AASE launches phase 2 of Sales Engineering Education and Promotion
Sales Engineers sell technical products and services to companies. They need technical knowledge and commercial competencies, but also management and soft skills. AASE members are committed to improve sales engineering education and to train highly performant and rapidly operational graduates in line with industrial requirements.
On 14th – 15th May the AASE Annual Meeting 2019 was held in Vienna (Austria). Hosted and organised by AASE member Prof. (FH) Mag. (FH) Roman Anlanger from the University of Applied Sciences BFI Vienna, the meeting was the opportunity for the 20 present members to review achievements of the first five years of cooperation and to prepare AASE to the future. Present members had also the opportunity to visit and discover the Climatic Wind Tunnel Vienna operated by Rail Tec Arsenal ( https://www.rta.eu/en/ ) one of the largest wind tunnels for railways, lorries and also helicopters and small planes.
The first five years of AASE’s existence were characterised by fundamental works to ensure high quality education of sales engineers in Europe. The main important achievements are the definition of minimum requirements for sales engineering studies, the creation of double degree programmes and increased Erasmus+ exchanges, common scientific articles as well as joint R&D projects such as e.g. the ongoing project ‘RADICAL - Filling Skills Gaps in Blue Industry by Radical Competence Boost in Engineering VET’, coordinated by AASE member Turku University of Applied Sciences and co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union.
Industry and sales engineers face two mayor challenges today: The need for new sales engineers is much higher than the number of well-trained graduates, and their work environment is heavily changing with e.g. upcoming digitalisation in processes and products, and with the constant increase of the business complexity.
To address these challenges, a new structure of the AASE Board had been decided: Professor Thomas Röhr (ESTA School of Business & Technology Belfort, France) was elected as President; he is supported by the Vice-Presidents Professor Dr.-Ing. Ludger Schneider-Störmann (University of Applied Sciences Aschaffenburg, Germany) responsible for Strategy & Development, Professor Dr. Thomas Berger (Duale Hochschule Baden-Württemberg Stuttgart, Germany) responsible for Education & Research) and Dr. Timo Holopainen (Turku University of Applied Sciences, Finland) responsible for Funding.
A new AASE Advisory Board advises the AASE Board. The members of the AASE Advisory Board are Dr. rer. oec. Luis Barrantes (Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany), Tero Reunanen and Liisa Kairisto-Mertanen (Turku University of Applied Sciences, Finland) and Prof. Dr.-Ing. Jobst Görne (University of Applied Sciences Aalen, Germany).
The AASE Annual meeting 2020 will be organised by the University of Applied Sciences Duesseldorf and is scheduled for May 2020 in Duesseldorf (Germany).
About the Academic Association of Sales Engineering
The Academic Association of Sales Engineering (AASE) was created in 2014 at the University of Applied Sciences in Aschaffenburg (Germany) and brings together about 40 deans, programme managers, professors and lecturers from Austrian, Finnish, French and German Universities and Universities of Applied Sciences active in the education of Sales Engineers.
AASE members aim at further developing the profession of ‘sales engineer’, at improving the quality of sales engineers’ education, at introducing academic standards for study degrees and at establishing the term ‘sales engineer’ as a brand.
AASE is open to new members from European Higher Education aiming at improving and strengthening sales engineering education and profession.
Contact
Thomas Röhr
President of AASE
trohr(at)esta-groupe.fr