Cooperation between Maturity and qb³ Management Consultants
Accurate Benchmarking and Hands-On-Consulting: One Stop IT Optimization
Maturity GmbH and qb³ Manage-ment Consultants GmbH have agreed to closely cooperate in selected IT projects, amongst others in the banking industry, as of 1st January 2011. Marc Bernath, Managing Director of qb³, and Thomas Karg, Man-aging Director of Maturity, talk about the reasons, the organ-ization and, above all, the benefit for the customer.
For quite some time several companies have already used the combination of Maturity and qb³ to identify their optimization potential in IT reliably and to improve it effectively as a result. So the question arises why it has taken until now that the two specialist companies offer a one-stop service?
Marc Bernath: In fact, the two companies have known each other for about five years from common customer projects in which Maturity has provided the as-is analysis with the benchmark data and qb has developed the strategies and measures on the basis of this information to help companies to improve the profitability of their IT.
But in times in which overhasty reactions and partnerships are common, we made the conscious decision to first check each other carefully and to see whether we actually match and would like to engage in a long-term cooperation. Efficient cooperation requires morethan just combining two service portfolios that seem to supplement each other.
Thomas Karg: It is at least equally important that corporate philoso-phy, quality standards, and existing expert level as well as the basic modus operandi in projects match. Moreover, the human aspect must not be underestimated. A common understanding of IT and team play at top business level is crucial to be successful.
Marc Bernath: The fact that we have taken our time with respect to the cooperation also provides a great advantage to our customers. They can rely on two companies which know each other well and which know causes of friction only in a productive sense, and make full use of synergies.
What is the customers' reaction on the Maturity-qb³ team?
Marc Bernath: While we were thinking about joining forces, we have been asked several times by
our customers whether we would not like to combine our strengths even more ...
Thomas Karg: It started with our customers wanting to optimize their IT on the basis of our ratios, which, however, we don't do since it is not our core business. Within the scope of various projects we got increasingly in touch with qb³ Management Consultants, and the way they do their job soon convinced us.
Marc Bernath: We, in turn, recognized quite soon how valuable the extensive database and the analysis and benchmarking know-how provided by Maturity was for our consulting work - amongst others because we also offer to be remunerated based on the success of our results. However, in the end it is the customers who want to be provided an integrated solution to be able to identify potential areas of improvement and to understand
how they could actually benefit from changes.
First of all, a common offer simply means for customers that they do not have to pay for coor-dination processes between service providers that don't know each other ...
Thomas Karg: Of course, time effort and error rate will be significantly reduced if two partners who know each other well co-operate closely. However, even more important to customers is the fact that their own human resources will be spared. Instead of having to participate in several workshops with different service providers, employees only have to participate in one workshop on the collection of data, for instance. Thus, the so-called "setup times" of companies decline significantly.
Marc Bernath: And our consultants can use the ratios, and proposals on the measures to be applied are presented together with the benchmarking results. This coordinated, structured approach means at least a halving of the investment to our customers.
And the time issue?
Marc Bernath: We and thus our customers usually know within two to three months where they or we are standing and what measures have to be taken.
Mr. Karg, Maturity is well-known in the market as IT benchmarking expert ...
Thomas Karg: We have achieved this position by means of our experts and our extensive and qualified database, above all. Irrespective of whether it is about the operation of data centers or applications in IT projects, we measure and compare criteria so that the companies assigning us can see at the very beginning how well they are actually positioned in the individual IT areas.
Objective comparisons were rare since they have been considered to be impossible or extremely cum-bersome for a long time. Now we offer a system which regularly refocuses and which sheds light on IT and the application landscape, and which even facilitates an analysis of the current situation. Thus, the grey area for customers will be reduced and their decisions will be more confident.
There will be a point of time where companies won't get any further by sticking to their internal views; they become blind to any corporate deficiencies. Maturity and qb³ provide clear answers which are based on hard facts of bench-marking and extensive consulting experience. It is not necessary that organizations reinvent the wheel over and over again.
So qb³ can make full use of its strengths on the basis of sound and extensive benchmarking?
Marc Bernath: Yes, indeed. The basic work by Maturity allows us to evaluate the quite heterogeneous IT architecture of a company as a whole. Moreover, as expert with respect to "improving IT" we can then recommend integrated measures of improvement to our customers.
For instance, take the situation of many banks and insurance undertakings. Here we often meet the phenomenon of IT silos, which don't mean anything else but that the individual IT areas have developed separately even though there is integrated governance. As a result, the areas work with different processes and technologies. A perfectly set up engine looks different. Drawing on our wealth of cross-industry best practice IT experience, we are able to propose improvements and at the same time calculate the improve¬ment potentials in euros - thanks to the benchmarking.
Besides the advantage of "one-stop optimization" - what is the advantage of two rather small consulting enterprises if I as a customer could also assign a global IT consultancy or a conventional consulting company?
Marc Bernath: If you assign a large consulting group, which provides one-stop services, you hardly have independence in consulting. Many consultants act as kind of an upstream distribution department. And need for improvement is identified in those areas which will increase sales. We want to make a difference and thus focus on the impact of our work. Settling in is no option.
Thomas Karg: The "benchmark" label is stuck on each assessment today, and IT sourcing has become a standard discipline. However, if two experts join their forces, the quality will be different. And of course, the independence of qb³ and Maturity is an important criterion. Customers continue to be completely free in their decisions on how and with whom they will work on the proposed solution.