Portfolio management – what does the term mean in IT? An IT project portfolio bundles projects that run in parallel and either relate to each other professionally or share resources. IT portfolio management is therefore the central control of such projects.
If the projects of a strategic IT programme are spread across several departments, this often leads to overlapping, especially when working on analogous requirements. Often there is also a lack of synchronisation of the runtimes of the systems involved. In extreme cases, project teams deliver services that neutralise each other. With central management of interdependent projects, companies create the organisational basis for a stable, high-performance IT architecture that is aligned with the business model.
The development of IT portfolio management begins with a thorough analysis of the system landscape. From this we derive a roadmap of sensible projects. These range from system maintenance to conversion or replacement to shutdown. The roadmap helps to clarify which projects fit the business and IT strategy and what they contribute to the result. In doing so, the IT architects and portfolio managers of Consileon and the client are guided by enterprise architecture frameworks (EAF) such as Togaf or purpose-specific alternatives.
Agile process models are increasingly gaining acceptance in project work. This means that portfolio management is faced with the following new tasks, among others:
Megatrends such as digitalisation, climate change and the erosion of the middle class are also affecting the automotive industry. While manufacturers used to plan for the long term in the model cycle, today they are competing with the smart mobility offers of agile new players. In this environment, the requirements for a project can change at any time. Portfolio management offers project teams a framework in which they can quickly reschedule. With the advance of networking and digitalisation, the complexity of IT architectures is increasing relentlessly. In the automotive industry, too, the competitive pressure is now so high that a rethink has begun. For several years now, more and more companies have been applying agile methods on both a large and small scale.
Consileon supports clients from industries such as automotive, finance and retail in the transition to agile working and in the management of classic, agile and hybrid project portfolios. This change is best achieved iteratively over several stages.
The first step is to take stock. In expert interviews and workshops, we provide ourselves and the client with an overview of the current programmes, clarify their relevance and interdependence and check for overlaps. This analysis results in options for action, including concepts for closing any gaps. The spectrum here ranges from fine-tuning to adjusting the scope of the project to complementary or continuing projects. Concept proposals are tested and iteratively agreed upon. The insights gained in this way are passed on to the client’s management and technical staff in presentations and workshops. We moderate decisions to be taken by several departments. The maintenance of the IT portfolio is an ongoing issue that requires constant attention. Consileaner supports automotive companies professionally, technically and as external portfolio managers.
The implementation of the new dimension of sustainability in the financial industry is in full swing. Customers are communicating that they want to invest more in sustainable products. The changeover in regulation at European and national level is taking shape. Banks and asset managers will also have to position themselves in this area in the future. But how can this be done in the face of simultaneous pressure on margins and costs as well as intensified digitization and competitive pressure?
The consideration of sustainability criteria and risks in the processes of banks and asset managers requires a structured approach, which at its core starts from a clearly defined sustainability strategy, which should be integrated into the current business strategy. Based on this fundamental positioning, focused product and sales strategies are defined. Their implementation affects all relevant areas end-to-end, from the sales and advisory process to the product development process to credit, organizational or risk processes.
Two years ago, Consileon established a competence team that deals intensively with sustainability issues in the financial market. This team is available to you for an exchange and for support in implementation projects.
Modern game engines are so universally applicable that they are also used outside of computer games to present digital content. This enormous potential is also used in the automotive industry for the visualization of vehicles.
Game engines bring the previously often competing goals of appealing visualization, interaction capability and required hardware performance closer together. This makes them interesting for machine builders and OEMs in all areas of the product lifecycle. Be it for evaluating design decisions in an early phase of product development without physical images of the design data or for visualizing any variation of the product towards the customer.
Game engines can also be used in the field of virtual reality (VR). Virtual reality is a highly immersive experience, as this technology takes the user into a new, virtual world, completely shutting out their environment. As a result, vehicle manufacturers that convert their showroom configurators to a game engine can let their customers experience individually configured dream cars directly using VR. This means that vehicles can not only be explored before the start of production, but can also be virtually test-driven in the future. Although haptically sitting in a real car body, the perceived visual environment is “drawn” by digital media. In addition, the customer can easily change the configuration, because only when the customer knows all the options and has tried them out can he make the right decision.
The foundation of any successful game is its game engine, such as Unity or the Unreal Engine, as it is crucial to the game’s usability and thus player satisfaction. A current game engine provides all the necessary tools to freely design an interactive experience of any degree. The game engine behind each game can be used to program the interactive behavior, i.e. the response to player input, place 3D models in space, texture objects, play animations, play audio signals, calculate physics effects and establish multiplayer connections. The high diversity of available game engines in a mass market and a permanent increase in hardware performance have ensured continuous further development, distribution and opening for years, which is only underlined by the worldwide turnover of the video game industry of 73 billion euros in 2019. Whereas in the past a game engine was often developed specifically for each game, widespread and, to a certain extent, even free-to-use all-rounders dominate today; these are also increasingly being used in industries beyond video games, where their potential is being exploited to great effect.
Consileon offers holistic consulting on the strategic and process-related use of game engines in your company. In addition to conceptual support, we advise on the selection of the optimal game engine for you, taking into account all advantages and disadvantages as well as technological limitations. In addition, we also support you in deciding whether the use of a game engine in a specific use case makes sense and is economical, or whether the desired effect can instead be achieved by existing software products in combination with higher-quality hardware.
In the medium term, every financial services provider will offer sustainable investment strategies. Wealth managers can stand out to clients with individualized sustainability.
There is hardly an area of daily life in which sustainability is not a topic. Starting from a change in consumer thinking in the area of food purchases, almost all companies are now trying to draw attention to the sustainability of their products and services. Can this phenomenon also be transferred to the financial industry? And what does this mean for wealth managers? What opportunities does the potential shift open up?
Sabine Beinhardt will give you the answer.
You can read the entire article here (last page retrieved 05/18/2020). (*only available in German)
Increasing digitization across all industries is opening up new sales and marketing opportunities. Social media such as Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat have experienced breathtaking growth rates in recent years. We are currently experiencing this in a similar form with the video portal TikTok. But while advertising is becoming increasingly precise and differentiated in addressing the respective target group, some industries are lagging behind their customers’ expectations of sales channels.
In addition to “classic” online marketing, for example via e-mail campaigns, current campaigns tailored to the target group can be set up quickly and cost-effectively via social media. The success of these campaigns can be easily measured with technical possibilities within the framework of campaign tracking. If a company integrates online marketing into its touchpoints and ordering systems, the sales success of individual campaigns can be measured against real sales and analyzed using suitable key performance indicators (KPIs). Future campaigns can then be optimized based on the results. Likewise, those touchpoints can be identified at which interested parties drop out and do not become customers.
Regulatory projects such as the upcoming implementation of the European MiFID II Directive are causing upheavals in the market and require both external asset managers (EAMs) and their custodian banks to rethink their approach. Price increases, changes in ownership and IT changes are putting additional strain on the relationship between external asset managers and their custodian banks. In this environment, regional banks, direct banks, traditional private banks, major national and international banks, and specialized fund custodians vie for mandates and play a special role in the triangular construct of EAM, custodian, and end client. But how satisfied are external asset managers with their custodian banks and where do they see weaknesses? What are the services with which a custodian bank can stand out from the competition?
The EAMs participating in our survey are generally satisfied with their custodian banks. Nevertheless, there is some potential for improvement. The following are particularly criticized
In addition, the reputation of some custodian banks is seen as critical – certainly not a point that can be remedied in the short term. In addition to the improvement in the points mentioned above, there are good opportunities for the custodian banks to attract new EAM as customers or to strengthen the bond with their customer base by offering additional services.
Learn more in our study External Asset Manager und ihre Depotbanken (engl. External Asset Managers and their Custodians | The study is in German.)
Even a perusal of the daily and trade press makes decision-makers in retail banking frown with concern: While eroding interest margins, bargain hunting by some customers, reluctance to buy securities, and aggressive digital financial services (fintechs) are gnawing away at revenues, costs are rising due to investments in multi-channel offerings, regulatory requirements, and higher wages.
Some retail bankers may look enviously at their colleagues in wealth management (WM) or private banking. There, it looks as if all is still right with the world. Instead of interest rate hoppers with a preference for costly digital interaction channels, the dominant clientele is not very interested in price and is happy to engage with advisors and mandates. The future also seems rosy: the company is relying on tried-and-tested methods such as the personal contact person, optimizing service ratios through the use of modern CRM systems, striving for good value development, and investing only the bare essentials in technical equipment. After all, the company’s main selling point is its good relationship with its customers.
As consultants with many years of experience in the financial industry, we have never been convinced by this simplified but essentially accurate self-image of private bankers. That is why we are traveling into the future of wealth management with this study. To do this, we asked thirty wealthy investors under the age of thirty, each in exploratory one-on-one interviews, about their expectations of their wealth manager.
The results suggest that private banking is facing just as far-reaching changes as the mass market business. Nevertheless, the majority of asset managers seem to have come to terms with the modernization backlog in their profession. Even if one or the other industry leader is expanding its sales channels, networking and offering online services, most of the players seem to hope that new customers will drop their desire for e-banking and channel integration at the threshold of wealth management (or only demand such things in giro transactions) and will henceforth only listen to the advisor assigned to them.
Our study shows, however: Some younger wealthy people never really get into wealth management. Relationships with WM providers exist in most wealthy families, but often the younger generation lacks a motive to use them. Lacking a model of care for the wealthy of tomorrow, providers are unable to access them, losing ground to the omnipresent retail banks and expanding fintechs. This is critical not least because young investors have financial resources that make them interesting as customers at a young age.
If a young investor nevertheless contacts a wealth manager, his expectations are often disappointed. Yet the target group does not want futuristic hoo-ha, but only the consistent further development of classic World Cup virtues. Young wealthy people want to be looked after just as personally as the generations before them. Only via channels such as e-mail and websites. In addition, the successors to the wealthy, who have grown up with the Internet, expect constant accessibility and tailored offers.
According to the participants in our survey, wealth managers rarely succeed in meeting these demands. Consequently, just under half of our panel say they will look for another wealth manager after any further inflows of assets.
From the provider’s point of view, this raises the question of how the personal advice that is still essential in wealth management can be provided on digital channels. Those who are among the first to present convincing solutions will gain a sustainable competitive advantage. The answers can diverge, for example, with the market position of the company. If online functions are standard for large WM providers in the future, smaller companies will achieve a lot in the first attempt if they can be reached by phone for longer and communicate more by e-mail. Even though our study documents the views of young wealthy people, such measures are likely to bear fruit with all customer groups.
To maximize success with younger clients, wealth managers should develop a separate service model for them. Approaches oriented toward generational change fall short with their focus on inheritance. In practice, it is more a matter of recognizing representatives of the target group – also in the customer base -, addressing them with exclusive offers such as the so-called concierge services, and keeping the dialog going via the channels of their choice.
Find out more in our study 30 unter 30 – Was junge Vermögende von ihrer Bank erwarten (engl.: 30 under 30 – What young wealthy people expect from their bank).
Virtual reality (VR) refers to computer-generated and animated, realistic visual worlds that adapt to the viewer’s perspective in real time. Used in marketing, they make it possible to experience a product emotionally even before it rolls off the production line. VR models are particularly useful in the sale of cost-intensive, customizable products, for example in the automotive industry, which offers new car buyers an individual configuration. In principle, one and the same model can be ordered in several million variants. To create virtual reality, you not only need software that calculates three-dimensional images from any perspective in real time, but also playback hardware whose frame rate (frames per second, FPS) is high enough to create an impression of flowing movement. A frame rate that is too low can cause nausea in the viewer. Since the necessary technology is now market-ready and affordable, VR models are becoming increasingly important in both B2C and B2B marketing.
Computer-aided design (CAD) provides manufacturers of technical goods such as carmakers with extensive 3D data. These can be prepared with moderate effort for the visual representation of a vehicle on the brand website, in the configurator or catalog, for example. To do this, the dimensions from the CAD systems must be assigned materials, among other things. In addition, the individual parts must be interconnected in such a way that the arrangement is correct from every angle. This work, which is by no means trivial, requires constant monitoring and adjustment, especially since even small, short-term changes to the data stock, for example on the occasion of the annual model update, can have a massive impact on the visualization.
Virtual demonstration vehicles would benefit retailers in particular. The increasing variety and complexity of models sometimes overwhelms dealers. Whereas a manufacturer used to have five to ten models in its range, some now have over forty. How many car dealerships have the space to stock such a large number, each in several variants? Many of the new functions and extras also require explanation. Here, dealers expect manufacturers to provide attractive media to support the sales pitch. However, producing glossy brochures or catalogs is expensive and time-consuming. On top of that, they quickly become outdated. Quote from the field: “To explain modern technology, I need modern technology.” For example, a VR configurator that offers the following.
The design of the VR environment and its presentation in the dealership is also important. If the customer buys a premium product, the showroom should already radiate value and modernity. A VR configurator fulfills this requirement. For customer-oriented development of the software, we recommend an agile methodology that allows rapid adaptation to modifications in the use case. In this way, feedback from retailers, for example, can be incorporated into the solution at short notice.
If international use of the software is planned, country versions must be programmed that reflect the respective legal requirements. Another challenging task is to roll out the configurator to the dealers and to organize support for both the hardware and the software in all countries of use. Numerous issues have to be clarified between the car manufacturer, VR providers and car dealerships, from the procurement of the hardware, including furniture, to user contracts and the establishment of the three support levels.
Are you interested in using virtual reality as a sales tool? Then contact us! We can advise you on the following aspects, among others:
You will find extensive information in our Content Magazine Issue 2, which is in German.
Digitization, ever new customer demands and a changed market environment not only require maximum flexibility at high speed from product and IT developers, the entire company must become agile. This applies to SMEs as well as transnational corporations, even if the transition to agile working is easier in smaller companies. However, especially for manufacturers of sophisticated products, well-established processes that are interlocked with the organizational structure stand in the way of agility.
Characteristics of a company characterized by agility are the successful integration of young and new colleagues as well as open communication across hierarchical levels that promotes creativity and brings problems to light before they escalate. Agile employees do not perceive change as a threat, but as the normal case and an opportunity.
Becoming an agile company is a fundamental decision. It is not enough for individual teams to do the pioneering work. First and foremost, managers must commit to the upcoming cultural change and set an example. In addition, it is important to choose a process model that fits with the company’s own values, projects, employees and structures. While Kanban or Scrum, for example, tend to be applied at the level of the teams and their management, PuLSE can also be used to make middle and upper management more agile.
The automotive industry is in the midst of upheaval. New competitors are acting partly as partners and partly as rivals, the supplier market is concentrating, and demand is declining. In order to hold their own in this environment, manufacturers must become more agile. We support the transition to agile methods not only in software development, but also in core departments such as purchasing, production, sales, controlling or human resources.
With these five stages, our experts also make your company more agile:
This cultural change will only succeed if the workforce supports it. That’s why we involve your employees right from the start. Particularly interested employees can assist the coaches as tandem partners to later coach their colleagues themselves or act as Scrum Masters and drive agilization beyond the project.
In addition to classic project work according to the waterfall model, agile methods are increasingly gaining acceptance. Iteration, rapid feedback between project teams, users and external partners, and a more active role for developers lead to greater efficiency, better results and greater acceptance in the agile approach. The following agile frameworks are currently relevant in the industry.
Team level: Scrum, Kanban, hybrid forms, DevOps, OKR, design thinking
Scaled deployment: SAFe, Scrum@Scale, LeSS, Scrum of Scrums
Agile working requires a culture of corresponding values and principles in which employees can develop their potential.
Because of its highly complex product development, manufacturing and marketing, the automotive industry has always been crisis-prone. Digitization, electromobility, stricter legal requirements and new competitors, some of whom act as partners and others as rivals, require fast, sometimes unconventional responses. Agile process models are designed precisely for such confusing, changeable situations. Based on a deeper understanding of the target groups, agile teams take responsibility for the product, implement customer needs promptly, and overcome organizational hurdles and silo thinking.
For more than a decade, our coaches have been supporting companies in various industries in their transition to agile working – not only in IT, but also in core departments such as procurement, production or sales. Many companies have already tested agile process models in IT projects. The success has convinced many so much that they want to extend the working method to the core business. A three-phase approach has proven successful in the software product cycle.
To break out of old thought patterns and focus more on what customers want, the agile teams work with approaches such as the customer journey or design thinking at the beginning of the project. Already, the developers are involved. Consileans versed in creativity techniques, team building and agile principles accompany this stage as coaches.
In the second phase, the actual product development begins. We recommend a test-driven development (TDD) approach here. By far the most common agile framework is Scrum. For larger projects, it is worthwhile to use a scaling model such as SAFe, Scrum@Scale or Scrum of Scrums. If work is to be done with DevOps, the preliminary work for this now needs to be done. The coaches train the project teams for this. Priority is given to deepening the developers’ knowledge of the customer, for example through shadowing, as well as the training and continuing education of product owners, Scrum masters and managers.
In phase three, the teams iteratively build out the product in intervals of a few weeks, called sprints. Here, the focus is on collaboration between the developers and the subsequent administrators. The coaches accompany the introduction of DevOps. The focus is on opening up organizational silos, promoting collaboration among the teams and integrating their work results.
