I am currently supporting a large omni-channel eCommerce project for a retailer. We are in the middle of the discovery phase, discussing thousands of requirements with various stakeholders at the customer and trying to bring together many loose ends. In one of the first sessions, in which we also analyzed the risks, someone formulated the…
User experience is one of the buzzwords of today. Ever since it became generally known how Steve Jobs dealt with the customer experience of his products in an almost manic way, it has been part of every marketing manager’s good manners to ride around on it in projects and emphasize how important a good UX…
It’s fintech. In Germany as well as in Switzerland. Many initiatives and start-ups are emerging. There is even more talk about it. In small Switzerland, various larger companies are trying their hand at mobile payment apps and even though I find such motivation and action commendable, I think the solutions shown are aiming nowhere. Here…
A few days ago, I saw the poster below. I reflexively tweeted it with a rather cynical comment. Too often I experience traditional management consultancies as mills that grind extremely slowly. Encouraging the customer to be idle. Transformational doing? How paradoxical to advertise this when you work almost exclusively theoretically and hypothetically. And then leaving…
It seems to be a diffuse, mysterious ailment. I see it again and again in customers. Customers with very different characteristics. Be it origin, gender or skin color. Whether in large or small companies. Be it in Germany, France, Italy or Switzerland. I’ve experienced it everywhere, the “our customers” syndrome.
The following article was published in Topsoft magazine in August 2015. I am publishing it here as many German readers do not subscribe to the magazine. The digital transformation has reached the executive floors of “Corporate Europe”. Gone are the days when even high-ranking management staff denied digital progress and its impact on society and…
The day before yesterday I was once again in beautiful Switzerland. I was invited to give a talk at Topsoft15 on the topic of “Digital transformation: where to start?“. On my way there, I noticed the poster below. Although I had seen it before, I thought to myself, well, what a funny satire. What fine…
I am often asked what is important to be successful in a tech company like an internet agency or a tech product startup. Having worked with many such companies and worked in a few, I think there are a number of factors that are very important. However, they are more general in nature such as…
As more and more digital offerings have to be created, the “demand” for developers has increased enormously. I often see larger companies toying with the idea of building internal teams for their platform projects instead of relying on external service providers. This may or may not work out well. In fact, it often goes wrong….
In my previous articles, I have often written about the fact that the leadership qualities that are in demand today are largely similar to those exhibited by traditional entrepreneurs during industrialization. Even today, there are still entrepreneurs who have already left their careers behind them, but from whom we can learn a great deal in…