Digitized and efficient into the future

An elementary law of evolution states that organisms significantly increase their resilience and ability to survive by continuously adapting to changing environmental conditions. This universal principle can be transferred identically to our working world. During industrialization, for example, numerous manual trades evolved into automated operations, marking the birth of mass production.

Analog process digitized: Easier said than done

Today, digitization is advancing rapidly and encompasses a large part of our living and working environments. Disruptive technologies enable quantum leaps; what was unthinkable 10 years ago is suddenly possible. For companies, this represents a major challenge. Digitization is massively changing customer needs and their aspirational behavior; in addition, it is becoming increasingly challenging for companies to grasp the complexity of the globalized economy and to satisfy customer needs. However, the key to success lies not only in the innovative strength of companies, but is also based on the underlying process architecture. The task is to transform analog processes into digital ones. Easier said than done, because: Processes have to be conceived and built digitally from scratch. However, the in-house know-how and the necessary resources are often lacking for this. A process is not digital just because a PDF replaces the fax. It is also essential to know what the goal of a process is. Only those who have the goal in mind will find a way to achieve it.

Digital solutions without media discontinuity as a competitive advantage

The fast-growing Ironforge Consulting AG, headquartered in the municipality of Muri near Bern, has been offering its customers services in the ICT fields of engineering, business analysis and project management since 2009 and also specializes in transforming its customers' analog business processes into digital ones. The company operates with a high level of expertise and offers individual as well as complete packages for public administrations, government-related companies and customers from the private sector. The highly qualified employees know that digital processes without media discontinuity and standardized represent a competitive advantage; companies that have digitized their processes work more efficiently and focus more on their customers.

The right employees for the right job

In order to better anticipate the needs of its customers, Ironforge Consulting AG, in cooperation with the company Vertec, purposefully expanded a CRM and ERP system and added two new topics: "Skills Management System" and "Project References". With the help of the "Skills Management System" Ironforge now has the possibility to define the best qualified employees for specific customer orders, to participate efficiently in tenders and to save valuable time in the end. The Skills Management System offers many possibilities: It shows the overall skills situation across the company and opens up new opportunities in personnel development and personnel requirement planning. For example, education and training (HF, BSc, Uni as well as CAS, DAS, MBA, etc.) or subject-specific certificates in the areas of project management, business analysis, requirements engineering, IT architecture and service management can be recorded. In addition, the expertise in the individual areas is also recorded in years, language levels can be called up and specialist areas in the fields of agility, cloud, security, procurement and GEVER. This gives the possibility to make various evaluations at the push of a button. "With the new ability to automatically map project references, we also save time by being able to systematically file previous customer projects and quickly pull them out of the drawer when needed" says Gianni Lepore, CEO of Ironforge. "Now we are ready to offer such solutions to our customers as well and implement them in their everyday work."

High time savings and more satisfied customers

A classic win-win situation for all involved, says Gianni Lepore: "We experience significant time savings and a high level of satisfaction among our customers. The latter also benefit significantly, because with Ironforge they have a business partner who understands their needs and implements them unerringly". With its results-rich implementation, Ironforge Consulting AG can efficiently review customer inquiries and requirements and quickly bring customized offers to the market. Another notable advantage is the massively reduced effort. "Thanks to our new features in Vertec ERP, we can now offer our customers tailor-made solutions and are thus much more efficient on the road. Thanks to our skills management system, we always have an overview of the skills of our employees in our rapidly growing company" says Gianni Lepore "Thanks to the systematic mapping of our project references, we experience the acquisition of new mandates as much more efficient".

Not only digitized, but also trained

But what should never be forgotten, despite all the euphoria, is that the transition from analog to digital processes depends to a large extent on how employees can use the new possibilities. It is therefore essential that the workforce attends training courses in order to be able to take full advantage of the applications' scope of services.

Source: Ironforge Consulting AG

Vertec
Since 1996, Vertec has successfully continued to develop as a software and company and offers an integrated CRM and ERP system as a powerful core product in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. The central unique selling point is the flexible adaptability of the software to individual business processes.
www.vertec.com