A Retrospective of the Intercai 2011 Customer Event:
 "Top Performance - Thanks to ICT, With ICT, Despite ICT?"

The topic of the first presentation delivered by Dr. Emmanuel de Haller, COO of Hocoma AG was about efficient integration of ICT with international business processes. The presentation showed the approach, manufacturing process and operations of the young company developing automated therapy equipment for the rehabilitation of patients worldwide. ICT is one of the key success factors for the service delivery, information exchange with customers and optimizing the workflow of their business. Large amounts of data exchange and processing are required for operation and maintenance of their systems in both customer consulting and patient care. Hocoma also often operates in regions where the knowledge of technology and ICT is rather poor or the infrastructure is inadequate. The ICT "backwardness" of the healthcare industry worldwide i.e. use in clinics and therapies is a serious barrier to success. There exists very little data in electronic format, restricting the fluidity of the data exchange between Hocoma, clinics and local therapists. The speaker drew the conclusion that under the current conditions without ICT their business model would not operate. At the same time most important remains the personal interaction with customers and patients. For an exchange at an International level, ICT remains a means to an end.

The topic of the second presentation, by Enrico Lardelli, CIO and Board member of Postfinance, was how to deal with the future challenges of internal ICT services. He described how, in large companies, the role of IT manager has shifted to the role of Business Process Manager. Specifically the situation of ICT within Post-finance the focus has shifted from ICT technology skills to process skills which actively contribute to company value.  Customer satisfaction, technical expertise, ability to implement projects efficiently as well as continuous cost optimization remain, in his view, important base responsibilities of ICT. He sees the development of com-puter science in the direction of a Service Center with integrated financial and performance management and with high transparency and user-based cost allocation. PostFinance goes even further as they implement the vision of the Executive Committee that ICT should become involved in business innovation. Lardelli demon-strated concrete examples of customer service supported by modern Tablet PC applications and database services such as cashless payment by internally-developed smart phone applications.

In the third presentation by Brigitte Walsh, trainer, coach and co-founder of Speak GmbH, the communication expert put Man in the context of the social circle into the centre. She raised the question of how far ICT needs soft skills. In her presentation, the speaker postulated that there are three prerequisites for good communica-tion: social skills, health, and how aware the respective person is. This was demonstrated with concrete exam-ples – e.g. the young, ambitious, highly competent professional, with the highest spiritual freshness and tireless commitment who, to the annoyance of his superiors, will take no responsibility, but will repeatedly make additional demands. Or the leader of a global enterprise, whose wheels never stop spinning and who, when asked how they feel, will talk about their health concerns, but never acknowledge that they must take more time for themself. A second trilogy, noted Walsh, was the man with the technology and the organization. Today we have become good at planning and optimizing organizations; even in technology, quantum leaps have been accomplished. In terms of the improvements achieved for Man, however, she gave society bad marks. After the technical considerations of the previous speaker, she thus led the audience into a pensive consideration.

In the ensuing panel discussion, participants took an active role with individual views and questions to all three speakers. It was noted by several participants that today more than ever, the technical and factual issues are in the foreground and that the human factor is losing importance. Unanimously ICT as a success factor was not in question, but the participants considered people management much more important. This was completely con-firmed by the panelists. Also by the examples of PostFinance, with their substantial commitment to cultural promotion; or Hocoma with a focus on dialogue with partners and customers; and Speak, with their focus on the effective appearance of people in front of other people.

The response of participants to the event was positive, which encouraged us to continue the series and host another customer event next year, on 9 May 2012 in Bern. On behalf of Intercai, we thank the speakers and all our guests for their attendance and their active participation.
 

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