digital transformation Archive - Page 3 of 5

Digital change 21. March 2021

Complexity in management, agility and digital transformation

Management complexity has been around since digital transformation brought back into focus. How can companies deal with the increasing complexity and dynamism of markets? How can modern leadership and structure be established in companies and how can we reduce complexity with the help of special methods. According to the author Niels Pfläging, corporate structures should be just as lively as markets. But what does he mean exactly and how is complexity reduced in practice? Why is there complexity in management Why did it get so complex? What were the triggers and why wasn’t it like that “earlier”? For this I found the picture above. It seems that this dynamic has only slowly increased since 1970 and has peaked again in the past few years. The reasons for the high density and the increase in competition appear understandable. In addition, many authors mention the digital transformation, Industry 4.0 and Big data…

Agile organization 21. March 2021

Reinventing Organizations: Organizations Yesterday and Today

Organizations are in constant change. A core task of the modern manager is to carry out changes together with employees and to actively involve them in the process. Especially in times of a shortage of skilled workers and constantly changing market conditions, it is important to make a company fit for the future. this has Frederic Laloux in his book Reinventing Organizations examines the organizational development of the last 100,000 (!) Years in detail and provides information on where modern organizations should move. Reinventing Organizations In his book, Laloux gives an insight into his research on organizational development. In addition, the author even moves back up to 100,000 years. He assigned a color to each of the epochs and characterized them precisely. This is how we start our journey through time of over 100,000 years of organizational development. I will only go into the individual phases of development very briefly…

Agile departments 21. March 2021

Beyond agile and agile software development

Agility has long been a fundamental part of IT and there is actually no more non-agile software development. Agility is now also expanding outside of IT. A related article about agile departments outside of IT already exist. But since agility was established, the question has often arisen: What will “Beyond Agile” come up with? Agile in the Waterfallworld In my Master thesis (Lindner 2015, p. 24) I have already researched the initial situation of agile departments and found that an IT department often has to react flexibly to typical waterfall customers and that agility stops after IT. In the current research project a year later, I notice that agility is slowly leaving IT. But IT departments will still have to react flexibly to each customer. So this has to be an important trait of the next level of agility. You can find a whitepaper: Agile team teams in waterfall organizations…

Agile departments 21. March 2021

Agile sales and agile sales

Agility is widespread in software development. But how can the term “agility”, which is also described in business terms with flexibility, be transferred to sales? Let’s take a look at the definition of sales first. The Gabler Wirtschaftslexikon says: “Sales mainly includes the sale of goods; distribution of goods (logistics, marketing logistics), control of the sales force organization and maintenance of the relationships between a manufacturer and retailers or, in the case of direct sales (direct sales), to the end customer. Newer approaches emphasize the great importance of customer management in the context of sales. It should be noted, however, that sales departments in companies often focus on existing customers without the flexibility to tackle new projects and ideas within the department. Often with fatal consequences: If a major customer breaks away, this often means economic difficulties for the entire company. If sales, instead of managing the existing customer base,…

Agile departments 21. March 2021

Agile production in Industry 4.0

Production is “the process of the targeted combination of production factors (input) and their transformation into products (products, output)” (Gabler Wirtschaftslexikon). So far, so good – but how do you turn standardized production into agile production? Ultimately, increasing market volatility and growing uncertainty force manufacturing companies to steadily assimilate their own production concepts to changing conditions. Industry 4.0 is intended to represent the fourth industrial revolution: Smart, digitally networked systems ensure automated production. But it’s not just cyber-physical systems which “upgrade” the still largely existing Industry 3.0. AGILE production and new business models Kaufmann (2015, p. 12) shows an initial trend with regard to agile models: The focus with this approach is not exclusively on intelligently communicating machines, but on a fundamental adaptation or even realignment of the (existing) business models. Above all, adapted products and shorter delivery times are taking a step towards agility. The main focus is on…

Agile departments 21. March 2021

Agile Finance and Agile FinTech

Almost every German has a bank account. In the meantime, you can “almost” even (almost) delete it, since even homeless people are no longer allowed to open a basic current account by law. The reason is obvious: without a current account, we are not part of this society. Rent, taxes, credits – cash is nothing today. Anyone who carries large amounts of cash is either a drug dealer or an arms dealer, or maybe some red light boss. Of course, this claim is not true, but it is already clear: the bank account and its deposit money have already won the crusade! In the digital age, however, the good old checking account and the general business model of the established banks are facing several new battles. For example: Deposit vs. Blockchain – Creative FinTechs can be a kind of interface between the New World and the Old World and make…

Agile departments 21. March 2021

Agile logistics and the agile supply chain

Logistics “includes all tasks for the integrated planning, coordination, implementation and control of the flow of goods as well as the goods-related information from the generation sinks to the consumption sinks” ( Gabler Business Lexicon ). Furthermore, the task of logistics is to provide the right goods at the right time in the right amount in the right place. Logistics is characterized by a high level of dynamism. Often the definition of which goods actually have to be available at which location and at what time cannot be clarified. So it seems that changeability should be a fundamental element of logistics. For this reason, there has recently been a rethink towards agile logistics. Agile logistics or is it lean? While “Lean” was the absolute keyword in logistics a while ago and every manager proudly showed his Six Sigma Belt, there is now a rethinking towards agile logistics (Valerod 2013, p.…

Agile departments 21. March 2021

Agile Marketing

Why agile marketing? “The basic idea of marketing is the consistent alignment of the entire company to the needs of the market” ( Gabler Lexicon ). Markets in particular are very unstable these days and are constantly subject to new trends. It is precisely to these that modern marketing has to react. Consumers are now also exposed to a great flood of advertising messages. As a result, many customers actually no longer perceive advertising properly. Experts are therefore calling for new ways and methods for modern marketing. But how is modern marketing defined and how agile should my marketing be? In the following I would like to introduce two trends from the literature and try to interpret how agile marketing can help companies. Marketing 3.0 Kotler et al. (2010) defined this new type of marketing with the slogan “From customer to person”. To illustrate this development, they published the following…

Digital leadership 21. March 2021

What is the difference between digital leadership and agile leadership?

Digitization was undoubtedly one of the trending topics in the past year. Contrary to what the talk of the trend suggests, digitization is anything but a temporary phenomenon – it is rather a so-called megatrend: a long-term development that shapes all areas of social life (Source Heap ). In order to implement this, the collective term “Digital Leadership” was formed. Continued to pose Heap the following: Never has the market demanded innovations, solutions and methods so quickly, never has the need for skilled workers been higher and never has work been carried out so closely across borders and time limits. This presents managers with new challenges in personnel management. One possible solution is: agile leadership. So there is agile leadership on the one hand and digital leadership on the other. But what is the difference and which of it is currently optimal in the digital transformation? Agile leadership For executives,…

Digital leadership 21. March 2021

Leadership 4.0 – Digitization in Management

The acceleration of the markets and the increasing complexity of possibilities and requirements demand managers in a previously unknown form: In order to keep pace with the new developments, the management culture has to change Innovation Evangelists . It is, among other things, the task of executives to exemplify, promote and convey values. According to the Innovation Evangelist, they must also promote four criteria in order to be attractive to young professionals: good teamwork, (perceived) meaningfulness of work, compatibility of work and family and personal development. The following article is intended to shed light on how executives could manage such a balancing act. Employee autonomy while maintaining controllability and control A special component that is required of executives should be trust. That’s right, because permanent control is demotivating. Nevertheless, a manager must also maintain constructive control so that activities take place in accordance with the company’s goals. This balancing act…