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Straight from the Client: Consulting Experiences and Observed Trends
Straight from the Client: Consulting Experiences and Observed Trends
Straight from the Client: Consulting Experiences and Observed Trends
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Straight from the Client: Consulting Experiences and Observed Trends

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The challenges of our customers are more and more diverse. A couple of strong trends like digitalization and cyber security issues are facing the daily life of all of us. This is true for our business and private life. That "People make a difference" is a strong Vineyard belief. Therefore, in this book the Vineyard consultants are interviewed in order to present their individual consulting experiences.

As a starting point the current customer challenges and consulting trends are summarized. A contribution towards the GDPR deadline and approaches how to deal with these changes is following. The next article is suggesting how to handle the need in the pharmaceutical industry to communicate with business partners beyond the firewall. Based on Vineyards long experience in the IT Cyber Security world the following article is emphasizing why security is priority zero and how IT Security standards and frameworks can be used in a beneficial and lean way.
The following two articles have a strong technical focus. While the first one is introducing the new technology "Summarizer" which is capable to compress existing files from a content perspective the following is about what an agile methodology can deliver in the field IT Service Management.
The benefits of a focused eDiscovery approach for litigation processes are discussed in another contribution. How transitional changes for companies as a result of Brexit for example can be managed is following. Risk management in the cyber field for the banking industry and leading in projects are two interviews that reflect typical customer challenges. How to set-up an electronic archive as part of a digitalization initiative is outlined in an expert interview for the insurance industry. The benefits of a focused eDiscovery approach for litigation processes are discussed in another impulse. An interview about knowledge management is closing this book. As a key component for the customer in a knowledge society it is discussed how this can be approached for a consultancy.
If you focus your deep dives you can also see the little things in a broader context.

We wish our readers inspiring insights and new impulses to find the individual balance between the right deep dives and the ability for the helicopter view. Many thanks again to all Vineyard colleagues contributing to this new Vineyard book.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateDec 11, 2017
ISBN9783746003962
Straight from the Client: Consulting Experiences and Observed Trends
Author

Carsten Fabig

Carsten ist Gründer, Inhaber und Berater der Vineyard Management Consulting GmbH und betreut Projekte in mittelständischen und großen Unternehmen aus den Bereichen Finanzen, Versicherungen, Industrie, IT und Telekommunikation. Als Diplom-Wirtschaftswissenschaftler der Universität Hohenheim ist Carsten seit fast 20 Jahren in Großprojekten tätig. Seine Schwerpunkte liegen in den Bereichen Transition, Controlling und Management von Komplexität, Geschäftsprozessen, Multiprojekt- und Changemanagement. Seine Kernkompetenz ist das Management von großen (Multi-)Projekten zur Implementierung und Veränderung in globalen Umgebungen. Er verfügt über Zertifikate in ITIL, CMMI, SCRUM und Six Sigma und ist außerdem vom Project Management Institute (PMI) als Project Management Professional PMP® zertifiziert. Er hat Artikel und Bücher zu den Themen Changemanagement, Balance Scorecards, Software-Lizenzmanagement, GRC, Prozesskostenrechnung, Basel II, Komplexität, Projektmanagement, IT und Transition Management veröffentlicht.

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    Book preview

    Straight from the Client - Carsten Fabig

    Vineyard Management Consulting GmbH

    Vineyard Management Consulting GmbH is an experienced

    Management Consulting company with focus on:

    Change Advisory

    Management of Complexity

    Optimization of Projects

    Networking with People

    We have constantly enhanced our expertise and competence in numerous global projects in the sectors banking, insurances, telecommunications, automotive, and information technology.

    Our Management Consultants have a project and professional career experience of more than 10 years leveraged by continuous investments in their personal development. During the successful delivery of our customer projects we emphasize on social aspects and intercultural specifics as well as on positive and target oriented communication.

    Our core competencies are

    Preface & Acknowledgements

    The challenges of our customers are more and more diverse. A couple of strong trends like digitalization and cyber security issues are facing the daily life of all of us – this is true for our business and private life. That People make a difference is a strong Vineyard belief. Therefore, in this book the Vineyard consultants are interviewed in order to present their individual consulting experiences.

    As a starting point the current customer challenges and consulting trends are summarized. A contribution towards the GDPR deadline and approaches how to deal with these changes is following. The next article is suggesting how to handle the need in the pharmaceutical industry to communicate with business partners beyond the firewall. Based on Vineyard’s long experience in the IT Cyber Security world the following article is emphasizing why security is priority zero and how IT Security standards and frameworks can be used in a beneficial and lean way.

    The following two articles have a strong technical focus. While the first one is introducing the new technology Summarizer which is capable to compress existing files from a content perspective the following is about what an agile methodology can deliver in the field IT Service Management.

    The benefits of a focused eDiscovery approach for litigation processes are discussed in another contribution. How transitional changes for companies as a result of Brexit for example can be managed is following. Risk management in the cyber field for the banking industry and leading in projects are two interviews that reflect typical customer challenges. How to set-up an electronic archive as part of a digitalization initiative is outlined in an expert interview for the insurance industry. The benefits of a focused eDiscovery approach for litigation processes are discussed in another impulse. An interview about knowledge management is closing this book. As a key component for the customer in a knowledge society it is discussed how this can be approached for a consultancy.

    If you focus your deep dives you can also see the

    little things in a broader context.

    We wish our readers inspiring insights and new impulses to find the individual balance between the right deep dives and the ability for the helicopter view. Many thanks again to all Vineyard colleagues contributing to this new Vineyard book.

    Hofheim am Taunus, November 2017

    Carsten Fabig Alexander Haasper

    Managing Director and Management Consultants of Vineyard Management Consulting GmbH

    Table of contents

    Consulting Trends

    Customer Challenges

    Question and Answers

    Good Practices and Summary

    Vita: Alexander Haasper

    Past and Future of Data Management – GDPR-Deadline (28.05.2018) introduces new challenges in the IT landscape

    Customer Challenge and Overview

    Question and Answers

    Good Practices and Summary

    Vita: Dr. Lars Niemann

    Secure Sharing and Collaboration beyond the Firewall in R&D Life Sciences - A necessity for New Product Innovations

    Customer Challenge and Overview

    Question and Answers

    Good Practices and Summary

    Vita: My-Ly Nguyen

    Information Security is Job Zero

    Customer Challenge and Overview

    Question and Answers

    Good Practices and Summary

    Vita: Rainer Sponholz

    Too much information is wasting money - Summarizer

    Customer Challenge and Overview

    Question and Answers

    Good Practices and Summary

    Vita: Dr. Coskun Akinalp

    Usage of agile methodology in IT Service Management

    Overview and Customer Challenges

    Question and Answers

    Good Practices and Summary

    Vita: Laura Dinis

    How can the IT department create added value in a litigation process?

    Customer Challenges and Overview

    Question and Answers

    Good Practices and Summary

    Vita: Frode R. Karlsen

    Transformation programmes to manage changes like Brexit

    Customer Challenge and Overview

    Question and Answers

    Good Practices and Summary

    Vita: Carsten Fabig

    Risk Management – Cyber Risk

    Customer Challenge and Overview

    Question and Answers

    Good Practices and Summary

    Vita: Ioana Salanta

    People & Management: Leading laterally in projects

    Customer Challenges and Overview

    Question and Answers

    Good Practices and Summary

    Vita: Tanja Endres

    Digitization of Insurance Companies

    Customer Challenge and Overview

    Question and Answers

    Good Practices and Summary

    Vita: Thomas Durstberger

    Knowledge Management

    Customer Challenge and Overview

    Question and Answers

    Good Practices and Summary

    Vita: Anja Krause

    Literatur

    Alexander Haasper

    Consulting Trends

    I. Consulting Trends

    1 Customer Challenges

    The European consulting market is a growing business as the last 5 years are showing an increase of more than 5 percent per year. The 2016 turnover increase of 7,9% in Germany is an outstanding segment with a total market size of 9,3 billion (Mrd.) EUR. The stable economic environment and the digitalization across all industries are the main market drivers. In particular, the market as well as strategy consulting is also growing continuously. This is still a huge heterogeneous segment where the customer is supported by consultancies in various roles to drive the implementation of their strategic programs. The IT outsourcing business is of course growing as a result of cloud technology.

    Looking from a customer perspective there are some major trends that are important to characterize the current customer situation. This should also inform consulting companies as to how they should enhance and sharpen their portfolio.

    Digitalization means business model transformation

    Digitalization has become a game changer. New competitors have already entered markets that have been stable for decades. Of course, the most prominent example is Google, an internet age company that has entered the automotive sector with their mobility services and autonomous driving competence. However, the majority of the companies have only just started to restructure as a result of digitalization. Across all areas of digitalization change management and business model transformation are required as this has a huge impact customer interaction and service delivery management from an organizational point of view.

    The true potential for digitalization does not lie in one singe business line as today the majority of the organisations are in a near optimum state regarding the specific business line processes. The potential is in the orchestration and automation across business lines. Therefore, digitalization requires organisational transformation. The promises of artificial intelligence (AI) are high. But the implementation of this technology will take much longer as many of the protagonists are currently forecasting. The main reason are the risks related to applications of AI. As a consequence, all decisions supported by AI require a clear organizational setup and rules how to deal with risks and critical situations when the human staff needs to stepin for AI.

    Data protection requires to manage the business records

    The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Community requires companies to manage their records and enable deletion of individual data, based on pre-defined retention periods and, in certain circumstances, at customer request. The challenge is that the majority of the IT systems has never been designed to fulfil deletion requirements. Also for unstructured data e.g. on Microsoft SharePoint sites and file share systems the amount of data is a big and growing issue that companies need to get under control. The requirement to manage business records is not new one as a lot of regulated industries need to be compliant with law and regulation demanding minimum retention periods, some requirements of which date as far back as the 50s. The big challenge today is replication and copying of data to other contexts which has increased the amount of data tremendously. Besides the sheer volume of data there is also an issue with old or historic systems. There is often a lack of available know-how with these systems.

    IT security needs to defend the company against cyber security threads

    IT security is getting rising up the CEO’s and CISO’s agenda in the majority of companies, even those that are not heavily regulated. Security awareness has increased over the last couple of years due to the potential impact of malware like WannaCry or the risks related to direct hacker attacks. The main challenges for the customers are to deal with the different business stakeholders and regulatory bodies regarding cyber risks as well as manage a variety of relevant technologies and their operations effectively around the weakest links in the chain. The big challenge still facing the CISOs of the Mittelstand (Small and Medium sized Enterprises – SMEs) and the traditional industrial companies is that IT, and in particular IT Security, often does not have the appropriate importance in the organisation compared to Sales, Sourcing and Production.

    Project management at high maturity level is a must-have transformation skill

    In the majority of the companies the maturity of project management has increased significantly in the last decade. Even in industries where project managers have been hired from the external market there is a trend to staff projects more and more from the internal market. However, when it comes to strategic projects it is still a struggle to find the right people. The agile project hype is still relevant, however the companies are currently learning in which areas the agile approach is feasible and where it has to be combined with more traditional methods.

    Although discussed for more than a decade, complexity management is a consulting topic the majority of the companies still do not want to buy or integrate in their day-to-day project management business. However, any organization has to deal with increasing complexity in a world becoming more and more digital and meshed.

    Summary and Recommendations

    Overall, the need for strong, solution orientated, including reliant, project delivery for consultants and companies is greater than it has ever been before. All strategic projects and disciplines require very skilled and experienced staff that harder and harder to find. On the one hand, more and more standard IT solutions help to not reinvent the wheel. On the other hand, the more complex topics require end-to-end and cross-organizational solutions which involves managing a variety of stakeholders and the interdependent aspects of strategic projects.

    The majority of well established companies have not yet changed the organizational structures and daily work culture significantly: Agile approaches are mostly project or program specific, IT oriented projects are more open minded for the working environment for young talented software engineers, but often have missed to adjust the next management level, customer business attitude and parameters for a successful working relationship with these new IT teams.

    The lack of skilled resources as a result of the high demands of the trends above is both an opportunity and a risk. As it is unlikely to find a perfect team from a subject matter skill perspective, the opportunity is to develop the relevant skills on the job and drive team and organizational development through long term partnerships and cooperation with consultancies that support new successful ways of working.

    2 Question and Answers

    Vineyard: Alexander, what has been the point in your CV when your fascination for consulting started?

    Alexander: As a computer scientist with business administration focus from my studies I have started my career as a junior consultant in a small IT management consultancy in Wiesbaden in 1999. From the beginning with my more technical focus at that point in time I have been more than surprised and impressed that the efforts to create transparent concepts that can fly and finally get implemented in the customer organizations are so huge – and sometimes consulting seemed more like an art than fact based analysis. So I was very keen to take a much broader approach to develop my skills beyond IT management starting with process management and eBusiness development focused on projects in the financial sector. Of course, I was fascinated by the promising business models in the internet 1.0 age and on the other hand sceptical regarding the development of the consulting sector.

    And then, yes to be honest it was more or less a biographical accident. In 2001 that company went bankrupt mostly as a result of the hard landing of the internet hype and a lacking ability for a quick change in the organization. Due to my fascination and a couple of inspiring colleagues I was convinced to continue as a self-employed consultant to set-up a new company for Management Consulting.

    Vineyard: What has changed in general over the last 20 years in the consulting business?

    Alexander: When I look back at the last nearly 20 years of my consulting experience there are a couple of new drivers and new parameters significantly influencing the consulting business. However, when thinking about what remains the same I can say: overall the nature of the business to effectively communicate with customers and help them with their strategical focus and orientation, conceptual problems or even operational setup.

    As Vineyard is serving customers of various industries I think besides the classic industry culture and attitude the market pressure varies significantly across the branches with deviating profits and very different capabilities to change the organisation and business models. While the firms in a destructive competition market like telecommunications and banking need to focus more and more on cost reductions, the more Mittelstand or niche players can develop more focussed, flexible models by combining their way and intense of working together with consultancies. In particular the cost saving companies have learned to be more and more strict to push day-rates down for the senior and junior consultant skill level.

    Overall the market is getting more and more transparent with increasing power for the purchasing departments compared to the customer line businesses. Last but not least to mention is the increasing dynamic: although it is even harder to find the right people the customers are less likely (?) to exchange consultants or stop

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