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The power of customer centricity

How to turn customer experience into a unique selling point. Product diversity, special services and price advantages are no longer sufficient to achieve a unique position compared to the competition. Competitive advantages can only be obtained with a unique customer experience and extraordinary products. Therefore companies must focus on a unique customer journey when developing their Unique Selling Proposition (USP) . To this end, customer-centric strategies, processes, responsibilities and decisions must be fully established in the company. In this way, the customer becomes the center of all things, and also makes it possible to perform a holistic assessment across all touch points. Where customer centricity is fully integrated into the business model and value chain, and where it has been credibly developed as a unique selling point, companies are able to create real added value and can position themselves accordingly in the market. Customer centricity is more than just customer orientation. At the same time, there is a big gap between perception and the actual implementation of customer centricity. Companies can create a unique customer experience if they consider the right attributes. And it is precisely how they can clearly position and differentiate themselves from the competition.

Customer orientation and customer centricity are not the same thing. While customer orientation means offering products and services that customers want, the customer centricity approach focuses on those goods and services that customers need. Particularly customer experiences that are based on individual needs are essential to a company's success today. In the volatile world of digitization, competitors with new innovative technologies and competing products continuously create new incentives for acquiring customers and motivating them to change providers. This means that companies must increasingly separate themselves from their competitors to ensure long-term customer loyalty.

Developing customer centricity

New services and products are being created ever more quickly, but often they end up being identical to another provider's products. Companies are finding it noticeably more difficult to distinguish themselves from the competition with special differentiating features, and to highlight a specific added value. That is why an integrated customer centricity strategy is an important guide on the way to the optimum customer experience.

And it starts with the customer. Customer buying behaviors and expectations have changed significantly in recent years. In the age of social media, it is important to acquire brand ambassadors. This is only possible by building trust in the company, having the right instincts when it comes to managing modern technologies, as well as a personalized approach for the target groups. Five attributes must be reflected for customer centricity to develop effectively:

1. Understanding the customer: From pure customer orientation to customer centricity

Many companies believe they know what their customers want. But the goal must be to know what the customer really needs, not just what he or she wants. Hence only a holistic examination of customers across individual touch points presents a reliable basis for the right diagnosis.

At the same time, companies also face the challenge of correctly capturing the needs of their customers. Because greatly decentralized responsibilities, structures and processes that are all about the customer often make it quite difficult to assess demand. But such an assessment provides the basis for an integrative approach for customer-centric strategies. Platform-spanning and digitized options for interacting with potential buyers with real-time data and customer insights help with consolidating the decentralized structures and processes in a customer-centric manner. 2. Correctly interpreting desires and needs: From analysis to strategic measures

Companies must know how to interpret customer desires correctly based on their analyses, so they can be translated into concrete strategic measures. These should lead to target group-appropriate products and services. The goal is to deliver only what customers really need. In the ideal case, it leads to the development of products that the buyers did not even know they needed.

But such customized solutions can only be realized with an integrated customer centricity strategy, i.e. the right interaction between innovation, technology and design experience, as well as their targeted establishment in the company. The entire value chain must focus on the customer and align the activities in the company accordingly. 3. Establishing Customer Centricity Excellence: Requires the commitment of employees and management

Customer Centricity Excellence can only be achieved when employees and management display a high level of engagement. Customer centricity is a way of thinking that must be reflected in the actions of each and every employee. The focus is on the customer - and this approach must also be practiced and depicted. This requires a sustained management commitment Customer Centric Leadership so that business decisions are made with the customer in mind, and they support measures that continuously optimize the customer experience. 4. Building empathy and trust: From buyers to brand ambassadors

Besides the basis of examining customer centricity as a holistic transformation, empathy and trust are also considered important factors for a successful customer experience. However, these two aspects are often overlooked.

5. Human touch: Combining technological innovations and the human touch

The use of artificial intelligence and other technologies offers many advantages for optimizing the value chain and generating fast response times. The big challenge is to not lose sight of the human component in the interaction. Therefore companies must add a certain human touch to their technological innovations.

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Targeted development of innovation

Four dimensions for an effective innovation strategy. Companies need a clear strategy to fully exploit their innovation potential. It provides employees with an important guide for all innovation-related decisions. Therefore companies should consider their own optimum degree of openness. Different degrees of openness are required, for example with regard to different cooperation partners and technologies. The various degrees of openness should not be formulated in too much detail, however, since this makes it extremely difficult to regularly review and adjust the strategy. Often, companies lack a clear strategy to fully exploit their innovation potential - even though it is actually not that difficult to develop an innovation strategy. At the same time, there are several things that must be taken into account. Open Innovation can help companies increase their innovation performance, as long as they are mindful of several criteria in this context.

Innovations are the driving force behind business success. But innovation development in companies is often a cumbersome process. Companies need a defined innovation strategy to master current and future challenges. An innovation strategy describes the company's long-term innovation goals and provides employees with a guide for innovation-related decision-making. Managers must be mindful of the fact that the innovation strategy must be coordinated with the business strategy. The more it is embedded in the latter, the easier it is to implement.

In addition, the innovation strategy should be adapted to the company environment and regularly scrutinized. This is particularly true in dynamic markets. If that does not happen, a company may find that its products, ideas and philosophy are no longer of interest to the relevant market.

 

Four dimensions

Anyone wishing to establish an innovation strategy or quickly review an existing one should consider the following four dimensions:

Formalization ensures that the strategy is integrated into the organization. It describes whether a written innovation strategy was prepared, how precise its contents are, and to what extent it is available to the employees. The ambition level demonstrates the degree of differentiation with regard to the contents and the time frame of the innovation strategy. Challenging innovation strategies aim for a higher innovation level and rapid market. Implementation represents the compatibility with the business strategy. The long-term advantage of an innovation will greatly depend on this conformity. For example, a high degree of implementation may be reflected through an innovation-based distribution of resources and incentive systems. Strategic innovation controlling defines how systematically and regularly the innovation strategy is validated and adjusted. In the ideal case, the company continuously and flexibly adjusts its strategies to external influences.

 

Important factors for the strategy

The contents of the innovation strategy represent a key criterion for its success. A strategy, with its company-specific focus areas, should cover at minimum the following items:

Timing: Is a pioneer strategy useful, or is a (fast/slow) follower strategy more promising? Performance: Does the company strive to become a performance leader, or does it only aim for an average level of performance? Which future expertise and skills are the most important? Innovation types and technological focus: Does the company focus on product innovations, on process innovations or on different types of innovation? What technology(ies) does the company focus on? Source of added value: Does the company focus on internal or external research and development? Does the company target special cooperations or acquisitions to access external knowledge? Use: Are the ideas and inventions used mainly within the company, or are they also conveyed to external market participants? Do they perhaps leave the company through licensing?

Open approach for innovation

The last two aspects - source of added value and use - play a particularly important role with regard to Open Innovation. The basic idea behind the Open Innovation approach is that a closed innovation approach is no longer a sustainable option in view of the rapid development and distribution of valuable knowledge. Therefore companies wishing to maintain their innovation capacities must open their innovation process to external market participants.

Since the beginning of the Open Innovation concept, there has been a division between open and closed strategies. But in fact, more attention should be paid to the gradual character of openness: Companies decide on the degree of openness that works best for them. It is a highly relevant factor for decision-makers. Because they must recognize when their company is pushed towards openness from the outside - e.g. through their customers - and is therefore driven beyond the optimal degree of openness.

Be careful about too much openness

Even proponents of Open Innovation warn companies of becoming too open. There is a risk that other market participants profit from the possibilities provided by the innovation, while the inventor can only derive limited benefits. For this reason, companies should determine their optimum degree of openness and take it into account as part of the innovation strategy. In that way, they can differentiate themselves from the competition, which only follows a continuous Open Innovation trend.

In light of the complex environment faced by many companies today, they should define different degrees of openness for different cooperation partners and divisions. In addition, the optimum degree of openness may change over time, e.g. depending on the product life cycle. Companies should not formulate their strategy in too much detail, however. This creates a lot of unreasonable work and makes the important task of regularly reviewing and updating the strategy more difficult.

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Digital transformation of Sales & Marketing

Identifying and utilizing potentials. The digital transformation makes markets more transparent and products exchangeable. Customers favor a personalized approach across all contact points with the company. Hence the mere evaluation of customer satisfaction after a purchase is no longer sufficient. Interactions in the entire customer life cycle must be managed in such a way that potential buyers become buyers, who build trust in the company and the brand. As a result, they become loyal customers and make additional purchases. In the ideal case, the customer becomes a multiplier and actively recommends the brand to others. Adherence to certain success factors and the use of a Digital Sales & Marketing Center of Excellence are essential for achieving this objective in today's competitive environment. It is the only way to fully utilize the potential offered by digitization in this area. In this context, companies should not simply jump on the latest trends but rather formulate a digital Sales & Marketing strategy and communicate it across all levels of the company to remain successful. When it comes to the digital transformation of sales and marketing activities, most companies encounter similar challenges. The relevant warning signals will advise of the need to improve the digital maturity level of the companys digital sales and marketing processes. Companies must react, identify possible solutions and implement the same. In this context, success is made possible with the establishment of a Center of Excellence.

They are becoming an increasingly common sight in cities: pedestrians staring at their Smartphone instead of paying attention to traffic signs and traffic lights. Similarly, companies should be equally mindful of these warning signs on their way to the digital transformation. But they often find it difficult to identify and correctly assess these signs.

A case in point is the digital transformation of sales and marketing processes. Here, companies want to use digitization to reduce costs, grow sales or increase growth, for example. The cost-effective scalability of digital sales and marketing measures represents a big advantage compared to traditional marketing. And yet just a handful of companies have highly-sophisticated digital sales and marketing processes in place. Success will depend greatly on the company's culture, because the digital transformation is much more difficult to achieve with conventional structures and thinking patterns. An integrated strategy is not required only for the Sales and Marketing divisions, but the effects of the lack of such a strategy should not be under-estimated. Most of the company is directly or indirectly involved in digital sales and marketing measures to ensure a perfect customer experience in all channels.

This requires a company-wide integrated digital Sales & Marketing strategy for defining common objectives and integrating all departments that are affected. A systematic and integrated translation and implementation of the strategy can only be achieved with a clearly-defined plan, newly-created processes and defined responsibilities. But many companies have either no or an unclear digital sales and marketing strategy, so that initiatives are often started without a system and a lack of focus. The following warning signals can indicate that the companys digital sales and marketing activities need to be improved:

Measures are only tentatively implemented (or not at all) due to internal discussions and uncertainties or a lack of support, for example indirect marketing concepts. The performance of sales and marketing measures is either difficult or impossible to measure, or it can only be measured with a considerable delay after they have gone live. Campaigns, for example, are associated with a lot of manual work. Reasons for unexpected KPI fluctuations - e.g. sales, traffic or conversion rate - cannot be analyzed automatically but rather are calculated manually based on the conjectures of individual employees. Responsibility for the various digital communication channels in the company is spread across many areas, which in turn draw on different databases. These success factors form the foundation for the effective implementation of a company's sales and marketing strategy, and for generating the desired results. The graph below provides an overview of the relevant components for the successful development, implementation and realization of this project. The establishment of a Digital Sales & Marketing Center of Excellence ensures the success of these measures. It provides the general framework for digital sales and marketing in the company, and it guarantees the development and bundling of the relevant expertise in the areas Strategy & Organization, Customer Interaction and Customer Insights. The Center of Excellence monitors and coordinates the measures for digitizing the company's sales and marketing activities across the entire organization. In addition, it also advises the various departments with regard to implementation and execution. In this way, it provides the correct direction for sales and marketing and ensures that the processes continue to be enhanced.

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Four factors for a successful digital strategy

New perspective: Combining the ideas of employees and managers. On the way to becoming a digital leader, companies must learn to focus on the innovation process, let go of the desire for specific results and allow strategic elements that are created from the bottom up. Only then can they become fully engaged in the digital transformation and develop the flexibility that is required to increase competitiveness. The business world is changing rapidly.  Companies must respond to the constant changes with new digital business models. To do this, they require direction from management. At the same time, employee initiatives should be promoted and implemented as soon as possible to remain competitive.

In the age of globalization and digitization, only the two or three largest provider of a product or service will survive in the long term because they are already known to potential customers, which alone gives them a great advantage.

Today, every company should strive to become a digital leader and to be in a position where they can manage digitization. It is the only way to secure long-term business success despite disruptive technologies and extremely agile start-ups. But it also means that companies must have the flexibility to make strategic decisions that quickly respond to changing environments.

Ever shorter product life cycles give way to significantly shorter planning horizons. Companies must adjust their strategy development process to respond to the new business models of their competitors. To this end, they must integrate new digital trends and developments into the strategy and implement the same.

 

From top-down to bottom-up

The classic top-down approach of strategies specified by management is no longer sufficient because it is based on two basic assumptions:

First, the person formulating the strategy possesses all knowledge about the environment, and enough expertise. Second, the environment is sufficiently stable and predictable.

But today, these requirements often no longer apply as new competitors, technologies and business models are constantly changing the business environment. This increasing volatility makes systematic and strategic planning more difficult. Classic strategic decision-making systems fail in these unstable conditions. Hence the increasing importance of emerging strategy elements, which are initiated bottom-up by employees in unstructured and quickly changing contexts. In this way, tactical decisions are often made outside of strategic planning processes and are subsequently integrated into the business strategy. This allows companies to respond more quickly to novel opportunities or risks. Fundamental differences

Traditional top-down plans are created in agreement with the business objectives for realizing the strategic intentions of management. In contrast, bottom-up plans can arise independent of strategic directives, since they are the result of employees autonomous initiatives.

The defining feature of bottom-up strategies is their unplanned nature. They originate during the exploratory search process for new opportunities, which are identified and formulated by employees at subordinate hierarchy levels. In the best case, the result of these processes has the effect of changing managements intentions and thus exerts influence over the business objectives.

Strategies for the entire company

Until now, the focus of digital strategies has frequently been on the transformation of products or processes. Particularly effective digital strategies are concerned with transforming the entire company, however. In that case, many digital technologies must be integrated into human collaboration, processes and functions in order to generate competitive advantages.The following four success factors can be considered:

Creation of a common vision Maintaining strategic flexibility with bottom-up initiatives Top-down specification of a strategic framework for digital initiatives in order to avoid inefficiencies Continuous reflection and adjustment of the digital strategy Promoting innovation by combining processes

Having a top-down process for digital strategies is still important, but emerging elements must be given room to guarantee a certain level of flexibility. This statement is confirmed by almost 90 percent of managers who were surveyed by Campana & Schott as part of a study.

In this context, most of the digital strategies actually implemented are the result of bottom-up initiatives. Top managers must monitor these promising initiatives in the company, recognize their dynamic nature and finally take an active role in promoting their further development.

Support for bottom-up initiatives by employees and the specifications provided by management should therefore complement each other. Because - uncoordinated initiatives lead to inefficiencies and a lack of transparency regarding the digital transformation projects that already exist in the company. Excessively strict specifications, which do not provide enough design leeway, smother flexibility.

It means that a combination of top-down and bottom-up processes for formulating and implementing digital transformation strategies is the ideal approach for promoting innovation that emerges from both employee ideas as well as top management specifications. The successful combination and coordination of these processes leads to faster innovation in the company and hence to increased competitiveness.

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The new Microsoft Project

Evolution of project management in the cloud. Focus on collaboration and integration

Microsoft continues its road map by developing a new innovative Project generation and thus enhancing the entire Microsoft PPM ecosystem. In this context, it focuses on collaboration and the integration of the different tools. Now, companies can simplify communication between globally distributed project teams. In addition to the classic tools such as Project Server and Project Online, Project Service provides a modern alternative that offers great potential for the future Microsoft PPM environment with the Power Platform. We are very excited about the next few months! Starting now, Microsoft will provide the new service to customers with a Project Online Subscription. Customers were notified of this in their Office 365 Message Center.

Preceding, first insights were given at the in-house Inspire technology conference. In addition to announcements from the project scene, this years Inspire conference, which was held in July, focused on the issue of collaboration. In the future, the task management tool Microsoft Planner, the communication hub Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Project will be combined under the more general term Work Management.

Campana & Schott also uses Microsoft applications and looks forward to the innovations for the year 2019. No wonder: Over the last 20 years, Microsoft Project has become one of the most popular project management tools. An overview of the most important innovations is included below.

 

Simplified planning: The new Project Service

At the conference, Microsoft strategists presented the update for the new Project. It is expected that the first release of this completely revised Cloud service will be issued in the second half of 2019; it concentrates on a radically simpler planning approach in the web browser.

With this product, Microsoft is targeting users who find the current Microsoft Project too big, and the Microsoft Planner too limited. The new Project is suitable for users who work with Planner's Kanban elements and also want to use Gantt Charts, project structures and simple resource planning. This new direction will appeal particularly to users working in sales, marketing and recruiting. Other modules for cost management, resource management and time recording will be added later on. Better Together: Added value through integration with other MS Cloud services

In the context of its Better Together strategy, Microsoft is combining Cloud services to generate added value for its customers. This also applies to project and portfolio management solutions. The combination of Microsoft Project Online and Power BI has gradually established itself as a reporting and dashboard tool in practice. An important trend for 2019 is the fast-growing demand for solutions that combine other products and services such as Microsoft Azure DevOps or Microsoft Teams into an integrated project and portfolio management solution. How this looks in practice is shown by the examples below.

 

Project and Teams: Optimum combination for collaboration in projects

Microsoft is continuously enhancing its PPM tools, and in the process also considers two important aspects that are essential for (agile) project management: collaboration and communication. This is particularly true in situations where the work is performed independent of location, which means that communication in the project team becomes a key success factor. The Microsoft Cloud platform offers the ideal support in this context because it addresses the requirements of very different project teams by combining a variety of tools. Even now, Microsoft Planner can easily be used within Microsoft Teams, thus providing all team members with direct access.

Employees do not even have to install software on their device - the web version can be opened with any browser. In this way, Teams becomes a central hub for project teams. Project Online can also be integrated into Microsoft Teams, so that all important project information is now bundled in one tool. It is also expected that Planner and the new Project Service will be connected even more in the future in order to utilize the advantages of both planning approaches.

 

Project and Dynamics 365: Integrated solution for customer projects  At this time, there are two Cloud ecosystems in the Microsoft universe - Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365 - which are largely separate from each other.

Microsoft 365: The Microsoft 365 environment includes the Office and Collaboration tools Office 365 and SharePoint, as well as the project management solution Project Online. Additional tools such as Microsoft Planner and Teams enable company-wide and flexible collaboration between employees in projects. The integration of the different Microsoft 365 tools is intuitive for users, which is essential for globally connected project teams.

Dynamics 365: In addition to Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365 was released about three years ago - it is the Cloud version of the well-known ERP and CRM product line Microsoft Dynamics. It includes the modules Project Service Automation (PSA) and Sales, which make it possible to depict processes between Sales Force and project teams.

Better Together: Over the course of the next few months, the modules Project (part of M365) and PSA (part of D365) will be combined through a common data model, in order to depict the entire life cycle of projects. The process starts in Dynamics as a sales lead up to the point of an offer, followed by project implementation in the new Project as a fully-fledged project management tool. Invoicing continues to be done in Dynamics. In this way, each module is able to play on its technical strengths - together with a consistent user experience. Power platform: Customizing of the next generation

In addition, both worlds benefit from another trump card: the Microsoft Power Platform. It can be used to radically reduce the development periods for business apps. This means that Microsoft provides users with ever more powerful no-code or low-code options for developing their own solutions. Previously, such solutions would have required in-depth programming knowledge and developer tools.

Today, Microsoft speaks of IT-savvy end users who develop applications on their own, without having to rely on programmers. In the past, users could only create user-defined fields, own views and pages in Project Online. Now, data can be rapidly gathered from all parts of the Microsoft universe, processed and visualized in dashboards and (mobile) apps.

Confirmed by growth rates of 300 to 700 percent, Microsoft is fully focused on the power platform, which allows the Cloud services Power BI, PowerApps and Flow, as well as the Common Data Service (CDS) to combine their strengths. This is customizing of the next generation in a way that has never been done before.

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One way towards a more agile organization

Successful introduction of Objectives and Key Results (OKR) with central platforms. Objectives and Key Results is an effective management instrument that companies can use to respond to today's challenges and support their own development towards an agile organization. The OKR methodology forms the framework in this regard, and it can be adjusted and used depending on the complexity and culture of the organization. Success will depend on how the OKR are defined and how they are accepted and practiced by the employees. The aspect of transparency plays a major role in this context, and it is supported with tools developed by Campana & Schott as part of the Microsoft Platform. In the course of the digital transformation, companies must be able to quickly respond to changes and streamline cumbersome and hierarchical decision-making process. The introduction of Objectives and Key Results (OKR) on a central platform can lead to more flexible and adaptive organizational forms.

A familiar scenario: A customer calls, a colleague is asking for information and urgent e-mails are waiting in the mailbox - all at the same time. In today's work environment, employees frequently have to look after several tasks simultaneously - as the pace continue to increase. Under these conditions, they find it virtually impossible to pursue their own and the company objectives.

However, that applies not just to employees but also the entire company: The present environment is characterized by rapid change, high complexity, global connectivity and continuous transformation. And the speed of change will continue to increase in the coming years - driven by artificial intelligence, IoT and data-driven business models.

This means that companies need agile and adaptable forms of organization. The target system in particular represents a key aspect for the management and direction of an organization. Accordingly, the introduction of Objectives and Key results (OKR) is one component of an agile transformation process. OKR is a management instrument that was developed at Intel in the 1970s, and which became more widely used (particularly in large tech corporations) starting in the late 1990s. It means that the orientation of the entire organization to the company objectives is used as a management instrument.

Compared to agile methods at the level of individual projects, OKR can therefore be understood as an agile management instrument across different hierarchy levels in a company - from the level of the entire company down to individual employees. Everyone pursues his or her specific objectives, which in turn are derived from the overall strategy. In this context, OKR should:

be defined, reviewed and adjusted during the year be focused on a few but central objectives be visible to all employees be motivating and difficult to achieve (Objectives) be measurable and precisely describe the target status (Key results) With this simple concept, OKR are easy to understand and efficient to implement. The review and adjustment of OKR during the year guarantee a rapid response to changes and thus promote the company's agility. The regular coordination of employee, project, divisional and company objectives, combined with a concentration on a few central objectives, also ensures that double work and work on low-priority issues can be avoided. In this way, resources can be used across the different silos and in a profit-maximizing manner.

This level of transparency allows employees to see their own contribution to the higher-level objectives, while also being involved in the target formulation process. This increases their motivation to reach their own objectives. In addition, the objectives are aligned to the company's strategy, so that each organizational unit is working towards its implementation. The Key Results represent measurable results that can be used to verify the employee's target attainment up to the level of the company objectives.

The development of a more agile organization of companies is another application field of OKR. In this vein, project and non-project worlds can be linked together - regardless of whether they are agile (or not). Today, many management approaches are based on decentralized and non-public tools such as Excel calculations or PowerPoint reports. Accordingly, the objectives and assessment of progress that are documented in the same are not made transparent. But an essential feature of OKR is that the method is accepted and practiced by employees and management alike. Therefore, these traditional tools are not suited for OKR. The tool that is used must facilitate the simple entry and transparent representation of objectives, expected results and the correlations between the objectives. This is the only way to realize the advantages of OKR.

Using the Microsoft Power Platform as the basis, Campana & Schott developed a solution that meets the OKR requirements. The tool provides a centralized representation of the objectives at the different levels of the organization, which is accessible to all employees. The tool can be used to document, monitor and illustrate all OKR across divisional boundaries. Through the visual representation of the hierarchical context, each employee and each organizational level can see how their own objectives have their place in the company's overall objectives. This ensures the required level of company-wide transparency using a tool as a single point of truth. 

With the Microsoft Power Platform, the solution can be seamlessly integrated into the digital workplace and therefore makes a significant contribution to a successful outcome. Information from other tools that are based on the Microsoft technology (e.g. Project Online/Project Server, Planner, Dynamics 365 PSA or SharePoint) can also be connected. In this way, particularly project and non-project worlds can be linked and centrally managed within organizations.

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Overcoming five hurdles to perfect business processes

Why the introduction of innovative processes and new platforms comes to a halt, and how to solve this dilemma. The buzzword Digital Transformation has become reality. Companies are constantly faced with new technologies and solutions that must be integrated into their processes. This means that obstacles must be overcome and the Operations department must be adjusted. Using the right approaches, companies can successfully design their digital future with optimized processes. Proven processes form the backbone of classic companies. But modern IT platforms consistently deliver new and flexible solutions that can be used at the push of a button. This means that companies must rethink their structures and continuously integrate new technologies into their processes - using the right approaches. What does your son do? He is an Operations Manager. And what exactly does that mean? I am not sure. He has explained it to me a few times, but I didnt understand it. This could be a typical conversation between mum and her friend over a cup of coffee. But lets be honest: Only a few people really know what Operations Management means.

It means coordinating all activities that are involved in the provision of services within a company. The term Operations includes all processes and activities for providing this service - regardless of whether they relate to products or services. Therefore the manager in charge must plan, manage and monitor the associated work processes.  Based on the current practice, it becomes clear that processes form the core of all classically structured companies. The Operations department is not just responsible for keeping the processes going, but must also ensure that they are designed efficiently and continuously optimized. In the past, this was not very difficult. Since the processes remained mostly the same, and sometimes over decades (especially in production, but also in other industries), all that was needed to keep up with the competition or even become the industry leader were small adjustments and marginal improvements.

But in the last few years, many novel technologies entered the market, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), virtualization, Cloud Computing and mobile apps, just to name a few. This has already lead to many changes in individual behavior: Meetings dates are arranged on ever shorter notice, and tasks are completed immediately on-line. On the corporate side, the large tech groups such as Microsoft, Apple, Google or Amazon, also provide companies with extensive integrated platforms, which enable them to use modern technologies and services at competitive prices at the push of a button.

This opens the door to novel solution scenarios, such as Cloud-based business applications, software-defined computer centers, connected production machines, Mixed Reality Predictive Maintenance or near-series production for batch sizes of one. On the other hand, this significantly higher flexibility and automation also means that current processes no longer work all the time, or at minimum are no longer ideal. Companies wishing to be successful in the future must use these technologies, integrate them into their processes and restructure work processes and organizational structures. But doing that is easier said than done. Many companies are overwhelmed by the speed of the constantly emerging technologies, whose breadth and scope also continues to grow. Also, there is often a lack of knowledge on how to respond to and handle these developments. The main obstacles are: There are a number of approaches for overcoming these obstacles and adjusting the operation to the new requirements. They include: These approaches can be implemented at a manageable cost if they are properly planned and implemented. An experienced partner such as Campana & Schott can offer valuable help in this context. 

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Microsoft Project - A whole new concept

The biggest innovations and roadmap presented at the Ignite Conference 2019. Promising developments in the Cloud

This year's Ignite Conference delivered an impressive confirmation: Microsoft is consistently committed to the Cloud First approach to innovation and is developing Cloud products in an incremental fashion and at high speed. With Project for the Web, a key innovation for simple project management scenarios was presented. 

In future, users of complex scenarios can look forward to important enhancements. For example, Microsoft plans to gradually expand the new Project to include modules for Enterprise Resource Management, Finance Management and Integration with a Global Task Management solution. In addition to new developments on the basis of the Power Platform, modules from the Dynamics 365 Cloud will also be integrated. In what is a new paradigm in the development of Microsoft Project, ideas from the worldwide customer and partner community and the public Project User Voice are increasingly being considered. To date, Microsoft Project is considered an expert tool for experienced project managers within IT as well as Research and Development. At its 2019 Ignite Conference, Microsoft has now released a new version that also incorporates use cases of Opportunity Project Managers within Marketing, Sales, and HR environments. Initial assessments from the user's perspective appear promising.

Anyone planning a project in the company today often still reaches for an Excel spreadsheet. The reasons for this are obvious: The application is well-known, the functions are familiar and the project participants can handle it intuitively. With ever greater frequency, however, this tool originally created for calculation work is reaching its limits in this area of application. But making the switch to Microsoft Project is quite difficult for many people who do not need to plan projects on a daily basis.

This has also been identified by Microsoft and, thanks to the radically simplified planning module Project for the Web and the building blocks Project Home and Roadmaps, a new product generation for company-wide project and portfolio management has been published. Further expansion stages for larger application scenarios are due to follow in 2020. In particular with Project for the Web, Microsoft offers a completely new alternative to users for whom Microsoft Planner as Task Management offers too few features, and for whom the conventional Microsoft Project Client provides too many features as a planning tool. And that is what will appeal to millions of users especially project managers with a keen preference for ease of use and modern, intuitive user interfaces. "Project for the web" thus serves as an evolutionary stage for Planner users who need a schedule with structure and dependencies that go beyond simple work management this is also the most requested functional scope in the public User Voice Channel of the Global Planner Community. Thanks to its intuitive nature, users can switch between an agile Kanban Board and a classic Gantt Chart.

With an easy-to-use and sleek interface design, the IT giant from Redmond is also targeting competitors such as Asana, Smartsheet and Jira in the discipline of modern task management and agile project organization, thereby expanding its target groups. Details about the new features and possibilities in Project for the Web are available in this blog post. The established and proven combination of Microsoft Project Online and Project Client provides project management professionals with powerful planning tools for complex projects, as well as a comprehensive project portfolio management platform for highly project-oriented organizations such as IT and R&D departments. Entirely in line with Microsoft's vision Give the people the tools they want, "Project for the Web" will also be accepted by casual project managers in smaller, agile projects. Tool-based planning should be as simple and self-explanatory as possible, while simultaneously the planning tool should bring with it everything that is necessary to facilitate good cooperation with team members or external partners. 

This creates new use cases in departments, which previously did not work with extensive planning tools and did not need them. Especially within Marketing, Sales and Human Resources there are some use cases for small projects, which are frequently handled on an inter-departmental basis and which are particularly suitable for the use of Project for the Web (see Fig.) With the market launch of Project for the Web as a new alternative for easy project planning scenarios, Microsoft is also introducing a new license: Project Plan 1 is now available on a subscription basis to customers for EUR 8.40 per user, per month . For the significantly more comprehensive project portfolio management solution with Project Online (including Project Client), the existing licenses have been renamed and retained: Project Online Professional for Managers of Complex Projects or Programs has become Project Plan 3 (current reference price: EUR 25.30 per user, per month), Project Online Premium as the license type for Project Portfolio Manager has become Project Plan 5 (current reference price: EUR 46.40 per user, per month). 

With the significantly cheaper Project Plan 1, Microsoft is also moving (from a cost perspective) from an expert tool to an app that satisfies the mass market and an expansive user community. In addition to the appropriate Microsoft Project license, companies may also wish to make use of extensions, such as licenses for the products Power Apps (web applications), Flow (business processes), Power BI (reporting and self-service BI) and Teams (collaboration). Employees receive their daily tasks from various applications: Requests from emails, comments in Office documents for revision as well as personal tasks in To-do and Outlook, stemming from team work in Planner and, of course, also from project work in the new Project for the Web. Keeping track of things is becoming increasingly tricky. This often triggers that unpleasant feeling of having forgotten a task or a to-do item.

In order to counteract this sinking feeling, To-do - the app for personal task management will be gradually expanded going forward. Even today, there are views in To-do that merge personal tasks from other applications, such as ear-marked emails from Outlook and assigned tasks from Planner. In future, Office documents will be able to be extended so that comments with "@mentions" are automatically converted into tasks in Planner. 

Teams will get a Tasks app as the central hub for teamwork, so that it is possible to keep track of all tasks. Furthermore, the integration of Project for the Web is not limited to displaying plans. In future, tasks from the new project should appear in the upcoming Tasks app. As part of its better together strategy, Microsoft repeatedly combines Cloud Services to create added value for its customers. By way of example, the combination of Microsoft Project Online with Power BI as a reporting and dashboard tool has been implemented successively in practice for several years in particular for project portfolio management solutions.

Power BI is constantly evolving as a Cloud Service and is now, according to several analysts, the world's leading self-service BI tool. One particularly impressive innovation from this year is the launch of Automated Machine Learning in Power BI. This innovation will significantly reduce the hurdle to utilizing Data Science Methods and also make such use cases available to BI professionals without requiring users to code in languages such as Python or R. 

Portfolio managers and PMOs will also be delighted, given that more and more intelligent analytics and predictive techniques are becoming applicable to project management data. In future, companies will increasingly be given the chance to learn from their own project data.

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Using data to boost ticket sales

The effective customer-lead and risk-scoring approach - in soccer and other industries. The application example shows that data can be a decisive factor in professionalizing marketing and thus optimizing customer communication, even in small industries and companies such as soccer clubs. Even if the analysis results described are soccer-specific, the data-driven approach for marketing and sales campaigns can be applied for all industries. Companies do not always have to turn to Big Data Science in order to get concrete benefits. With simple customer lead and risk scoring, companies can find concrete approaches for new sources of income and increased sales. Even non-IT industries like soccer are trying to increase their financial success with the help of digital processes. There are practical examples that show how recognizing the data available can contribute to success. Other industries can also benefit from the approach of customer-lead and risk-scoring.

Chants, swinging flags, excitement and awesome goals: This is how you imagine a successful afternoon soccer match. But the reality is sometimes different: poor athletic performance, bitter defeats and relegation to the lower league. It is no wonder why ticket sales decline and some fans do not renew their tickets for the new season. After all, a city has many other attractive leisure activities to offer.

Many soccer clubs are thus always thinking about ways to increase their ticket sales. Price adjustments are often unsuccessful in the medium term, especially if the athletic performance is not great. Available data sources can help make marketing more professional. For example, data can be used to identify trends and patterns of sales in order to optimize the fan approach. A striker must not only keep an eye on his goals, but on the opposing goal as well. Likewise, the club must know its goals. In addition to television money and sponsorship, a secure income generated from season ticket sales is an essential source of income and is therefore one of the most important pillars for every professional soccer club. Data can be used to help stabilize or even expand this strategically important pillar, even in difficult sporting times.

The concrete approach here is to get a better understanding of the fans, especially the season ticket holders. Based on the example, we should ask a few questions: Which fans buy season tickets? Who do not renew their season ticket? What are the reasons for buying or not renewing? 

Answers to these questions can be used to identify new potential season ticket holders, to recognize, in good time, season ticket holders that are at risk of not renewing their tickets and to control the communication with these target groups accordingly. The concrete result of such an analysis should, for example, be in the form of an assessment (scoring) of the current season ticket holders with respect to the risk that they may not renew the season ticket. A list of potential new customers (leads) and their purchase probability can also be useful. Such results form the basis for a marketing campaign. Even the best tactics are of no use if the players on the field cannot implement them. After the content and scope of the application case have been clearly defined and its added value has been presented, the implementation begins. It must be determined which resources are necessary and whether the club has access to them or has to rely on external partners. Every striker wants the coveted trophy - but most goals do not result in a trophy. Such rankings are not only used to evaluate players, but also fans. This is because a scoring model can be developed based on the results of the previous data analysis. There are two perspectives: The Lead-Scoring lists the fans and visitors in the databases according to their similarities with season ticket holders and thus represents promising new customers and season ticket holders. On the other hand, Risk-Scoring assesses current season ticket holders with respect to the risk that they may not renew their tickets. This scoring can be improved with further information about the respective person in order to address fans and customers. The aim is to create content and offers that are as personalized as possible to optimally meet the wishes of the fans. The approach shown has already been successfully carried out by several soccer clubs.

They benefit from the following advantages:

Decrease in the decline of season tickets (the churn rate has been reduced by up to 20%) Increase in the number new customers (the rate of new season ticket holders has increased by up to 30%) Increase in fan loyalty through positive feedback with more individual communication High ROI through quick implementation of the use case with clear added values This approach can be used as a starting point for other industries to start or expand their data-driven marketing and sales campaigns with a success measurement or automation, for example. The Customer-Lead and Risk-Scoring can be transferred to other B2C and B2B areas to support marketing and sales processes.

Here are some thoughts:

What kind of data does the company have about customers? Does the company use this knowledge for marketing and sales? Which customers are the most important ones? Which group/industry accounts for 80 percent of sales? Which customer groups have been lost, kept or acquired in recent years and months? How does the company communicate with these groups? How does the company assess its success?

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No Business without IT

Own solutions & incompatible systems Why the digital transformation is so difficult, and how to solve this dilemma. The idea of aligning the IT department to the digital transformation of the entire company sounds pretty simple in theory: It only has to make its own organization agile, maintain a strong connection to the business, focus on the main technological trends and actively promote these to management and the various departments.

However, this fundamentally changes the conduct of IT as a service provider and requires a significant restructuring of the IT organization and its resources. In practice, the IT department must also become an enabler for employees. At the same time, it must manage on-going operations and provide sufficient resources for modernization and the introduction of new approaches and technologies.

Therefore, in order to achieve an optimum and successful digitization process, IT departments should be considerably strengthened with regard to their skills and impact - or they should take the initiative in this regard. An IT transformation is not possible without a mature and enabled IT department that is viewed as a partner by the business. And without an IT transformation, there can be no long-term and sustainable company-wide digital transformation. Wanting to implement innovations quickly, companies often develop digital process inside the different departments without the adequate involvement of IT. This leads to isolated solutions within the organization. But solutions can only deliver true added value for the entire company if they can be scaled and integrated with each other.

The digital transformation has reached the company. However, departments often introduce SaaS-based applications on their own, or they develop their own solutions. This leads to the uncontrolled growth of incompatible systems. This means that manual interfaces are required to exchange data, but they also represent a potential source of error. Therefore the systems should be integrated across the departments to warrant complete data integrity and availability.

In the case of a production company, this would allow customers to modify their product during the production process, actually see the progress and track the shipment in the web portal. The supplier management tool automatically receives data on current purchase orders and inventories. Supplier orders are automatically adjusted based on forecasts for product demand. And the development department always has access to current prices and production experience. The result: the cost-effective and efficient series production of individual products. As a result, digitization requires a holistic approach for companies, their value chains and in particular their IT organizations. But IT must also accept and be allowed to practice this new role. In practice, it often finds itself trying to balance the requirements for rapid, efficient, agile, scalable and innovative digitization in the company with the growing IT independence of the various departments. These often view the IT organization as a hindrance, inflexible or old-fashioned. And so they go ahead and do their own thing - using Cloud services or external developers.

But it is exactly these types of isolated solutions that frequently lead to rising administrative expenses, more complexity and not least increased security risks, since the existing governance requirements and guidelines do not cover these cases. The result: Short-term solutions must be controlled again. This not only leads to lost investments but also unused IT solutions or even contractual dependencies on external providers.

Therefore the IT department (whether the other departments like or not) must strictly control the use of customized solutions and approaches during the digitization process. But by doing so, it cannot act primarily as a hindrance, but rather as the keeper and enabler of new business models. The IT department has several trump cards over its colleagues in the other departments: It focuses on what is good for the entire company and it has the flexibility to pro-actively find the required service providers. In addition, it can organize or manage tenders to negotiate the best terms with external providers. To complete this transformation, IT departments must develop and pave the way for the future particularly with regard to the IT organization, business centricity and technology. They must assume responsibility for the scalability of the new digital solutions. In addition, they must ensure that processes are fully thought through, developed and automated, and that they can be integrated into the overall organization in a flexible and (if needed) agile manner.

This means: The processes in the IT department are increasingly changing in the direction of an agile collaboration with departments. Moreover, the IT team increasingly assumes advisory and managing functions. In addition, interdisciplinary DevOps Teams in the IT department also help to increase software quality and availability and therefore customer satisfaction. Business Centricity must also be improved (or introduced), and a detailed understanding must be created for the company's business processes and value creation. To this end, the IT department must develop joint solutions with the other departments. On the whole, it means that the existing employees in the IT department must increase their knowledge and skills for supporting business processes, because company-wide innovations require IT departments to take a close look at the new requirements and the associated fundamental technological developments, which promise a lot of added value for all departments today. It is only by including these issues that IT has the flexibility to meet the requirements of the departments, while also guaranteeing the company's security and efficiency.

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