News from ERNI

In the recent episode of the Book summary series our colleague Nikol Laschan speaks about her book tip Failosophy. Find out more about the art of failure.

Today’s agile book summary comes from our Principal Consultant Patrick Wilhelm. What does Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder say to its readers? How can it navigate you especially in times of insecurity like the ones we live in now?

The number of digital touchpoints between consumers and brands continues to grow. For successful communication, they must be specifically selected and managed. The strategic and systematic management of all contact points between the person and the brand is crucial for success and presents companies and agencies alike with a number of challenges.

Robotic Process Automation, or RPA for short, has raised many hopes in recent years and caused a stir in the financial services industry. What can this technology do and what can it not do? Sandra Bruderer and Remo Rambaldi, Senior Consultants at ERNI, recommend a well-considered use of software robots.

For a leading developer and manufacturer of injection and infusion systems for self-medication and a renowned diabetes specialist we performed an Agile Fitness Check. Learn more about what the customer gained.

Michael R. Wade had probably just seen the film classic Dracula or the horror flick Eclipse when he coined the term “Value Vampire“ in connection with the digital disruption of our days. The professor for innovation and strategy at the IMD Business School in Lausanne, Switzerland, uses it to describe young companies that are destroying existing business models without mercy: “They offer their products or services extremely cheap or even free of charge and thus suck out the profit pool, which leads to shrinking market shares for the established providers.“ At the same time, these startups also convinced consumers with a better customer experience and innovative services.

In this episode of our series about Agile best practices, we focus on sprint planning as the first of the Scrum ceremonies. Joffrey Zehnder and Zuzana Gočová explain what they have encountered in their work as Agile coaches, including the pitfalls they frequently experience and how to avoid them.

Cross-platform mobile development surpasses the limitations of native mobile development. You only need one team that can develop apps for both Android and iOS, instead of having two teams that develop apps on each platform separately. Since its release two years ago, Flutter has been used by developers as one of their go-to cross-platform mobile development framework.

Make or buy? Do-it-yourself or outsourcing? Every company today is challenged to put itself, its services, its organisation and its costs to the test bench again and again. At the latest, this raises the question of what belongs to one’s own core competencies and what does not? And this is followed by the question of whether it is advantageous to outsource certain processes or areas. However, this decision can be quite complex and is not so easy to make.

Are your Scrum Daily meetings lasting more than 15 minutes? Are you achieving Dailies’ goals?

Patrik Opát joined ERNI in April 2019. With his previous experience as Scrum Master, IT Business Analyst and IT Consultant, he became Service Unit Leader of Scrum Masters and Product Owners on our Bratislava, Slovakia site later in January 2020. Patrik follows his motivation of helping people improving their work life through coaching, guidance, process improvements and removing impendments.

The reasons for outsourcing are actually always the same: Lack of in-house expertise – i.e. too few or not the right employees on the one hand – and concentration on the core business on the other. Often there is also a lack of internal resources for the implantation of new technologies such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence or virtual reality.

Simply capturing data doesn’t automatically make for good customer relations. The desired effect is only achieved when you have the right idea to match.

Are people outside the team assigning directly tasks to the scrum team members? Is the team clear about what they are expected to do?

Christine Salzeller has been with ERNI since 2017. In 2013, at her previous job, she first came in contact with Agile and Scrum, which she got to know as an alternative to the classical waterfall model. She took over the role of a Scrum Master at ERNI in April 2019 and currently coaches three teams. In this interview, Christine tells us what a typical day of an Agile coach looks like.

Today’s agile book summary comes from our Agile Coach Christian Glück. Read about why he thinks the book This is Lean from Niklas Modig and Pär Åhlström is the best he has read so far.

Brands must act successfully throughout the entire customer journey. And this doesn’t end once a successful purchase has been made.

Have you ever wondered what makes an Agile practice run smoothly? The factors are described widely. From daily life, you can point out habits that make the difference and are worth following. In this series, our Agile expert Joffrey Zehnder reveals what he has learned throughout his years of working as an Agile Coach.

In our digital day and age companies can only be successful if they see things from the customer’s point of view and create a better customer experience.

Tanja Neuenschwander joined ERNI in September 2018. Currently, she is a Professional Consultant and a Product Owner of an agile team. She has been practicing agile for more than 10 years now in several different roles. She used to be a software developer and is now more focused on the business side of agile environments. Today, she introduces a book dealing with agile teamwork called The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni.

What does an outcome-based collaboration require from the customer? What do you have to prepare yourself for when considering switching to this kind of setup? Someone who can tell the best is one of our customers who introduced this model into their organisation. We talked to the Sourcing Manager at the customer about his view and experience.

Are you facing collaboration and tracking challenges on virtual retrospectives? Find tooling tips about how to boost your feedback loops.

Our customer in the telecommunications area requested more efficiency in the service delivery alongside raising quality. Is it possible to reach these seemingly contradictory aspects? Yes. We proposed to switch from the time and material model to an outcome-based collaboration. Read more about how the realisation worked out and what it meant for the customer.

Nowadays someone’s decision to buy is no longer a single, impulsive act but usually the culmination of many steps taken before the final selection is made.

If the maturity with the customer allows it, an outcome-based collaboration is an effective way for both the customer and the service provider. In this article, we talk about what outcome-based cooperation is based on and what benefits it can bring to all parties.

In our new four-part interview series about Digital Business Consulting, we want to give you some insights into the daily work of our experts. We talked to four of them about their recent projects, the challenges they faced and how they overcame them to create the most value for our customers. In the last interview of this series, Patrick Wilhelm talks about how he and his team helped a company, which is rich in tradition, to move into the 21st century. He is active as a Principal Consultant for the Swiss market unit and is globally responsible for the Innovation and Digital Business Consulting services.

In our new four-part interview series about Digital Business Consulting, we want to give you some insights into the daily work of our experts. We talked to four of them about their recent projects, the challenges they faced, and how they overcame them to create the most value for our customers. In the third interview of this series, Evert Smit talks about consulting on bringing a state organisation to a more state-to-the-art IT system and helping them keep their image of an innovation company. Evert is a Principal Consultant with long-year expertise on topics like Strategy, Change Management, Digital Transformation and Data Intelligence.

An association of architects and engineers in charge of overall norms and directives in the construction area needed to respond to the changing requirements of their end customers on interaction and exchange.

B2B companies need strong brands in order to lend an emotional power of distinction to rational arguments. Strong brands help companies to assert themselves in competitive markets.

Brands today have a very different role to play compared to just a few years ago. Customers expect them to understand their needs perfectly and to act accordingly.

The IoT World Congress is the largest IoT event in the world, dedicated to helping increase productivity via disruptive technology. The ERNI engineers who attended the congress summarise their opinions and concerns regarding IoT deployment and development over the next few years.

A customer of ours in the area of science-based innovation asked us to develop a 5-year strategy for their IT department. This is how we took on the challenge.

In our new four-part interview series about Digital Business Consulting, we want to give you some insights into the daily work of our experts. We talked to four of them about their recent projects, the challenges they faced and how they overcame them to create the most value for our customers. In the first interview of this series, Nicolas Neuwirth talks about how he and his team initiated a new data strategy in just 3 months. He’s a Zürich resident and a Junior Consultant at ERNI with a master’s degree in business innovation at the university of St. Gallen.

There are many companies that struggle with the transformation into a DevOps organisation. In general, it is challenging to organise a bigger group of people. On a company level this is even harder and the stakes are higher. Again, there are companies that can guide you on the way as a trusted partner.

There are four technological approaches for the development of a mobile app: Native, Cross-platform, Hybrid and PWA. Which option to choose depends on many factors. ERNI has now developed a questionnaire that supports you in this important decision: the AppType Chooser.

Strong brands ensure long-term customer loyalty to a company and create turnover and growth. They are present in the minds of potential customers, are seen in a positive light and enjoy a sense of trust.

One of our biggest customers in the transportation area approached us with a request to establish a programme for digitalisation of processes in the area of project engineering.

An interview with Dr Sergi Figuerola, Founder and CTO of the 5G Barcelona Alliance.

The manufacturers of health apps have not had an easy time in recent years. The e-health market is not only fiercely competitive, but is also fraught with numerous legal hurdles.

When we speak of design, we usually mean something’s visual appearance. Design is much more than this, however.

Today, more and more companies – from the manufacturing sector to the engineering industry – are starting to use such technology to optimise products, refine processes and predict possible failures.

IoT has been changing the mindset of the entire sports industry for years now. The IoT market does have an upward trend and the top leagues and teams will be a significant part of it. IoT can not only provide useful data when developing one’s performance but also influence the team strategies, boost fan experience, and help referees make the game fairer. ERNI engineers and keen sports enthusiasts Robert Cluet and Toni de la Torre discussed the key areas that the sports industry focuses on nowadays and offered their opinions from multiple perspectives.

At the very beginning, we find the most important question. What does a brand stand for? And where is the brand heading to? People are irrational and so are their choices. This reflects itself in many decisions they make. While that’s perfectly fine in private life, it can be challenging for a company. In each brand, each company and in every design aspect there is the potential to touch the people around. And a strong brand and appealing design generate business value. You can control and optimise the emotions of your brand based on data.

Only when a brand impresses the consumer, stands out from the competition, enthuses, captivates and surprises is the consumer prepared to buy, change supplier or try something new. This is exactly what brand experience design aims to do.

Healthcare is facing numerous challenges. As our population ages and the cost of care increases, the healthcare industry must find innovative ways to solve operational, clinical, and financial challenges. Technology allows these devices to generate, collect, analyse and transmit data, creating the Internet of Medical Things: a connected infrastructure of health systems and services.

We all know it, Covid-19 killed human interactions. But there are two different contexts our ERNIans are living nowadays