Fichtner Group switches to digital workplace

A current publication on the subject of digitization contains the following motto: “The success of digital transformation does not depend on the use of new technologies. What matters most is that we are willing and able to rethink the world with those tools.” (brand eins/thema, November 2019)

At Fichtner, we began at an early stage to give ourselves this option and to break new ground. Over the course of about two years, we provided our staff with a digital workplace consisting of three key components:

• integrated communication via messenger, video and phone calls
• mobile access to all company resources from any location
• the ability to share content and to work on it interactively together with colleagues and external partners.

We chose the Microsoft 365 platform, with Teams as its central component, to be the technical basis for our workplace of the future.

This new digital workplace enables our staff working at various locations all over the world to do things like work on a presentation jointly and simultaneously by holding a video chat. This not only saves them having to write lots of emails. Above all, they no longer have to keep asking themselves or checking every step of the way whether they are working on the latest version.

There is also a company-wide search engine integrated into the digital workplace, which makes it considerably easier to work efficiently. Our Fichtner “Google” encompasses all our data sources to drastically reduce the effort involved in searching for information.

We are currently enhancing this search engine with machine learning/AI functions with the aim of developing and testing new concepts in knowledge management.

Our digital workplace contributes significantly to our teams being able to operate in a more focused, fast and comprehensive manner within a highly dynamic work environment and to complete their tasks in the best way possible. In doing so, we have also laid the technical foundation for the digital transformation of our company and our services.

The second phase we are now working on is to rethink our processes and services on the basis of the available technology. Our staff are very active in this, with interested applicants very welcome to get involved in shaping the process and rethinking our way of working.

March 2020