The advance of digitization involves more than just the development of new technologies, because society is also changing in tandem with technological innovations. In this context, small and medium-sized companies in particular must better adapt to the changing needs of their customers and optimize their own processes in order not to be left behind. True to the motto "No limits", this year's SoftENGINE SolutionDays focused on the ongoing influence of digitalization on the working environment. The conference, which took place on June 8 and 9 in Speyer, gave SoftENGINE users, partners and employees the opportunity to exchange ideas about current trends and challenges in business operations.
Boundless ideas for the digital working world
Exciting workshops, informative presentations and creative elevator stories covered the challenges of e-commerce and innovations in software solutions for online stores and enterprise resource planning (ERP). In addition, musician, extreme athlete and entrepreneur Joey Kelly spoke about what it means to go to your own limits and also to overcome them. This provided the audience with new ideas to expand their personal and professional horizons true to the motto "No limits". The conference participants were able to immediately follow this maxim in a direct exchange with the developers and share new ideas for the digital working world. The commercial software solutions BüroWARE and WebWARE were the focus of the conference as pioneers for the control of business processes in digital commerce and industry, because project control is becoming incredibly complex due to more and more moving parts made up of technology and human interactions. Current approaches to digital projects are too unwieldy and cannot keep pace with rapid developments. Companies therefore need to create a working link between e-commerce and enterprise resource planning processes in order to meet the changing demands of digital commerce.
Due to the long-standing cooperation with SoftENGINE, Blackbit supports customers in setting up this link between store systems and merchandise management in an optimal way. The in-house ERP know-how helps to find the best possible solution for the changing needs of customers when developing complex projects for digital commerce. Currently, efforts are being made to link the JIRA project management tool with the WebWARE ERP system in order to minimize the number of necessary steps in project control and thus ensure better organized workflows.
Digitalization demands new methods
If companies try to manage complex projects according to old approaches, they will fail sooner or later. In the course of digitization, there is more and more information and constantly changing factors that complicate project management. Technology versus people - it was precisely this tension that was addressed in the elevator stories presented on the second day of the SoftENGINE SolutionDays. In a five-minute elevator story, Stefano Viani presented Growth-Driven Design for Blackbit as an agile method for serving rapidly evolving technologies and changing customer needs in equal measure when managing digital projects.
Growth-Driven Design is a process for developing digital projects, such as websites and online stores. From the perspective of the changing environment, the usual risks (high initial costs, immense time and no performance guarantee) can be circumvented already during the creation process. This is because the agile design and production process brings about high-performance online platforms. The Growth-Driven Design approach is suitable for mastering the new requirements of the Working World 4.0 (including the networking of production and service processes, changing user needs, and the preparation of data) because the flexible structures and variable processes adapt better to the actual conditions. Companies looking for an individual solution to link their online store to their ERP system should seek advice from a Growth-Driven Design expert who is also familiar with enterprise resource planning systems.
One step back, is one step ahead
If e-commerce projects continue to be managed according to time-honored procedures, they will sooner or later be doomed to failure. Companies should rethink their current project strategy and take a fresh look at innovative methods such as Growth-Driven Design. Incidentally, existing e-commerce platforms can (and must) be reworked and constantly optimized according to these agile principles. And even if it may mean having to take a step backwards for the time being, future (re-)launches can be better approached with this. Because in the longer term, companies can avoid expensive, cumbersome and unsuccessful online projects with the Growth-Driven Design method. This need for workable approaches to mastering digitization in the corporate work environment was also clearly expressed during the SoftENGINE SolutionDays 2017. The conclusion of the two-day conference was: leave perceived boundaries behind and pursue innovative approaches to cope with digital transformation.
As a certified Growth-Driven Design agency, Blackbit serves companies from various industries in the implementation of e-commerce projects. In doing so, we combine in-house ERP expertise with agile project management to find an optimal solution together with the customer.
Leave us feedback