Consulting

Dig­i­tal­iza­tion means change. In com­pa­nies, this process is usu­ally asso­ci­ated with changes to work­flows, work­places and office infra­struc­ture through the increas­ing use of dig­i­tal hard­ware and soft­ware. Dig­i­tal­iza­tion sig­nif­i­cantly changes the every­day work­ing lives of your employ­ees. That is why it is impor­tant to accom­pany dig­i­tal­iza­tion processes also by com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

Com­pa­nies dig­i­tal­ize to remain com­pet­i­tive. At the same time, the intro­duc­tion of mod­ern tech­nolo­gies should make work eas­ier for employ­ees and speed up cer­tain processes. In the work envi­ron­ment, dig­i­tal­iza­tion is opti­miz­ing and link­ing sin­gle processes. For exam­ple, by enabling loca­tion– and device-​independent access to all com­pany data. Or by automat­ing cer­tain, fre­quently recur­ring pacesses. An impor­tant pre­req­ui­site for the suc­cess of such dig­i­tal­iza­tion projects is that employ­ees under­stand the newly intro­duced tech­nolo­gies and know how to use them.

While the busi­ness ben­e­fits of dig­i­tal­iza­tion projects are eval­u­ated as part of a busi­ness case analy­sis, their care­ful prepa­ra­tion and follow-​up are car­ried out as part of change man­age­ment.

A change process describes a planned strate­gic, struc­tural or orga­ni­za­tional change in a com­pany that serves to adapt to chang­ing frame­work con­di­tions. Such changes can affect dif­fer­ent areas of a com­pany – depend­ing on the inter­nal and exter­nal fac­tors on which the company’s busi­ness field depends. Due to the dynam­ics of reg­u­lar tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tions, cor­po­rate IT is a clas­sic area that is fre­quently affected by such adjust­ments.

Change processes must be care­fully planned and pre­pared. For exam­ple, if new soft­ware is intro­duced company-​wide, this can­not hap­pen “overnight”. Rather, it is the task of change man­age­ment to grasp the change process in all its com­plex­ity, to make the nec­es­sary prepa­ra­tions, and to develop and imple­ment a solu­tion con­cept. In the case of a roll­out of a new IT solu­tion, for exam­ple, the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion must first be ana­lyzed and an objec­tive for­mu­lated. At the same time, it must be ensured that the project is accepted within the com­pany. It is also essen­tial to ensure com­pli­ance with any exist­ing orga­ni­za­tional or labor reg­u­la­tions. And last but not least, employ­ees should be pro­fes­sion­ally trained to be able to han­dle the new soft­ware in their daily work.

Thanks to smart change man­age­ment, even com­plex change processes can be imple­mented goal-​oriented and pave the way to a suc­cess­ful future for your com­pany.

To under­stand what a busi­ness case analy­sis is, we must first clar­ify what is com­monly under­stood as a busi­ness case. A busi­ness case out­lines the likely finan­cial and strate­gic impli­ca­tions for a com­pany asso­ci­ated with a spe­cific invest­ment. Such an invest­ment could be, for exam­ple, the devel­op­ment of a new prod­uct or expan­sion into new busi­ness areas. The busi­ness case enables to eval­u­ate whether it is worth­while for the com­pany to carry out the project asso­ci­ated with the invest­ment. In this way, it is the foun­da­tion on which, ide­ally, a busi­ness deci­sion can be made.

The busi­ness case analy­sis, in turn, includes the work and research that pre­cede the cre­ation of a busi­ness case. The analy­sis includes a detailed pre­sen­ta­tion and com­par­i­son of all costs, ben­e­fits and risks asso­ci­ated with the invest­ment project. It also weighs up the pos­si­ble alter­na­tives. In order to pro­vide a dif­fer­en­ti­ated view of the poten­tial project, the busi­ness case analy­sis is based on com­pre­hen­sive cal­cu­la­tions, risk assess­ments, exist­ing case stud­ies, com­pa­ra­ble ear­lier busi­ness cases and, ide­ally, on the opin­ions of expe­ri­enced experts in the rel­e­vant field.

As a result, the analy­sis deliv­ers a busi­ness case with con­struc­tive pro­pos­als for imple­ment­ing the project described therein. Since all oppor­tu­ni­ties and risks have been care­fully weighed and eval­u­ated, the com­pany gains decision-​making con­fi­dence. The busi­ness deci­sion for or against an invest­ment is made trans­par­ent and com­pre­hen­si­ble by the busi­ness case analy­sis.

For peo­ple with phys­i­cal dis­abil­i­ties, such as a lack of sight or hear­ing or motor impair­ments, office work presents spe­cial chal­lenges. Acces­si­ble soft­ware is designed to enable all employ­ees of a com­pany to do the same work. This enables peo­ple with phys­i­cal dis­abil­i­ties to process busi­ness trans­ac­tions or take calls in a call cen­ter.

Var­i­ous stan­dards, such as ISO 9241 for the “Ergonom­ics of Human-​System Inter­ac­tion”, the “Web Con­tent Acces­si­bil­ity Guide­lines (WCAG)” of the World Wide Web Con­sor­tium and the “Bar­ri­ere­freie Infor­ma­tion­stech­nik Verord­nung (BITV 2.0)”, define guide­lines and cri­te­ria for acces­si­ble soft­ware. Accord­ing to these, the code of soft­ware appli­ca­tions must be acces­si­ble so that screen read­ers can access the infor­ma­tion and dis­abled peo­ple can use assis­tive tech­nolo­gies. In addi­tion, obsta­cles in the user inter­face must be avoided. User inter­faces that are easy to access and clearly struc­tured are very likely to be acces­si­ble because they can be grasped by assis­tive tech­nolo­gies and can there­fore be oper­ated by peo­ple with impaired vision, for exam­ple.

In soft­ware devel­op­ment and pro­gram­ming of busi­ness appli­ca­tions, mixed teams of IT peo­ple, devel­op­ers, func­tional man­agers and users have proven their worth. Even in projects with acces­si­ble soft­ware, it makes sense to involve the actual users, impaired and not, in the devel­op­ment process. Hand­i­capped users in par­tic­u­lar can con­tribute impor­tant ideas based on their every­day expe­ri­ences.

The Gen­eral Data Pro­tec­tion Reg­u­la­tion (GDPR) is designed to pro­tect per­sonal data. Accord­ing to the reg­u­la­tion, this means all infor­ma­tion that relates to an iden­ti­fied or iden­ti­fi­able nat­ural per­son. For this rea­son alone, the GDPR is rel­e­vant in the con­text of IT projects for all com­pa­nies in which data is processed auto­mat­i­cally or stored as part of non-​automated pro­cess­ing.

The Con­tact Cen­ter envi­ron­ment in par­tic­u­lar is a highly sen­si­tive area in which both the data of the company’s own employ­ees and the data of its cus­tomers are col­lected. This relates to con­nec­tion data on the one hand and com­mu­ni­ca­tion con­tent on the other. It is doc­u­mented and stored which employ­ees were in con­tact with which cus­tomers. Each con­tact is imme­di­ately com­pared with the cus­tomer data­base via the CRM con­nec­tion. If nec­es­sary – for exam­ple, for qual­ity assur­ance rea­sons – even the spe­cific con­tent of the con­ver­sa­tions or cor­re­spon­dence is stored. This can also involve data that is to be regarded as par­tic­u­larly wor­thy of pro­tec­tion. In the case of an insur­ance com­pany, for exam­ple, the sen­si­tive health data of an insur­ance pol­icy holder could be stored.

In addi­tion to dam­age to the company’s image, vio­la­tions of the GDPR could also result in sig­nif­i­cant fines. IP Dynam­ics brings many years of expe­ri­ence from many com­pa­ra­ble projects and ensures that you also mas­ter the legal chal­lenges safely.