiatives. That's completing business integration, simplification, and that especially includes continuing the trend of our ERP standardization. This is a very complex area for our business, where three of our big four factories presently rely on multiple ERP systems to support different areas of production at the same plant at the same time.
Imagine the complexity of running these factories. Over time, we've reduced from 16 ERPs in the recent past to 10 today and have a plan to reach five where no facility has more than one ERP. These work streams support growth, efficiency and focus, and that will drive our performance. Now I've shared the story of the Americas and the Americas turnaround with you. To reiterate, I am confident we can execute and deliver our targets for growth and performance. Following our Shape for Growth strategy and with strong support from Sabrina and the whole executive team, we will grow around our core products, simplify and focus our business, deliver customer service and sales activation, and by doing so, grow and contribute results to dormakaba from this vital must-do region, the Americas. I'm passionate about this turnaround. It's my purpose. The key is relentless execution.
We know it, and we're in motion to deliver results. Thank you. With that, let me please invite Sabrina and Sigi back up, and we can take some questions.
We start with the audience. Any questions for Alex? Rishi, please.
Thanks for the presentation, Alex. 400-500 basis points is quite a big jump. Can you help us with the phasing of this? Also more importantly, where do you see the low-hanging fruits? I mean, you talked about utilizing technicians' time better, focusing on key accounts. Just if you could help us, what are those low-hanging fruits? When should we expect them?
Yep, you bet. The phasing is actually, it's fairly steady in the process. The low-hanging fruits are from simplification and efficiency, starting mostly around the way we do operations and deploy our sales force. Also, an important lever is pricing.
Is there a structural reason why this business should not be a 25% EBITDA margin business?
Right now, our focus is to deliver the 400-500 basis points of improvement. Underlying that is some fundamental product and business model work that I think equips us for the future very well, but the immediate focus is 400-500 basis points and start growing.
Okay. The other one is, I'm a bit surprised when you said that you are underrepresented in education and healthcare. I thought at the time of the Stanley Black & Decker deal, when you acquired Best, that you actually gained significant position in those two segments. Can you just remind us of how big are those two verticals?
Yeah. As a clarification, higher education, K-12 education, we're fairly well-represented. Higher education's a massive opportunity for our Electronic Access and Data business, and so is healthcare for Electronic Access and Data and entrance systems. If you look at the growth in the Americas market, those verticals, and in particular those product categories and solutions, drive a lot of that growth. We wanna be a bigger participant in that area.
Patrick Appenzeller from Research Partners. Talking about low-hanging fruits, I thought that the potential divestment of Mesker should be the low-hanging fruit. How much would this contribute to the planned increase in the EBITDA margin?
I think the figures were clearly shared before, the impact it has on our business. Obviously, we look forward to focusing on the other areas which I think drive the meaningful growth.
Maybe one clarification on this topic. At the moment in our business plan, Mesker is still in, of course. But what we have in our business plan is an improvement of Mesker because we are working on restructuring and improving the business. We have this improvement in our business plan.
Does it mean that the Mesker should then also go to this 21%-22%? Is it less? Would it be less with Mesker?
The improvement of Mesker is included, but the divestment is not included. Yeah.
This margin would be.
Yeah.
including Mesker.
Next question, Carolyn.
Yeah. Thanks, sir. Patrick Graf for UBS. You mentioned 14,000 suppliers in Americas. That's a bit. Looks like a big number given 20,000-25,000 on the group. What's the reason behind that? Is there structural explanation, product groups, explanation for that?
I think it's the legacy. Some of those 14,000 are not exclusive to the Americas, and we're excited to be part of a global strategy to rationalize and drive value there.
I'm curious to know if you can share. You know, how your work at United Technologies or Carrier you see like addressing some of the challenges that you're facing now with all the improvements to be made. Also just, how you see the new operational structure coming in. Like, does it feel like you're breaking some chains? Or, you know, were you also like quite involved in helping kind of steer the idea in that direction?
Let me start with the second question first. Absolutely. The formation of this strategy is a collaboration of the EC, fully. Certainly, Sabrina's been fully engaged in the process, but on the team. I think it's been refreshing. We're gonna absolutely break some of those chains, I think in a good way. I have no doubt that this strategy will help us reach our potential. So no reservations or concerns. I'm pretty excited about it, actually. We have a lot that we can do by focusing more on customers and selling. Operations is important, and it deserves, you know, its own focus, full-time, and that's what it gets. In terms of personal backgrounds, we all bring them. I'm very excited to be at dormakaba. So many good strengths of this company.
I hope I can contribute, you know, something to help us in this journey. Each company and each organization and each specific markets and customers require their own, you know, focus, and that's very much what we're attentive to here.
Okay.
I would be interested if you have for this turnaround the right people. It's all about people. In the U.S., we hear a lot about labor shortage, badly educated people, wage increases. Could you update us what's going on? I would also be interested, what's your personnel turnover rate right now?
Okay. Let me start with addressing the labor situation. It's definitely been a challenge. I don't think we're different than many industrial companies that see the same market for labor. As a result, we have taken proactive measures to ensure that we communicate with the workforce, that they're aware of the mission we have as a company, and that's localized in our facilities, and of course, make sure that we are attractive as an employer economically as well. By doing that, we've been able to operate through this difficult situation without any significant disruption. And I'm proud of that. I'm happy for that. Same thing with our suppliers. We stay engaged with them to ensure that they take these measures and are able to run and stay up with us as well.
Sorry, the first part was?
Turnover.
The turnover. You know, I don't have the figure in mind, but what I recall is our typical turnover rate. We're running 2.5x to 3x that now. Some of that is situations specifically related to the pandemic, which I think pass. Some of that is consistent with the general labor market. It definitely requires attention and, you know, we're committed to keeping that right. Now, you asked about the management team. You know, we have taken significant changes in personnel of the Americas management team, including three pretty significant and pivotal roles around human resources and operations and engineering, and those have been taken in the past year.
Related to the rest of the team, I'm confident, but at the same time, of course, in embarking on any turnaround or running any high-performance business, it's important to have performance and accountability. That's a continuous process, and I'm committed to that process throughout this turnaround.
Thank you. My question is, you mentioned some measures such as key account management or better integration of acquired companies. I'm just wondering what held you back the last couple of years, actually, to already do those kind of low-hanging fruits?
Well, you know, I think it's difficult for me to go back too far and focus on all of those reasons. What I think is important is the steps that we're taking, we're confident will improve these areas. On the leadership team for the segment in Americas, we have a program management function now that helps us with execution, whether it be things around product or marketing or the way we evolve the business, including integration work, systems work, all the things that I described we are setting out to do in terms of simplification.
Would you like to?
Hey, Alex. Just a question on your specification team, how big it is. Are you happy with its size, and the talent you have there? Secondly, just for us to understand, is your team able to spec solutions on the entire dormakaba portfolio today? And if not, when do you expect that to be achieved?
Our specification team is smaller than I'd like. That's why it's foundational in our Shape for Growth strategy to significantly invest in that team. The 50% figure to expand those resources is consistent with how we look at that in the United States. We do have specification activity across the entire dormakaba product line. Obviously, because of the specifics of the U.S. AIA, typical divisions and the specification framework that's set up for a project, maybe one spec writer doesn't write a specification across the entire range of dormakaba products. That wouldn't be necessarily effective. We can. When we have different spec getters, the partner of the spec writer, out in the marketplace, and we identify where a customer can benefit from the full solution, that's the way we approach it.
We'll be improving that obviously, as the product line evolves and becomes more interoperable and compatible.
Thank you, Alex. Before we wrap up, I hand over to the operator, Maria. Do we have any question from a remote participant in the line?
There are no questions from the phone.
Okay. Thank Alex Housten for the presentation and the Q&A. Now we're heading to the next presentation of Jim-Heng Lee about Asia-Pacific.
Thank you.
Hello, good day. Can you hear me?
Yes, we can. Yes.
Yes. Thank you very much. I'm Jim-Heng Lee. I'm very happy to be able to share with you the small little success stories of Asia-Pacific Access Solution. It is always record-setting, including these presentations. Why do I say that? Because as I speak in Hong Kong, we are now four minutes into the new dawn, sixteenth of November, 2021. Record-breaking in a sense that this is going to be the longest presentation that I will make that will spread over two calendar days, from November 15 to November 16. We are now seven hours ahead of CET. Good day, ladies and gentlemen. How do I frame my presentation today and the key messages that I would like you to take away? It is easier for me because I lived through those pre-merger, post-merger, pre-pandemic, post-pandemic years of dormakaba Asia-Pacific.
I would like you to take away what we have achieved during the six years or five and a half years since merger. I would also like you to take away what were the key lessons that we have learned in going through those ups and down over the past years. Also very importantly, which is the very purpose why we are all here today, and that's to celebrate the new dawn, Shape for Growth. What would Asia-Pacific be like with a crystal ball into Shape for Growth, as well as what Asia-Pacific could contribute to dormakaba as a whole? I hope I'm able to drive my deck from here. I hope you see it okay. We have achieved a rather positive track record in certainly the fastest-growing region in the world.
We predicted that the market growth in our core countries by 2026, 2027, China would deliver 5%-6% per annum year on year. India, almost double that, 8%-10%. Our very mature market in Australia will somewhat grow in a respectable manner of 3%-4%. This is market. We believe that the market growth is pretty much propelled also by the tailwinds which Sabrina elaborated during the day. What are they? The shift from mechanical to electromechanical on-premise solution to cloud to off-premise solution. Pandemic has brought challenges. However, as the Chinese would say, behind every crisis, it presents an opportunity. New normal living and working spell opportunity for us. Sustainability, we talked about that earlier on. We are in a good position to grow from where we are today. We have a proven track record.
We have a team that deliver year on year. We have well-established rich market presence across most major cities of Asia-Pacific. Last but not the least, we have also dedicated product development centers. We have also dedicated supply chain ecosystem in place. We are poised to grow, and we wanted to grow faster than what the market will present itself. I would like to go back in time. How have we come this far? The moment the merger took place in 2015, three full financial years later, our profitability percentage, margin percentage almost doubled. We grew faster than the market, combining matured, developing geographies within Asia Pacific, 7%. Very satisfying to know that China and India grew during the same period with a whopping 13% and 11% CAGR, respectively. How did we do that? The merger, in short, brought about three major complementarities. First, geography.
Second, product portfolio. Thirdly, business cyclical complementarities. We were able to become a trusted leader among the top players by the end of June 2019. These were clearly a demonstration of a team that believed and worked on disciplined execution, and we did. Looking back in time is easier than to have a crystal ball looking ahead. How did we leverage on the strengths, and what were the strengths to begin with? We had, as we mentioned so many times, and as well in Alex's earlier presentation, we had a scalable core, and we have a capable local complements.
There are clear examples of how we, among the top two and the one of only two full suite solution provider, be able to offer with local complementarities and even to the extent of being able to served with European norm solution as well as NA American norm solution coupled with local digital products that is so much the in thing of smart home that is so trendy across major cities in China. We were close to the verticals. Our China organization was one of the first across dormakaba to introduce vertical approach through very robust CRM tracking. We know what hotels were being built. We know what major airports were being built. We know when to contact what would be the ideal design phase. We have them in our database. We are close to it. Specification is not a matter of numbers. Yes, number counts.
Specification is as well a strong correlation of win rates as well as our capabilities. We were able to do that. We've clearly demonstrated our product differentiator, and we are able to do that by listening closely to the designers, to the architects, to the stakeholders, as well as to the most important stakeholders, the developers of the building. Service is a crucial part. It's in our DNA. Everything we do, we wanted to ensure that recurring revenue would occur because of the loyal customers that were in place. Stickiness to our customers is crucial. Service business present an opportunity to bring ourself closest to the channel as well as the channel closest to the customers. Last but not the least, one of our major strength is I'm representing this evening and this morning, because we already passed midnight here in Hong Kong.
I carry on my shoulder the entire team of passionate associates that we have in Asia-Pacific. I'm proud to be able to deliver here because they deliver, and so have I. We continuously look for accountability. We continue to put together a strong dormakaba one or one dormakaba mindset that is so crucial. I would like to give you two concrete examples of customer stories. Sabrina mentioned about a significant project in Beijing. We have quite a number of them, but this one I would like to share with you with a lot of pride. Hang Lung Properties, a property developer listed in Hong Kong, had a major project in the central part of China, in the provincial capital of Wuhan. This name might ring a bell to you. This project is the hallmark of the CBD, Central Business District of Wuhan City, which boasts 8.6 million population.
It's about the same population as you have in Switzerland. What is happening here is that they are building an all-encompassing complex. A 350m tall office building, coupled with service apartments, hotels, residential apartments, covering a space of 350,000m sq . We were early into the project. We engaged them. We knew the project that was there. We built a specification around the stakeholders. We work hard. We listen. We were patient. When the time came, we put together an irresistible package of solutions comprising what you see on the screen, European norms, EN, American norms, NZ, automatics with touch-free access solution, master key system, as well as high-security cylinders. We did that, and we achieved this, along with other significant projects across Asia-Pacific, with a fully dedicated team of specifiers as what Alex said before.
It is one thing to write specifications. It's another to close and get the specification done in our favor. That offensive and defensive approach work hand in hand. Fortunately, for Asia-Pacific, we have that favorable factor in our hand. Across Asia-Pacific, I will comfortably say that we have more than 70% chance of winning a job once we put our heart and soul into writing a meaningful specification which is differentiated from a specification. This is crucial for us. This is, to me, a major success factor. I would like to come to another customer story. I hope I'm not going too fast. I cannot see you, but I could feel that customer sharing is a very important part of our business. This is where it matter most with the mindset of customer centricity.
Alibaba, headquartered in Hangzhou, southeastern part of China, very close to Shanghai, needs no introduction. It started in 2008 with a humble adoption of our SAP and SAP endorsed exos platform. It grew over time. We grew over time with Alibaba as well. As they venture overseas, as they cover the entire China with more than 10,000 access points, and with more than 500,000 master records domestically and overseas. We started with exos together with our partner, which are very important. We expanded the exos ERP system into even office booking, into car park, into visitors management system. We were able to execute this in a seamless way whereby Jack Ma could still conduct his day-to-day business in a seamless way. We did that, and we were appreciated. We were a proud partner of Alibaba first-ever unmanned hotel.
They call it the Future Hotel. We were in there. The opportunities are aplenty. Key global accounts that is so much into our integral part of dormakaba approach will serve Alibaba, but it is not without our local knowledge, intimacy, as well as proximity to attend to Alibaba that could makes a difference. We put in place a robust first level, second level, 24/7 service. Jack Ma likes that. The pandemic has brought challenges to all of us. I could not come. If I do come, I will have to be quarantined upon my return back to Asia. What have we done? In the initial phase, as what Bernd suggested during the day, we were focusing on cash is king, and we move on to ensure business continuity among all employee safety.
As we had tasted growth, and we protected our bottom line, in our financial year just ended, 2021, we moved our focus from realigning priorities to respond to customer demand with touchless solution, antimicrobial, developed in our India local product development center with international certified certificate to ensure that these bacteria do not pass on. We were selling a lot of automatics with touch-free solution because this is what the market really want. We continue to fill our pipeline during the pandemic days. We have our sales force who work at home, from home, to continue to conduct virtual training, and we encourage them to build communities among themselves to cross-learn. India was such a good example. Very resilient colleagues that we have in India that continue to drive despite the tens of thousands of COVID cases reported every day at one time.
Our connection with the customer were much intensified during that period of time. Our win rates and our strong presence in specification was mentioned again and again. As I said, numbers do matter, but it's not just a number game. It's differentiator. It's knowing what we know about the competition, that our competitors do not know much about us that could make a difference. The launch of customer-oriented touchless entry solution. Consequently, the financial year that we just ended, June 2021, we clocked a respectable 4.3%, whereas part of the number China had already returned to pre-COVID level in terms of top line, and deliver more than the margin it had pre-COVID. 14.2% was our full Asia-Pacific number, EBITDA margin, and that is an improvement over the year before.
What is Shape for Growth going to be adding value and vice versa from Asia-Pacific to the group? This is a familiar table that you saw this morning. Acceleration of growth. Shape for Growth is a growth project. I believed Asia-Pacific is poised to grow, and I explained the reason why before. We continue to want to strengthen our leadership in the core. Door closer, door automatics. These are our must-win battle. We will continue to expand our market share across Asia-Pacific. Verticals is how we innovate. We will not let go of the intimacy. Service is our DNA. Our recent acquisition of RELBDA in Australia demonstrated that if we do it well, we are able to cover our scope of service to our commercial stronghold, to our residential stronghold through the acquisition, as well as to residential. Customer centricity goes without saying.
Verticals, customer centricity, loyalty, deep insight, domain know-how explain how crucial that is. We do have our fair share of turnaround. Exit from long-tail country, this will be enabler. As what Sabrina said, when you focused, you imply defocused, and this is no exception for Asia-Pacific. Our product development has significant room for improvement in order to strengthen our local competencies. Crucial. It's going to be a game changer, the next phase, which I hope Shape for Growth will grow. As was announced, it came as a significant news for us to welcome our Chief Technology Officer, Andreas Häberli, to be co-based out of Shanghai, starting Chinese New Year of 2022. He will be welcome. We will continue with the one dormakaba mindset that we are so proud of since the merger.
We will embrace further DNA for accountability and for Asia-Pacific to contribute to the greater good of dormakaba globally. We will do that. Ladies and gentlemen, I have come to the end of my presentations. Let me conclude by sending these loud and clear messages. We are today, Asia-Pacific, dormakaba, much stronger than where we were started out as Dorma and Kaba in 2015. The recent local leadership deployment and appointment will further strengthen us with new knowledge that we need in a digital age among our leadership team in APAC. We will continue to strengthen what we call premium segment, which is S1, S2. There are gaps that we would like to penetrate even more. The medium segment presents significant opportunity for fit for use solution due to the rapidly expanding middle class across major markets like India and China.
I talk about increased focus under Shape for Growth. The example that Sabrina mentioned about lodging is an interesting one. We are interdependently competitive among segments. With full transparency on value chain, door to door, factory to market, I do believe that is going to be a significant mindset change that will intensify our commercial team to promote. Full potential markets of China will be realized. I did mention about the Chief Technology Officer co-based in Shanghai. With that, I wish you a good day, and we are opening up for Q&A. I could not see Sigi, but could you please join the stage with Sabrina? Thank you.
Jim-Heng Lee, thank you. We open the floor for questions, please.
I hope you hear me all right.
Yes.
Thank you.
We saw you well. Everyone's getting tired here.
That, that-
You too, probably.
Sabrina, that's not good news to see me well.
Thank you for the presentation, Jim. Can you perhaps help us with the?
You're welcome.
margin difference between the different markets? My understanding is Australia is quite a high margin compared to China and India. How much of the margin jump that you showed in that slide was driven by Australia becoming sort of a larger country? And what is roughly now the split between resi and non-res after the deal you've done in Australia?
Let me take the second question, if I may, Sabrina and Sigi.
Yeah.
The second question is about Australia. With the recent acquisition, we were 99% commercial. With the acquisitions of that industrial residential opportunity now, we are probably 2/3 commercial. Now we are more diversified, and I think that is to me a strategic decision worth taking. Your earlier question about the gaps between the developing countries like India, the margin as well as Australia. Australia remains, from the weighted percentage, a significant part of total Asia-Pacific revenue. Given that it is more profitable than markets like India, therefore we see the gap as being present. I hope that answered the question.
Okay, thanks. Just perhaps your overall view, Jim, since given you've been in the organization, pre and post-merger, what are the reasons you think that made the integration more successful in Asia Pac than perhaps other regions?
I covered that in my earlier pages. I would attribute that the markets are different. I think the merger of Dorma and Kaba in 2015 came with natural complementarities. These complementarities propel the team to do what they should do. I think with that momentum, with that drive, it became natural that our process of one plus one more than two became a natural one. That I would see it as important drivers.
Here, Nick.
What is your personal opinion about real estate situation in your country, Evergrande, et cetera? Thanks for your own personal opinion.
Yeah. Thank you for your questions. We operated primarily in China in a commercial environment. We keep a very watchful eyes on what happened to the Evergrande episode. Far, we are confident that our commercial business at this moment, if any, it is manageable. We will continue to work on what we are able to drive the growth in the commercial sector. We do not know at this stage with crystal ball whether this Evergrande situation will develop over the next weeks or months. As far as we know, what we do have control over is our ability to influence the commercial specifications. That, to me, is something that our team is working extremely hard to ensure that our leadership position there can be further strengthened.
Hi, this is Emrah speaking. Regarding-
Hi, Emrah.
You mentioned the two success stories of your clients, but the question actually could be referred to the whole group. How do you measure actually customer satisfaction or customer success? Do you have an internal system? Do you use a score? Because it appears to be a very important factor, which is great, but yeah, just curious about that.
Maybe I-
Yeah, please, Sabrina.
Maybe I say a few words from the group what we want to do and maybe Jim-Heng Lee, you elaborate what you did. You saw my KPIs, the KPIs per boxes or per building blocks, where I mentioned in my presentation we will have two main KPIs per building block. One of the customer centricity is NPS. Here we need to push NPS, and we need to monitor the improvement that we make in NPS. We will implement NPS for the whole group. We will follow up the progress. This is something that we will put in place.
It will take a little bit of time so that we have the baseline, yeah, and that we can follow up and monitor, but this will be done, and this is key for customer centricity. Yeah. Yeah.
Maybe I hand over to the operator. Moira, do you have any questions in line from the participants?
At the moment, we have no questions from the phone.
If there's no final questions, so we can wrap up. Jim-Heng Lee, thank you.
Thank you very much, Jim-Heng Lee, and have a good night.
Thank you.
Have a good night. Now
Yes. Thank you a lot.
I would like to hand over to Alexander Bradfisch for an impulse, on innovation, digitalization, and differentiation. Alex?
Yeah.
Floor is yours. You have to
Thank you very much. EntriWorX, the intelligent door. What is EntriWorX all about? It's a strategic initiative of dormakaba to bring our portfolio together around the door to a solution. What we were doing there was all the time focusing on innovations for customers and also providing digitalized data for the whole process of the building formation cycle. The one or the other was in a situation to have the tour today, so you have seen how complex door can be. EntriWorX, as a solution, is not in this building already because it was launched this year, and we are in the launch for several markets as well. What we did there, as already said, we are making the door digitally available to our customers around the whole building formation cycle.
That means we needed to focus on the customer's demands that are working in this cycle. For example, an architect is not interested in technical information about a product. He wants to know what kind of norms and regulations he has to fulfill in a certain country. He needs to know what fire certificates he might need. He wants to have a BIM model of this door, and he also wants to know what the situation at the door is and what he has to focus at once during the specification. On the other hand, when you look at a facility manager at the end, when you are in the operation, he's not interested in all of that. The only thing he wants to know is: what is the status of the door? Do we have a failure at the door? Do we have a failure protocol?
How many cycles did that door take during the last couple of days? That means a complete different view on the door. An installer or a general contractor has a different view as well. He wants to know what products do I need to fulfill the solution, how are the products wired, and what information do I need to bring all the pieces together and bring them into operation as a solution afterwards. That means we have a complete different view for each customer group where we want to support and to make a difference. This is the differentiation that dormakaba wants to drive. We want to make it easier to find solutions for certain situations in a building, especially also in verticals, and dormakaba has the knowledge to provide this information.
That's why we want to differentiate, and that's why we want to use our knowledge and our teams to bring those door solutions to the customer. Also, dormakaba has the knowledge to drive this digitalization process for the future, because we have experienced that for the last couple of years during the foundation of our part of the organization in digital. I start to dance when we're doing disco modes here. Okay. That's our purpose. We wanted to have a unique selling proposition to the market by combining our products to plug-and-play solution at the door.
If some of you have seen what we have outside here, built up for you, we combine the components at the door to a digital availability for each customer group in the process, and we support them by our experts by providing those door templates for certain situations in the building. That eases the processes for planning. That simplifies, of course, also the installation, because all the information is available for the stakeholders. At the end, it supports the facility management to drive their processes. That's unique in the market. No one is able to provide this information right now. With EntriWorX, we are focusing on the main topics that we heard all over the day today. Products brought together through solutions. We are combining our product portfolio. That is also unique.
Not many companies are able to cover that much around the door. We are on the customer. We had in our project a couple of people that only had the role to challenge everything they did and everything with what we developed out of the view of the customer. That leads to compromises that helps everyone. Our integrated offering, which brought our portfolio together, increase our potential for cross-selling. Because once it is easier to install a door with the whole dormakaba portfolio, some of our partners might think about also using maybe access control or maybe a swing door operator also from dormakaba, although they might have used something else in the past. We want to drive cross-selling with this initiative. At the end, of course, digitalization innovation is the solid foundation for the future.
You can drive other business models in the future when you have a solid foundation like that. Bringing back that to the start of the project, we wanted to find out what the state-of-the-art technology is concerning swing doors and how to install them and what the customer is experienced in that journey. What we found out, of course, and I will show you some pictures afterwards, our industry is a little bit behind to use the digitalization like other industries, and we wanted to use that to differentiate. Therefore, we ordered our own products and some products of our competitors to build up a swing door that is quite complex. Once a couple of you already saw them in this building.
That's what you receive when you have to order products for swing door that is automized, has an escape route function, access control, and should be digitally connected to the building. I gave a picture here. That was our unboxing event that we did there. You see, you receive a bunch of products. You receive improvable support for installation, and there's almost no information to wire the components and support to bring the products in sync with the others. Because you have to imagine, when you mount everything up, you also have to bring them into operation so that the door works properly. That's just the unboxing, huh? When you look at the building site, you have to put everything together, and that's what we faced here.
You can imagine maybe once this building was constructed, how it might have looked at the building site to get the doors done. You have to be an expert in wiring, you have to know the norms and regulations not only for the product, also for the commissioning of the door, and all this has to be handled on the building site. The commissioning of the door after everything is installed is a manual process. Two or three people have to join at the door to bring the swing door operator, the lock, the access control into motion, and that everything works as a system. That's why we talk about solutions. It's not only about the single product, we have to bring them together to a solution.
At the end, that's the funny thing, you just have a simple door where you can walk through and what you expect it works properly. Here you can see on the right side we have a photo taking a picture what is hidden behind the wall or what is hidden in the ceiling. There you can see what happens at a door like this. We wanted to use this experience to reduce the complexity here, because lots of cables means lots of opportunities to make mistakes, and we wanted to do something about the actual status of technology because all our competitors and us, this is the state of technology, that's how doors are built today.
To give you a short feedback also from our partners, we asked our German partners about the obstacles they are facing today and the things that they have to take into account by installing those doors and working in the market. Please give us the video. We are talking about 30%-40% of the time to bring a door into operation of the whole installation process. Our first task was to reduce the wiring topic and to reduce the complexity at the door. Here you see on the left side the traditional wiring, the traditional situation, how a door is installed today. On the right side, you see our EntriWorX solution. What did we do different? We used the access control device to develop it further to act as a communicator at the door.
That means this device is responsible for the communication to all products that are mounted up at the door. What is the difference here? When you go through a door today, and you might have experienced it personally, you approach the door, then you say, 21, 22, and then the door opens. That's because of the I/O modules, the electric impulses that have to interface between the products. Everything is wired, and electronic impulses are done between the products that are mounted up there. That means the sensor detects a person, signal to the I/O module. Okay, please lock, unlock, then send back, I'm ready. Swing door operator, you can operate. This takes time, and this has to be done manually at every door. If you're doing a mistake there, then you experience the same situation that I explained already.
You're approaching the door, you have to wait, and then you can go through. With the EntriWorX unit here at the door, we can do all that in the firmware. We have the logic of the communication around the door in the firmware, and we have the digital twin of the solution that is mounted up there. That means we have already in the planning process the configuration of the door ready to be transferred to the door for the commissioning, and that's the difference. By doing that, we have one unit that communicates to the devices, and also only one unit that is communicating to the building.
Because when you want to put that into a building management system, you need four interfaces, for the lock, for the swing door operator, for the access control, and also for the escape route system. With EntriWorX, you only need one interface. One interface to get all the information around the door. That was the technology part. The second task was of course, and you saw that slide already today. We needed to make the digital twin of the door available for the whole process and for all stakeholders. What we did there was we generated a centralized team that offers the digital twins in the library.
Today we are able to provide the architect, the execution planner, the installer with data for the door and have the data available from the planning until the operation to the door. That means we have a full chain of information, and this is stored in a digital way and can be adapted to local norms and regulations. Because a door that is constructed here in Switzerland might not fulfill the norms and regulations in Sweden or Australia. We need to adapt to the local norms and regulations, and that's our strength because we know how to operate those doors, we know about the norms and regulations, and we can provide this information to our customers. Let me give you some examples of the value chain that you see here.
The architect today wants to know the function of the door, maybe some overview about the components and the corresponding BIM data and tender text. We can relate to relevant information for the architect, for this door that is needed in the certain situation, and so he saves time. He doesn't have to evaluate on his own or ask the partners in the market, and that's what Jim-Heng Lee also said. You have to be close to those guys to do the specification. Here we support them to ease their processes to save time. The second step is that our partners, our ecosystem partners that do the installation, like installers, general contractors, door manufacturers, they have the respective information for the door situation as well because they know the door is already described.
They have a wiring plan, they have all the components they need, so they can build the door easily, and there's no need to clarify how the door has to be built. That saves them time, and what we received as well as feedback, we save 50% in installation overall because the commissioning is done that well. For the ecosystem partners that do the building management system, we have the same situation. Four interfaces are more complex than one interface, of course. Every interface that you have to program manually is about EUR 25,000. That means a significant saving here as well in productivity. The facility manager at the end of the day has to type in everything in his facility management system after the building is handed over.
To maintain the building, he needs more staff today because he doesn't have the overview about the actual status of the door and no digital availability of the door in his system. That's where we provide the information for the whole building formation cycle. The thing is, this is unique in the market. We have no competitor today that can provide this information and can bring that to the customer groups. Here we see, and that's what we want to push into the markets as well. We have a significant cost reduction for the investor overall and for all participants of the value chain, a saving in efficiency and increasing their efficiency, of course.
Here also, we ask our German partners not only to talk about the obstacles, also to talk about what EntriWorX is all about and what they think about it. Please give us the feedback that they gave us.
[Foreign language]
EntriWorX will help the customer to improve their productivity and we can make a difference here to provide the information for the customer and increase productivity for the whole building formation cycle. What we did already in the project, because this is going on for one year now. We wanted to start very early in the process to ask the customer what they think about it. We had a first pre-wiring with a couple of market players almost a year ago, like general contractors, installers, door manufacturers, also investors. The feedback was quite positive and we had a couple of investors that already asked us early this year to support them in their planning process.
That means in February, we started to do the first door templates for certain investors, for certain projects, which we expect to be settled and built within the first quarter of next year. The second thing was we started to launch in Germany, that was our focus market, and also launched in France afterward, after the summer holidays there. Last week, we launched EntriWorX in Switzerland, so we are about to launch it market by market. We have overall 13 European markets that are in the launch plan for next year. That means since then we are starting to bring it on the market and start to talk to the customer and bring that into the sales operation of the markets as well.
We want to drive specification. We want to support the specification teams in the markets with the solution, with the door templates, to support our cross-selling initiatives and also to support the sales organizations, to bring their full speed on the ground. We also started since middle of last year. We started earlier, but concrete discussions were since the middle of this year, the preparation to adapt that EntriWorX ecosystem, adding portfolio to the ecosystem for the Americas and also for Asia. To have those door templates adapted to the local norms and regulations and use that also as a driver for specification and for growth in those markets as well. We will roll that out as well.
Of course, we are just already talking about the swing door, so we will also put our other, the rest of our portfolio on the EntriWorX ecosystem during the next upcoming years. We're starting within months, and then in the next upcoming years, we will enhance our product portfolio to that ecosystem. To sum up, access control business. It will bring us closer to the main deciders for products and buildings, and it will differentiate definitely dormakaba from our competitors. That's the most important thing. We want to differentiate, and we want to improve and gain market share here with that solution. This is a short overview about EntriWorX. I will still be there to explain it in detail if you want to, because we have the door outside.
With this, thank you very much for your attention, and I hand over to Sabrina.
Thank you very much, Alex. Thank you. It is time to wrap up after a long day full of several topics, and I hope you enjoyed it. I wanted to share with you the key messages. In a highly attractive market, our strategy is to focus on the customer in our core businesses, in our core countries, and in selected verticals. Through this focus, we will accelerate our profitable growth. Building on our strengths, 'cause we are a strong company, we will differentiate further from competition through digital and sustainable solutions. We will unlock our potential through improvements in operational excellence as well as in capital efficiency. This requires a change of the operating model and significant additional investment up front in people and in IT. The strategy will be anchored in the company through a change of our culture, behaviors, and incentives.