How long have you been with DATAGROUP, and how did you come to DATAGROUP?
I joined DATAGROUP in 2012 with the acquisition of the former Consinto, which I joined in 2006. Consinto was spun off from the Thales Group in 2008 and sold to a financial investor. With financial investors, the future is often uncertain, which is why we were happy to join DATAGROUP in 2012 as part of the resale.
As a German, medium-sized and owner-managed company, DATAGROUP’s DNA was a very good fit with ours.
What position do you hold today?
I have been on the Executive Board since 2018 and am responsible for delivery units and production. Before that, I was Managing Director of DATAGROUP Business Solutions and am responsible for a market unit there following a restructuring.
From the former Consinto to the management of DATAGROUP Business Solutions and now the Executive Board – how have you personally experienced and shaped change?
I am someone who enjoys change. Personalities are very different, but I need new challenges on a regular basis, and I’ve been given them at every station in my professional life. That’s what makes work exciting for me. A certain amount of continuous change suits me well.
You experienced DATAGROUP’s acquisition strategy from the perspective of the acquired company and then later from the other perspective. What sets DATAGROUP apart?
What we do significantly better than others is: We preserve the essence of companies. We follow a decentralized approach, which means that companies are largely independent units under the DATAGROUP umbrella. Accordingly, we do not integrate new companies hard into an existing, defined target organization, but incorporate them gently. We make sure that the culture remains intact and blends well with the DATAGROUP culture.
What are typical tasks in your day-to-day business?
The production department that I head was created with the aim of optimizing processes and cooperation within the DATAGROUP production model. Our production model consists of four central delivery units and local production in the market units. Among other things, we want to ensure through further optimization that our customers experience our services as from a single source.
Accordingly, the day-to-day business is very diverse and ranges from individual operational issues to large strategic projects. IT always has multiple dependencies. The technology and various processes in one unit must therefore interact seamlessly with that of another. In addition, there are the different interests of the people involved. Bringing these together is also one of my tasks. But also larger development topics and change projects, such as SQUARE.
SQUARE was a major change project. What was it all about?
With SQUARE, we transferred the DATAGROUP Business Solutions organization to the DATAGROUP model. For this purpose, we have on the one hand transferred existing delivery structures or production structures to the central delivery units, but on the other hand also created new market units with a differentiated focus. The former gave rise to DATAGROUP Operations, a merger of the former DATAGROUP Data Center and Business Solutions production units. In addition, we have fully developed DATAGROUP Inshore Services, a subsidiary of DATAGROUP Business Solutions, into a central delivery unit.
Furthermore, we have created four new market units, two with a regional focus (Munich / Bavarian area and Berlin / new federal states) and two with an industry focus: Defense IT Services with a focus on the defense industry and the new Business Solutions with a focus on the insurance and automotive industry. In addition, we have merged central departments of DATAGROUP Business Solutions, such as Finance and Human Resources, as well as IT Service Management and Governance, Risk and Compliance with existing departments within DATAGROUP SE.
What is important in such change projects?
In my experience, it is important to set a goal for changes of this magnitude, but also to be aware that you cannot foresee the entire course of such a project at the start. Many questions only arise along the way and can only be clarified along the way. Such a situation is not always easy for those involved.
Of course, people prefer to see all steps on a precisely defined path ahead of them, rather than starting with a certain amount of uncertainty, where you simply can’t answer all the questions down to the last detail. That’s why it’s important to make the people affected aware of this and then support them in dealing with such major change processes.
It is also important to actively manage this change, communicate any developments that occur and create transparency for the next steps.
What has been the biggest challenge in your career so far?
I find it hard to say what the one biggest challenge was. Looking back, big challenges for me were when there was organizational change with a certain level of complexity. Along the way, you usually realize that there are always surprises and things don’t always turn out the way you thought. Dealing with new insights here, finding solutions again and again, and at the same time sticking to the basic idea of change and pushing it forward, despite all the difficulties, is a very rewarding challenge.
What was the biggest change you experienced?
Looking back, it’s always the last changes you’ve experienced that seem particularly big. But SQUARE was clearly one of the biggest changes I’ve helped to shape, as we took an organization that had grown over many years, developed it so fundamentally, and moved it into a new target structure.
IT is constantly changing. What are you doing on the Managing Board to ensure that DATAGROUP remains adaptable in order to keep up with these changes?
What we are doing very intensively at the moment is investing in change competencies within our company. Because the only thing that remains the same is constant change. We can’t say today what changes will accompany us in the future, but we can already work on the ability to deal with change. We invest a lot in that.
In the course of the SQUARE project, for example, we implemented change agents, facilitators of change on the same level as colleagues. We would like to transfer this concept to DATAGROUP as a whole and thus try to develop an organization that can deal well with the changes that the dynamic IT industry brings with it.
What IT trends do you think will change society in the future?
IT will be in more and more products, services and everyday things, so that we will encounter what IT is all about everywhere. In the course of this, I believe that we will get used to it and learn to live with the new challenges. We will have to deal more and more with issues such as security and the handling of data. In products or situations where I didn’t have to worry about it in the past, we are increasingly confronted with these questions: Who has what data and how is it processed? How do I make sure I stay in control?
If we look back at the things that didn’t even exist ten years ago and the changes that have taken place, we can see that this will continue in the future.
DATAGROUP in five years – where will the journey take the company?
I believe that we as humans always realize what is technologically possible. However, technology develops so dynamically that there is always a gap between what is technologically possible and what companies or individuals are able to do in order to use these technologies perfectly. DATAGROUP builds the bridge here, today and in the future. The services may be different in the future, but you will always need experienced service providers like us to close the gap between what is possible and what is available.
What is your conclusion on the subject of change?
If you deal openly and proactively with the topic of change and the relevant skills are taught more strongly in the organization, then change is definitely something that can be positive and exciting, and can also help you move forward. Approaching change with the right attitude, willingness and skills, and consciously experiencing change is important. Then, despite change, you can look to the future with confidence, knowing that you can deal with that change and take advantage of new opportunities and possibilities.
Andreas Baresel, Member of Executive Board, responsible for Delivery Units and Production. Studied business administration, management positions focusing on business development and portfolio development in IT consulting and managed IT services.
As a company, we bear a special social responsibility. Sustainability and social responsibility have been part of DATAGROUP’s DNA from the very beginning. Among other things, this is vividly demonstrated at our company headquarters in Pliezhausen:
Sustainability has been the core of our strategy development since our foundation. Now, this responsibility has gained a more holistic dimension, formality and importance under the term ESG (Environment, Social & Governance). DATAGROUP is in a comprehensive process to bundle the numerous measures and initiatives of the company throughout Germany and to make them available to all interested parties under ESG aspects:
A first step was the publication of the first DATAGROUP ESG Report. In a second step, in 2021, DATAGROUP started a comprehensive process with the Landesbank Baden-Württemberg. The ESG experts of the bank have screened DATAGROUP with a Sustainability Readiness Check, talked to executives and analyzed already existing programs. A trained view from the outside can be helpful in uncovering further potential beyond what already exists and then addressing it strategically. The result of this check is a shortlist of topics that DATAGROUP will now successively expand within the company. The further development of the ESG strategy will thus be anchored in the overarching corporate strategy at the management board level in the long term.
Getting up in the morning, getting stuck in traffic on the way to work, and then spending the day in the office until it’s time to go home again in the evening – that’s what the working day used to look like for most Germans. In the spring of 2020, this changed abruptly, and suddenly what had previously been a marginal issue in many companies became possible: a comprehensive home office.
According to Bitkom, only four out of ten companies allowed home office work before Corona, and 62% of employees who were allowed to work from home still preferred to go into the office. With the Corona pandemic, however, a great deal had to change. Where home office had been the exception and physical meetings the rule, it now suddenly had to work the other way around. It became clear how much is already possible with the help of digitization – and in how many places we are still lagging behind.
In the beginning, the focus was on the technical basics: employees had to be equipped with mobile devices, VPN accesses had to be set up and the right communication and collaboration software had to be found. But these technical challenges are only one side of the coin. One that most companies were able to solve well. A far more protracted process, and one that is far from complete, is the cultural change.
A big step forward was made during the Corona pandemic. Virtual meetings became the norm, with all the challenges and opportunities that entails. While mimicking the interpersonal component via video was never quite the same as in face to face meetings, efficiency was gained at the same time: Unnecessary meetings were reduced, with a strong focus on issues to stay on schedule. All of a sudden, people communicated differently with colleagues: via chat, via short video calls, via the joint virtual processing of documents.
With the digitization of the working world, the future was suddenly here: modern, paperless collaboration, all information available at any time, more flexibility in work models, and everything independent of where you are. When the world hopefully soon returns from the pandemic to everyday life, it remains to be seen how much of these new working rules will remain. Only one thing is certain: digitization has clearly shown what it can do.
From its beginnings as a small Swabian company in contract software development to a listed IT service provider active throughout Germany – DATAGROUP has reinvented itself again and again in the course of its more than 35-year history. An interview with founder Max H.-H. Schaber about the history of the company.
Why did you decide to start your own company?
Every entrepreneur is probably asked this question. I could never imagine permanently being an employee. After three years as an employee, the thought matured in me that I could do it better myself. The background was the possible self-determination and freedom!
When you founded DATAGROUP, the company still had a different name and a different focus. What were those?
The company was called Datapec at the time, in reference to the personal computers that had just come onto the market. The main focus of Datapec was custom software development. We solved problems individually for customers and wrote software based on different programming languages. We relatively quickly won very large clients such as Audi and AEG and employed about 100 people.
Where did the company go from there?
Overall, the company has reinvented itself several times. At first, the focus was on custom software. Then we developed a new business model. We became what is known as an incubator. We looked for people in the market who had already had success in IT, for example as managing directors or technical directors of software or trading companies. We offered them a platform to invest in newly founded companies for a small amount of money. Before the term existed in Germany, we had already developed a start-up culture. But unlike today, we took care of the infrastructure and all the things that are often a nuisance for founders. For example, payroll, dealing with banks, how marketing works, etc. We gave money and infrastructure and were very successful with it. In total, we have founded more than ten companies, some of which have become extraordinarily successful.
One of these companies was a trading company that, after only a few years, had a turnover of almost DM 100 million with branches in six countries. The company bought computers from the USA and sold them to universities in Europe via catalogs. We were thus one of the eCommerce precursor companies. We sold the company when hardware margins fell sharply.
And then?
After that, we dedicated ourselves to software development again, this time in the healthcare sector. As KIS (Krankenhaus Informationssysteme GmbH) we developed a Hospital Information System together with Hewlett Packard and Anderson Consulting. It was the first system based on a relational database. That was before Oracle came on the market. The novelty of it was that you were able to determine the real production costs in the hospital, that is, how much does a case cost. We had almost 100 employees, at that time already in Pliezhausen, 36 hospitals as customers and no outside investors. Due to changes in hospital financing, the hospitals were unsettled and stopped investing for a while. We then looked for a partner – much too late, in fact – and found one in Jenoptik. We found ourselves in a pressure situation that shifted the balance in favor of the buyer and we had to sell the company without making a big profit. It was a very bitter time in my entrepreneurial life.
However, you didn’t give up, but continued with DATAGROUP. How did that come about?
We already owned a number of companies that operated in the environment of today’s DATAGROUP. Through acquisitions, we formed a company with a system house focus. We went public with this company, from the outset with the aim of playing an active consolidation role on the market.
What made you decide to go public as a medium-sized Swabian company?
Raising capital. Through our experience with KIS and this bitter sale, we knew what it was like to run out of money. To prevent this from happening again, we put our financing on a broader footing. An IPO enables better capital procurement.
When did the change from system house to IT service provider occur? What were the reasons behind it?
Back when we went public, we made about 26 million euros in sales from the system house business. We made good money, but 80 % of our sales came from the trading business. I realized early on that the retail business would come under increasing pressure in terms of margins. That also became apparent when companies like Bechtle, Computacenter and Cancom focused on retail, got bigger and bigger and put more and more pressure on margins. They had a completely different weight with the manufacturers. I foresaw this pressure on margins and thought: We can’t continue to struggle along on two or three percent. We need a higher return, greater customer loyalty – I like to say stickiness here – and we have to become an indispensable, not easily replaceable part of our customers’ service provision.
We wanted to grow as an active consolidator in the market and at the same time transform our business from a trading-oriented to an exclusively service-oriented business. That wasn’t easy; I also had to assert myself a lot internally.
From this experience – what is important for change to succeed?
First and foremost, you need a goal, a vision: Where do you want to go? Changing for the sake of changing makes no sense. Change only makes sense in order to achieve a goal.
The second important point is a clear structure of how this change should proceed, i.e. what steps are necessary for it. Breaking down the vision into individual steps according to the motto: If you want to climb a mountain, do it step by step.
The third point, which I consider indispensable, is to keep at it. Review the strategy, review the goal, continuously improve, iteratively solve the issues. Today, we would say that you have to be agile.
What do you see as the biggest changes DATAGROUP has undergone in its 35-year history?
Most definitely the development of CORBOX. For the first time, we had a goal that everyone in the company could be committed to. We had a common language and a common product world that everyone could get behind.
What changes are currently underway at DATAGROUP?
The company is being partially recentralized from a purely fractal, i.e. distributed organization. This means that we are bundling services that can be centralized, such as HR, Finance or Data Center, in shared services centers via so-called change processes. The SQUARE project was one of these changes.
The IT industry is also characterized by change. Which trends will change the industry the most in the future?
The trend towards as-a-service will become stronger and stronger. I would even go so far as to say that in five years there will no longer be any licensed commodity software. In addition, the trend towards multi-cloud environments and hybrid cloud environments will certainly continue to grow.
You can certainly be described as a serial entrepreneur who lives and drives change. What does someone have to bring to the table for this?
I certainly have extreme stand-up qualities. By that I mean that I don’t give up. As an engineer, I certainly also have the ability to look at things in detail and then judge for myself whether I want to get in there. It’s the ability to be awake, to be interested. When my kids asked: What do we have to learn to be as successful as you, I’ve always said: You have to be able to stand going down ten times a day and getting up an eleventh time.
How do you see your time after DATAGROUP?
Currently, for my time after DATAGROUP, I am developing a group of civil engineering companies that lay the last mile fiber to the customer, i.e. communications infrastructure. Here I recently bought a company that will be the core of my buy and build strategy in the area. Also, again, I’m involved in the health care software area, but that all falls into the area where I’m an investor.
How do you see the future of DATAGROUP?
Of course, the entire economy is in a difficult situation right now. However, we are operating in exactly the right market segment, have a very good portfolio and excellent relationships with our customers. I therefore believe that we are only at the beginning of our great success. I therefore see the future of DATAGROUP as rosy, sunny, very successful.
Mr. Schaber, thank you very much for this interview!
This question has long preoccupied mankind. From early automata to HAL 9000 to Ava from the film Ex Machina, the idea of artificial, man-made intelligence permeates our culture and our stories. In reality, we are still far from this general artificial intelligence, but the field has made rapid progress in recent years. But how did we get to where we are today?
Intelligence is notoriously difficult to define. In 1950, the British mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing formulated the test named after him to determine when one can speak of machine intelligence. If in a (written) dialogue a person cannot tell whether they are talking to a machine or to another person, one could speak of machine intelligence.
The birth of the academic discipline, this conference was the first to speak of artificial intelligence. The term caught on. The initiators John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Nathaniel Rochester and Claude Shannon requested 13,500 US $ from the Rockefeller Foundation to host the conference. They started with big plans: in two months, with ten participants, all aspects of learning and intelligence were to be described so that a machine could be built that simulates these processes.
ELIZA was a computer program developed by Joseph Weizenbaum to show the possibilities of how computers can enter into a dialogue with people via so-called “natural language”. The best-known form of ELIZA simulated a psychotherapy in which the computer searched the statements people typed in for key words and played them back in a modified form. The program was surprisingly successful, although users were able to push ELIZA to the limits of its capacity quite quickly, because the program did not learn anything new, but was pre-programmed according to certain logics.
Expert systems are computer programs that support people in solving complex problems. MYCIN was developed at Stanford University to support the diagnosis and treatment of infectious diseases with antibiotics. MYCIN analyzed numerous variables to identify the pathogens and recommend the best antibiotics – tailored to the patient’s individual parameters. However, despite the high success rate, MYCIN was not used in practice, as scepticism was too great and the technical basis for successful scaling was not yet in place.
Deep Blue, developed by IBM, beat the reigning world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997. Unlike today’s systems, Deep Blue did not “learn” the game, but beat its human opponent through sheer computing power.
In the American quiz show Jeopardy, players not only have to answer questions, the questions sometimes include word games. Watson, developed by IBM, competed against the two best Jeopardy players in 2011 and won. The AI showed that they could understand and answer questions.
For a long time, Go was considered the game that would take artificial intelligence years to master. This is mainly due to the complexity of the game. If the first player in chess has 20 possible moves to choose from, Go has 361. Sheer computing power, as in Deep Blues chess game, would not crack Go. With Reinforcement Learning, Google’s AlphaGo learned the game and in 2011 it faced Lee Sedol, a South Korean who is considered one of the best players. AlphaGo beat Lee Sedol 4-1.
Google is demonstrated duplex, an artificial intelligence, and had it call a hairdresser to make an appointment. The voice and style of speaking are indistinguishable from a humans.
The history of artificial intelligence ran in waves. Great enthusiasm (summer) was followed by disappointed expectations and cuts in research funding (winter). Often challenges were underestimated and progress overestimated. For example, the AI researcher Marvin Minsky said in an interview in 1970: “In three to eight years we will have a machine with the general intelligence of an average human being”. Expectations were not fulfilled, among other things due to the amount of data available and the comparatively weak computing power at that time. Known as Moravec’s paradox, researchers repeatedly found that things that are very difficult for a human being, such as solving complex mathematical problems, are easy for a computer, while things that are easy and self-evident for humans, such as recognizing images, understanding speech or performing movements, are extremely complex and difficult for machines.
Sara Gebhardt
Corporate Communication
sara.gebhardt@datagroup.de
Mr. Gißmann, can you describe your background and expertise in the field of Robotic Process Automation (RPA)?
For decades I have always been on the lookout for new technologies to meet our customer-centric approach. We started working on the subject of RPA as early as 2001. At that time, however, no one was using the terms that are used today. We started with an approach that is now known as Robotic Desktop Automation or Attended RPA. Here, software robots – or simply bots – support the activities of the contact center agent. The bot searches for relevant data for the customer’s request, makes suggestions and, after a confirmation by the employee, completes the process – in real time during the customer call. I and my team developed one of the largest Robotic Desktop Automation projects with 1,400 customer service agents for the energy provider E.ON.
What led you to bring RPA to Germany?
After our initial success with Robotic Desktop Automation, we have seen that there are also many applications for the full automation of processes. As a result, we then came across the topic of RPA in the USA. It was already clear to us at that time that it was not a question of whether to use RPA, but only when. So, step by step, we put together a strategic portfolio with the market-leading RPA software platforms, including Automation Anywhere, Nice and UiPath.
We can certainly be called RPA pioneers in Germany. Today, we operate a platform for our customer Deutsche Telekom on which more than 1,000 bots continuously run processes. This is probably one of the largest RPA installations worldwide. We are able to initiate and implement RPA projects for our customers in a short time, including the establishment of a Center of Excellence for robotics. A classic “enabler” in other words.
How will technology evolve? What are you and your teams working on?
In addition to the classic form of using RPA, as an on-premise installation, we also offer RPA “as-a-Service”. This makes us a platform provider and complements RPA solutions with innovative apps, innovative frontends and AI. The RPA-as-a-Service platform goes far beyond classic RPA and thus meets the requirements of “Intelligent Automation”.
Our approach is to make it as easy as possible for our customers to use RPA. To this end, we offer a constantly expanding number of pre-packaged bots that our customers can use immediately. In addition, we offer various machine learning services for advanced skills such as intelligent document analysis or image recognition.
What if your customers are not yet ready for the cloud?
No problem. Of course you can still use our entire range of products on premise.
How much does RPA cost?
There is a very simple calculation. Assuming that an FTE in Germany has a value of 100, then this value improves to 66 for nearshoring, 33 for offshoring and 10 for RPA, i.e. the bots. This naturally means that very short ROI periods are possible – under half a year.
Where will we be in 10 years?
AI will fundamentally change the relationship between people and technology. AI will herald a new age of productivity. We are already prepared for these challenges and will continue to develop our solutions in this direction to make intelligent automation as easy as possible for our customers.
Mr. Gißmann, thank you for this interview!
It is not always easy to pursue an education alongside a fulltime job. Marcus Schäfer, service manager at DATAGROUP, knows it very well, because he has studied alongside his day time job for years.
Marcus has worked for DATAGROUP for years. He has completed his apprenticeship as IT specialist here. Following positions in technical fields and in project management, he changed to service management. So continuous development is nothing new to him.
“I consider it important to further educate myself on a regular basis. Especially today, and especially in IT, so many things are changing so fast that it is good to leave the traditional path in terms of training and focus on regular continuing training instead, also on the job”, explains Marcus.
For years, Marcus has studied business administration by correspondence course alongside his full-time job. He got up earlier, learned, and drove to work. His studies were paid by DATAGROUP, as the company supports an employee’s efforts to further educate themselves.
“Back then, it certainly was exhausting but it paid off. You gain insights you do not necessarily gain on the job, but which you can put into use afterwards”, explains Marcus, who acquired his business administration degree in 2015.
This flexibility is important in his daily work, as he is the primary contact for his customers. He makes sure that these customers receive the services they ordered and have a partner who supports them in their further development. To this end, he must also look into the customers’ business processes, understand these processes and have an overview of new technologies to advise them as best as possible.
With the constant arrival of new customers from different industries, who have individual requirements, Marcus benefits from his studies and his willingness for further development. “I am glad I could do what I wanted and that my employer will support me when I want to continue my education”, says Marcus.
Dr Mićić, you are an internationally known expert on future management. What fascinates you about the future and what was the trigger for your interest in the complex field of futurology?
Future is a place which offers unused opportunities. But also threats. This is what fascinates me. My theme is not futurology but future management. Futurology only offers the raw material, whereas in future management we examine our own assumptions for the future and make them more solid. We become aware of potential surprises, prepare ourselves to identify opportunities and turn threats to opportunities, we develop a mission, vision and future strategy and work towards this vision with agile planning.
Your consultancy FutureManagementGroup supports companies and top decision-makers from economy, politics and administration in developing future strategies. What significance do future strategies have for companies?
I believe a future-robust, motivating vision and future strategy which is effective for employees is the most profitable investment. Because everything will be designed in a more precise, more focused and thus a more congruent way, every thought, activity, process and project.
What kinds of questions do you usually hear from companies?
What does lie ahead and what does not? What kinds of risks and threats will the future bring? How can I safeguard my business for the future? How can we best position our company for future markets? How can we steer the business easier and more motivating with a clear mission and vision? How do we design a future-robust business model?
What are the challenges a company must face when developing a future strategy?
The most important one is that the human brain could not care less about the future. Virtually all other challenges are a result of this fact. For this reason, people do not invest enough time, find it exhausting to think about the future, and when they finally have a clear future strategy, more energy is needed again and again to have people conduct themselves accordingly.
Is there such a thing as a recipe for a successful strategy?
A guarantee for success does not exist. But there are many requirements. Just a few examples: It must be precise and straightforward, and this can only be achieved when the people involved in the decision-making process have developed it together. It must provide security, which means potential surprises have to be incorporated. It must be credible and provide confidence, which means it must be based on future opportunities. It must offer a meaning of work, a concrete use for the customers and for mankind if possible.
What kind of role does simplicity play in your life?
Simplicity frees up thoughts and time for really difficult and complex matters. Simplicity is a true art. Complicated is easy, simple is difficult.
What kind of role will simplicity play in the future?
I believe its benefit and importance will continue to strongly increase. The world is becoming increasingly more complex and faster. Complexity slows us down. IT which has parted with the very comprehensive and complex exercise sheets in favor of agile processes is the best example. But also the disappearance of manuals for hardware and software. Successful providers make the use of their products as easy and simple as possible so we can do without a manual. This was still very different ten or twenty years ago.
Simplicity, a trend that will continue?
As mentioned above, the benefit and importance of simplicity will increase and will never be less important again in my opinion.
How do you succeed in reducing a complex process, for instance the development of a future strategy, to the most significant points? How do you proceed to help a company achieve more simplicity?
The first step is to have the opposite of simplicity, namely variety. Many ideas, many options, many opportunities, many potential threats. Then you need a methodology to filter out the most significant points with the help of criteria, in several rounds if necessary.
Thank you very much for this interview Dr. Mićić!
Dr. Pero Mićić is a leading international expert in future management. He is CEO of the FutureManagementGroup AG (www.FutureManagementGroup.com) and Director of the Leader‘s Foresight Institute.
He advises the management teams and strategists of large corporations and leading medium-sized companies on the preparation for future markets and the development of well-grounded scenarios, motivating visions and effective strategies.
Pero Mićić is the author of „Wie wir uns täglich die Zukunft versauen“ (How we mess up the future every day, International Book Award), „The Five Future Glasses“ („Most Significant Futures Work“ Award); „Das ZukunftsRadar“ (The future radar) and „Der ZukunftsManager“ (The future manager). He studied Business and Future Studies in Germany and in the USA and received his PhD in the UK.
Mićić is a lecturer at renowned universities and colleges and a frequent keynote speaker at international symposia and functions. He is a founding member of the Association of Professional Futurists in the USA, on the advisory board of the Master’s Degree course in Future Studies in Houston, Business Centurion of the Leeds Business School and was president of the advisory board of the European Futurists Conference.
The cooperation between DATAGROUP and Dr. Mićić started in 2013, when the company engaged him as an expert for the development of the future strategy DATAGROUP 2020. Last year, the strategy, which was published in 2015, was examined and developed further. In this context, DATAGROUP also relied on the experience of Dr. Mićić and the FutureManagementGroup AG.
Successful B2B brands have one thing in common: They are consistently moving forward and clearly get the message across. In doing so, they succeed in turning customers into fans and employees into friends.
“One of the few market-leading IT service providers which
remained human” – this is how a customer of many years has characterized DATAGROUP in an interview. Which is exactly in line with the principles of this unique company: On the one hand, it is as strong as an ox when it comes to technology, having the power of central IT production and the manpower of 2,000 experts. On the other hand, it is unusually human, likeable, accessible and at eye level with Mittelstand companies. A recipe for success can be that simple.
As part of its “brand mission” initiated in 2018, DATAGROUP has listened very closely: to customers, investors and employees. To enthusiastic fans, but also to critical sceptics. IT managers from the North Sea to the Alps have expressed their appreciation for their partner DATAGROUP – but sometimes also had a bone to pick with us. The outcome of these intensive efforts of looking at the status quo has been analyzed, discussed and condensed. DATAGROUP is remarkably open to novelties and changes. Many findings have already been transformed into concrete strategies of action. But above all it has become apparent that there are so many good things happening at DATAGROUP which have not been sufficiently communicated so far. There is great potential here according to the principle: „Do good and tell people about it.”
However, this key phrase in advertising is nothing new and has come to be the easiest part of successful brand communication in the 21st century. Especially in IT, the biggest challenge is not to find and bind customers but to attract and retain the best specialists. For this reason, creating a brand has to come from within. Successful employer branding is what really counts here – and it only works with authenticity and a true employee focus.
From the very beginning, Max H.-H. Schaber had the vision of a company – DATAGROUP – which simplifies the world of IT and the business of its customers. Simplicity, of all things, around a topic which seems to stand out for its complexity. The DATAGROUP brand has adopted this demand and actually succeeded. This is why the new brand claim is “IT‘s that simple”. A clear statement which is also visually reflected in a new corporate design. Born out of the CORBOX, the formally reduced red dice stands for what Max H.-H. Schaber has captured in a nutshell during a brand workshop:
“DATAGROUP is when it works.”
The astronauts of the Apollo missions have consistently reported that the true benefit of space travel has been the new perspective of Earth. A cooperation with Apollo 11 aims at such a change of perspective. In the end, this very change always leads to a “true” and self-assured brilliant appearance.
Ralf Schneller is responsible for IT procurement at Drees & Sommer, an international consultancy for the construction and real-estate industries headquartered in Stuttgart. The company’s main services are development, process and infrastructure consulting as well as project management and engineering. Before Ralf Schneller joined Drees & Sommer, he was key account manager of an international IT company for more than 17 years.
How did you come to join Drees & Sommer?
I had looked after Drees & Sommer for many years in my previous position as a key account manager of an IT company. When I learned that the position as head of IT procurement became vacant, I simply changed to the other side of the desk.
What is the core business of Drees & Sommer?
As a leading European consulting, planning and project management company, we provide support and advice to private and public builders as well as investors on all issues relating to properties and infrastructure. Both analog and digital.
Digitization and the construction industry – how does this work?
Digitization in the construction industry is noticeably lagging behind the development in other industries. There is still a lot of room for development in the future, where we are pioneers in terms of digitization.
Where and how does Drees & Sommer use IT?
The question is no longer where we use IT today – we are literally surrounded by it. The challenge today rather is to find good answers to the key question: How much digital is ingenious? Add to this all the requirements given by the market. I am thinking building information modeling (BIM) solutions, LCM (digital lean construction) or smart city. Our major asset is that we have both comprehensive know-how in strategic corporate consulting approaches and great competence in the design and support of projects at the interface between digitization, IT and construction. We thus combine all the competencies required to actively and profitably drive forward and shape the digital revolution in the construction industry.
Where exactly does simplicity play a role?
I believe every one of us feels that the variety of tools available to us today can become counterproductive someday. Just look at today’s communication possibilities! Even in our private lives, we are hardly able to control the flood of information with all the tools and platforms such as WhatsApp, Skype, email, text messages, fixed line, cell phone and Facebook. We note that the building construction projects and infrastructure projects in our core business become ever more complex as well.
What are the reasons?
There are several factors which come into play. For instance, an ever-increasing variety of project participants. Cost and time pressure increase, while the quality of the process flows declines. The design variety and the requirements for safety and sustainability have grown significantly as well. The consequence: It is becoming increasingly difficult to purposefully manage construction projects and to achieve set goals, e. g. in terms of costs, deadlines and quality.
Which solutions are possible here?
One trend driven by this demand is lean construction management, which is focused on an integrated project solution. This methodology is based on lean management in automotive production and the agile approaches in software development which are transferred to the execution respectively the planning phase of construction projects. Simplicity arises from transparency, which helps to better coordinate planning processes in a target-oriented manner.
In which way does IT make it easier for your customers?
I think we generally perceive something as easy when we have a feeling of control. Things we do not understand or comprehend are automatically perceived as difficult. IT-supported systems help us understand complex systems and to break them down into easy – because straightforward – steps and to provide tools to handle these steps. Clear arrangements, e. g. dashboards, provide the necessary security through control.
What were the most striking changes and milestones of Drees & Sommer?
What we have learned from building: If the foundations are wrong, the most beautiful building on top is of no use. However, you do not see the foundations anymore, once the building is finished. I think we have done our homework properly when it comes to foundations, and therefore can build on it on a grand scale. This holds true for both our IT and the other company segments. We can look back on a successful business development of almost 50 years.
How did the cooperation with DATAGROUP start?
We had already advanced quite far in the outsourcing process for our helpdesk, when a mailing on CORBOX arrived on my desk. I was especially impressed by the handwritten accompanying letter.
How did you proceed?
It was soon obvious that the CORBOX really is a valuable collection of professional competence and complete processes for us. We also got along really well on a personal level. All of this contributed to DATAGROUP winning the project.
What do DATAGROUP and Drees & Sommer have in common?
The mission of Drees & Sommer consists of eight statements which express how we tick, how we collaborate and what defines us. In DATAGROUP we have found a partner whose value system is comparable to ours and who therefore is a good addition to our own capabilities. Like pot and lid …
Is there something at work you do not consider simple enough?
In IT procurement, we constantly strive to improve our processes and operations. There is definitely room for simplification. Just recently, for instance, we have analyzed our procurement processes together with our colleagues from Consulting, which led to a couple of measures which we will fine-tune in the next few months.
Thank you very much for this interview Mr. Schneller!
