Is the fight against the corona pandemic failing due to federalism?

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2021

Is China really more successful with Xi Jinping in the fight against the pandemic than western democracies? A coordinated digitalization strategy is essential in this warfare. Does federalism hinder the necessary digitization to defeat COVID-19?

Federalism, which has been hailed as effective in democracies, for regulating local conditions, is being called into question. In Switzerland in cantons, in Germany in federal states, in the EU or the United Nations in their member states. One year ago, the WHO declared Covid-19 a global pandemic. Can federalism hinder or even prevent digitization that is necessary across borders?

Xi Jinping denies that the virus comes from a bat from the market in Wuhan or from the nearby bio-laboratory. Independently, Uli Sigg, the China expert, calls the president of the People’s Republic of China the supposed biggest winner of the crisis. So far, the bill seems to be working. Out of the Box, surprisingly well-prepared mobile intensive care units with respirators, seemingly out of nowhere, could become operational in the right place within days. Meanwhile, China is celebrating itself as a digitized dictatorship with a glassy society, not only as the conqueror of the virus, but also as the only country with positive economic growth as of 2020.

Having an uncoordinated bunch of democracies, as economic and political rivals, can still be right for Xi Jinping and the insatiable swarm of aggressive viruses. As the German Chancellor, the Swiss Federal Council and even the formerly sceptical, emergency-driven vaccination champion Boris Johnson, agree, that the epidemiological situation is getting seriously worse due to mutations.

The next construction site already consists in the federalized IT implementation of vaccination strategies. Consider the binding of management resources for the same factual assessment and the need for coordination by means of interfaces. Is none of the most important elements of any combat strategy to ensure decisiveness in times of a crisis?

The requirements for optimizing and unifying digitalization, such as data flow and communication between regional, national and international organizations, must continue to be resolved with the utmost urgency.

PEN Pandemic Ecosystem & Network

Summarizing quotations from interviews with scientists and politicians in Germany and Switzerland, around the COVID-19 aimed containment, reveals three main requirements (shown as symbols in the picture below). The centralized solutions can be explored after getting started and by clicking on the image changer per theme icon:
https://www.enterpriseknowhow.ch/en/use-case-pandemic

Our concern as a pure software company without any sales organization

We are interested in a partnership with an established sales and implementation partner. Our industry-independent  Digital Experience  by Social  Toolset could also be an innovative solution for other use cases such as Private Banking, Army, Investigative Journalism see also https://www.enterpriseknowhow.ch/en/use-cases to expand your product portfolio and support additional, company-wide projects.

Contact: rst@enterpriseknowhow.ch

Tags: Corona, COVID-19, Pandemic
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Workspaces: Manage the Labyrinth!

Thursday, February 27th, 2020

I refer to recent webinars for Office 365 or other Social Intranet providers in Germany and USA.

To meet the most important challenges we intend to extend today’s ‘Social Toolset’ solution based on Liferay DXP to cover Microsoft Office 365 and other Digital Workspace products on demand.

Challenge

For mid size and in particular big enterprises using one or several ‘Self-Service’ collaboration tools like

• Microsoft Office 365
  • SharePoint
  • Teams
  • Yammer (Native)
  • Outlook personal contacts
• IBM/HCL Connections
• Slack, Jive and others

there is considerable danger of uncoordinated creation of workspaces driven by personalized or groupwise more accidental than focus oriented objectives.

Illustration: B2E project structure of a sample bank

Workspaces promise a rapid increase of efficiency within the single team, on whatever level of the organization, but lots of groups may lead to duplicate and critical path in any action plan and may end in widespread nowhere land.

Search and usability in general for the single team member with different tools is cumbersome and missing collaboration performance. Access to workspaces and even tool specific communication means is often too much of a choice.

Management survey and centralized Administrator control are hardly achievable. Due to a tool selection depending on specific requirements and budget competency for B2E/Intranet, B2C/Internet and B2B/Extranet the organization risks a high degree of data redundancy for users or topics. Synchronization for overall objectives requires a complex alignment process.

Solution

Enterprise Know How’s ‘Social Graph’ provides for users multidimensional visualization of their memberships and direct access to the team sites and its assets of any application. Hierarchical structure diagrams for line organization or staff directory can be replaced and easily be integrated by standard APIs for organizational clarity at a glance.

Illustration: ‘User Perspective’

Enterprise Know How’s ‘Agile Org Designer’ (AOD) provides missing relationships and dependencies of single teams to others by directed or dotted line connections building up complex structures and easier multidimensional search. This may be essential for projects, channels, groups, communities up to program structures integrating all stakeholders and connecting external experts for informal knowledge sharing.

Illustration ‘Management Perspective’

Conclusion

“Who fails to plan, plans to fail!” (Benjamin Franklin). Neither only flat nor only decentralized structures ensure all over success of larger development plans. But still strive and build agile and simple units for flexible adjustments of client requirements in products and services at the same time. A centralized Digital Workspace Hub either as start page or as prominent entry point built by Social Graph makes enterprise wide joined-up thinking possible!

Manage the Labyrinth with Enterprise Workspaces Hub by Social Graph!

More

• You find Enterprise Know How AG Company information, Products and Use Cases on website http://www.enterpriseknowhow.ch
• Company http://www.enterpriseknowhow.ch/en/web/b2c/about-us
• Products http://www.enterpriseknowhow.ch/en/web/b2c/products
• Complete Use Case Private Banking http://www.enterpriseknowhow.ch/en/web/b2c/use-case-private-banking referred to in sample
• Video out of Use Case Army illustrates an application of “Social Toolset” in extensive structures:
  http://www.enterpriseknowhow.ch/en/web/b2c/use-case-army
• Blog article ‘Tear down walls build bridges!’ (Microsoft/LinkedIn Acquisition)
  http://enterpriseknowhow-blog.com/2017/01/the-enterprise-social-network-graph-battle/

We are open for any cooperation or participation model.

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The Digital Customer Experience via Open Banking APIs: Interaction in Social Graph!

Tuesday, August 27th, 2019

“One waits for time to change, the other tackles it vigorously and acts.”
Dante Alighieri or Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Inspired by the article published in IFZ Retail Banking Blog of the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences, Bank-IT: Signs of Change Are Compressing by Dr. Urs Blattmann, I have thought about the signs of the times and show how challenges can be met with our solutions and how USPs can be created for the bank.

The dilemma between compulsion and competitive agility

It remains undisputed that Bank IT, along with technology, is driven by business priorities and subject to constant change. However, digitization is only trendy when innovative ideas can really be implemented. The examples of regulatory requirements and cyber security, in contrast to the expansion of front processes via additional channels, don’t bring any additional income to amortize the investments. All unavoidable extensions cause high costs in the integrated core systems, the interfaces to peripheral silo solutions and a time shortage of the 24/7 processes: Alone for the run-the-bank requirements!

There is also the mentioned parallel to the situation 15-20 years ago, meanwhile with other providers, according to a Swisscom survey currently in Switzerland mainly Avaloq, Temenos, Finnova, Olympic, TCS BaNCS and many more in the world like Finacle Infosys, Finastra, Fiserv, FIS, Sopra Steria. They are subject to the compulsion of today’s requirements with increasing complexity of the entire system. This also applies in particular for all market leaders of the industry, both by balance sheet total as well as assets under management, due to the seniority of their proprietary, highly praised transaction machines. These are often based on hardware and programming languages, which were supposed to have exceeded the lifecycle of technology and maintainability ten years ago. Board chair, CEO, COO or CIO may hope secretly to timely inherit the worst case scenario with the promotion in the eternal hunting grounds to their successor.

The ability to finance a green-field start or a migration to an alternative core systems may not be an option given today’s earnings outlook. The questions asked about competitiveness, as well as the limited punctual breakage of the dams as a wave of change, thus apply for the IT of all market participants with competitive urgency.

Alternative with Social Toolset from Nicheplayer

The IFZ author calls for flexibility, individuality and low costs as well as for management – despite the complex environment – scope for timely and agile action. In his conclusion, he can observe the necessary technologies as well as initial solutions and some progress with respect to ‘time to market’ from the current suppliers. New providers are targeting individual niches and essentially try to win customers with attractive front-end solutions, ‘Best User Experience’ at low costs! In this context I would interpret this with a widespread definition of ‘User’ as Employee in B2E, Client in B2C, and Intermediary as Partner in B2B on a Digital Experience Platform.

As a somewhat generalized starting point, various studies show that the majority of Retail and Private banks hardly differ with the digitization of the core banking solution and e-banking for the retail segment. The differentiation of the offer as a USP, unique selling proposition, is understandably difficult. Those who want to set themselves apart from the competition focussing on higher customer segments can probably achieve this only with a situation-appropriate expert participation in the personalized, digital customer experience.

This concrete objective is explained here with exemplary challenges, their solution prerequisites and a conclusion from the point of view of a niche player such as Enterprise Know How as an innovator and accelerator for a time to market implementation by offering Social Toolset.

Challenges B2C

Are the customer advisors competent in all specific problems or does it require the involvement of experts?

Examples:

• Before retail customers are contacted as possible leads / prospects for Consultancy or Discretionary mandates, marketing research criteria and analysis metrics help to present customer-oriented offerings.
• When the CFO in the Executive Board of an internationally operating corporate client changes, a team of experts for liquidity, capital raising, currency risks, special financing and pension fund investments for future coordinated personal assistance must be formed in order to avoid the CFO move to his previous bank relationship.
• The succession of a beneficial owner due to death in the context of a Family Office mandate implies the regulation of new ownership (BO) in boards and external trusts as well as a review and reconciliation of the current investment strategy with respect to the risk capacity and tolerance of the new tenure composition.

The problems require the creation of agile structures of the B2C customer advisor with internal experts as well as with his external private or business customers for efficient communication and customer-oriented interaction.

More about the Use Case Private Banking, part B2C

Challenges B2B

Can the relationship managers in the EAM / FIM and Global Custody segments differentiate themselves from global and local competitors?

Examples:

• The benefit of economies of scale for big players, who provide intermediaries with free transaction data for their own measurement systems can be competed by the asset manager’s offer of a revolutionary client experience.
• When advisory and custody mandates generate little commissions and only periodic custody account fees in an uncertain geopolitical situation with passive managers, an ad hoc investment committee could recommend decisions such as hedge strategies for rebalancing decisions.
• As the bank’s custody service for end customers is limited to standardized asset and account statements, an individual offering with personal coordination of the risk appetite with the asset manager is increasingly desired.

The problems require the creation of agile structures of B2B customer service with internal experts as well as the external partners and end customers for efficient communication and end consumer-oriented interaction.

More about the Use Case Private Banking, part B2B

Challenges B2E

Are intranet phone directory, line organization chart and restricted sharepoint folders appropriate for specific personnel search?

Examples:

• Programs and projects that must comply with BIS rules mandated by national regulators should be connected internationally with all stakeholders such as Sponsor, Steering Committee, Project Leader in order to join forces for analysis and implementation.
• Whether central compliance has identified the suspects linked to PEPs of all branches and subsidiaries mentioned in the Panama and Paradise Papers can only be coordinated with geopolitical research through a money laundering Task Force.
• Despite our scepticism about existing and planned crypto currencies, such as Libra, we need to use cross-border expertise to guide client advisory behavior towards interested investors in our clientele to prevent asset outflows.

The problems require the formation of agile, multi-dimensional B2E structures for efficient communication and pertinent interaction beside one-sided line organization structures.

More about the Use Case Private Banking, part B2E

The Open Banking philosophy

In contrast to the previous generation, today’s vendors, such as Avaloq, Crealogix, Finnova in Switzerland or many others worldwide like Finacle Infosys, Backbase, Finastra, Fiserv have recognized the signs of the time and the catching-up need of their bank clients as a state of emergency and made great efforts to promote the open banking philosophy for the bank itself or fintech providers. When using Social Toolset, it is deliberately not about the disclosure of data to third parties but the self-use of basic data such as employees, customers, structures and, if available, relations. The reference is made via the defined API with in-house data sovereignty, be it in the cloud, on premise or with a hybrid architecture. Data is in each case protected by a specific security layer.

As presented in the graphic below, data is accessed through APIs that have a hinge function within the ecosystem. As an example, in avaloq.one the applications based on it can be created in a standardized development environment and offered on a marketplace. It does not matter which container – whether Liferay, Kubernetes or others – is used as the integration layer.

Of course, all methods of application realization are also available when using APIs: from a single page application (Web App) to the sophisticated Java portlet with integrated front and back end.

Conclusion

In order to be able to meet the complexity of the global framework on a customer-centric  basis, efficient communication via direct interaction over the desired channel in fixed or temporary structures with internal and external participants is a condition. These are visualized with Social Toolset and also connected for the next session. Agile and customizable!

The digital employee, partner and customer experience defined in this way can be processed with different variants directly from the bank, with the core banking supplier, the previous implementation partner, together with the niche player in an agile project organization to timely integrate specific requirements.

A strong focus to the personalized digital customer experience is a giant step for the strategic business, if not the business model. It will break the dams by opening up internal and external communication & collaboration and accelerates the change for better revenue prospects and perspectives!

Tags: Digital Banking, Digital Experience, Open API, Open Banking
Posted in Digital Banking, News | No Comments »

Use Case Private Banking

Wednesday, May 15th, 2019

The Human Factor

Relationship Management in Private Banking is very intensive, products are complex and granting highest confidentiality and security is required. This use case shows, how our products – bundled in Social Toolset – serve for personalized interaction. This, by the relationship manager with his private- or global custody clients (B2C), intermediaries including their clients (B2B) – and always supported by expertise of other employees (B2E).

The Multidimensional Way

B2C & B2B interoperate with B2E the multidimensional way. This use case consists of the following dimensions:
– Internal Organization and Projects : B2E
– Business with Private Clients : B2C
– Business with Intermediaries, Global Custody : B2B

Digital, Personal & Agile : What Else?

Dive into that use case and its separate sections for B2E, B2C and B2B. Each section consists of many try out pages.

Private Clients: Segmentation

Route Planning

Discover!

• Start with the Use Case – Learn, how Social Toolset fosters interaction: http://www.enterpriseknowhow.ch/en/web/b2c/use-case-private-banking
• Social Toolset, product page: http://www.enterpriseknowhow.ch/en/web/b2c/social-toolset

Tags: DigitalBanking, liferay, usecase
Posted in Digital Banking, News | No Comments »

Use Case Army: Building an Ad Hoc Combat Group

Thursday, November 15th, 2018

Uncertain times in politics and economy create rapidly changing challenges, even for large and complex organizations such as corporations and institutions. Despite inevitably rigid organizational forms and hierarchies, agility and efficient and short-term management are required to make organizational models more flexible at every level.

The present use case shows a threat scenario that our solutions implement with adequate measures – the creation of an ad-hoc combat group, which in the case of a large company would probably be a task force.

Our products combine visualization with communication and interaction. They foster networking and enable working most efficiently in any agile enterprise or community: Social Toolset bundles these solutions.

More information about Social Toolset!

Tags: Agile, Army, liferay, Military, Structures, Taskforce
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Power for your Digital Workplace!

Wednesday, September 5th, 2018

With our apps, bundled to Social Toolset, you’ll find yourself working the new way in any agile environment: power-up now and get closer to individuals, organizations and communities you work with – or you will work with, in case you’re seeking new talents.

Availability: We provide our apps for Liferay CE/DXP as standard. JSON and other APIs on demand. The specific applications are perfectly aligned to work in harmony but may also be used in standalone-mode.

Extend your portal to an efficient internal B2E and appropriate external B2C/B2B network: Human relationships remain the key to success!

Suits best for any sector like: Financial Services, Telecom, Media and Entertainment, Automotive, Politics, Armed Forces, Terrorism-Fighting, Money Laundering, B2B/B2C/B2E, Frontend visualization of Data Science and Analytics.

Product details, prices? Get more information here!

Tags: Collaboration, DigitalWorkplace, liferay, Networking
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New: Social Graph – Interaction within anybody’s network

Thursday, July 5th, 2018

Features

• Interaction within anybody’s network
• Explore connections
• Drill down to existing user and organization pages
• Instant access and immediate interaction
• Implement agile organization models
• Categorize organizations
• Discover organization structures
• Address relationships as group and communicate
• Customize easily and flexibly
• Graph from an organization’s point of view
• Search complete database
• Dynamic loading / combining of graphs
• Highlight neighborhood
• Supports Agile Org Designer – design and visualization of agile organization structures
• Supports Social Map – integration of Social Graph data in Google Maps

Benefits

Social Graph combines visualization with information, communication and interaction. It fosters networking and enables working most efficiently in any agile enterprise or community.

• Time savings by direct P2P or group interaction provided
• Complete network landscape visualized
• Suitable for all types of organization structures
• Empowers collaboration
• Bridging of other portals
• More engaged workforce
• Open talent marketplace: search any network

Use Cases

Social Graph suits perfectly for High tech, Financial Services, Telecom, Media and Entertainment, Automotive, Politics, Armed Forces, Terrorism-Fighting, Money Laundering, B2B/B2C/B2E and as Frontend for visualization Data Science and Analytics.

Buy Social Graph on Liferay Marketplace

• Liferay 7 CE/DXP
• (older version) Liferay 6.2 CE/EE

Your Digital Workplace, integration of other products

Combine Social Graph with our other products, Agile Org Designer and Social Map! Design agile organization structures with Agile Org Designer – integrate Google Maps with Social Map on user- and organization-pages, provides integration of Social Graph data.

More information:

• Social Graph
• Social Map
• Agile Org Designer
• Contact

Tags: DXP, liferay
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New: Agile Org Designer

Thursday, March 15th, 2018

Design agile organization structures by drag & drop.

Transform to an agile organization: maintain a stable top-level structure but replace much of your traditional hierarchy with a flexible, scalable network of teams. Agile Org Designer will assist you to design different organization models such as Adhocracy, Holacracy and Meritocracy – and – it provides great visualization!

Agile Org Designer adds the following affiliation types besides the standard Liferay Parent/Suborganizations:
• Dotted Line Parent / Dotted Line Child (directed)
• Dotted Line Horizontal same level cooperation (undirected)

The app consists of a data-table for selecting and loading organizations – and a canvas to design the affiliations between loaded organizations. Organization head setup is also integrated in the user interface, as shortcuts to standard Liferay control panel forms.

Agile Org Designer structures are fully supported by Social Graph (LR7/DXP, LR6 version on marketplace). The app operates standalone or beside our other products.

Features

• Visualize your entire organization structure – or parts of it
• Setup and maintain agile structures
• Easy organization selection, search/sort/filter/multi-selection
• Visualization powered by a physics engine, free to play with data
• Supports Liferay-style and new loose affiliations (Dotted Line)
• Create affiliations simply by drag & drop
• Setup Liferay parent- and suborganizations
• Setup loose affiliations (Dotted Line)
• Set organization head (leader role free configurable)
• Popup forms to add user, organization, organization role
• Configuration options, setup form

Buy

Buy now, on Liferay Marketplace (free 30-days-trial available!) or try out on our demo page. Ask us for integration to other portal systems!

Contact: info@enterpriseknowhow.ch

Tags: Agile, Enterprise, Hierarchy, Network, Organization, Structure
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Think Big and Start Small by Social Graph Light!

Thursday, September 14th, 2017

Enterprise Know How AG launches light version of Social Graph 2.0: The cost-conscious startup for network visualization and interaction within your Enterprise Social Network (ESN).

Features

• Overview: Social Graph visualizes personal relationships to organizations, units and communities including members.
• Interaction: Each node provides direct communication over various channels (mail, Skype, SMS, …). Smart team selection enables conference calls, bulk emails and more.
• Identification: Key information directly embedded in graph visualization.
• Linked Profiles: Drill down to existing user, community and organization profile pages – provides an open visual information and communication environment.

Included in full version:

• Search
• Organization categories
• Implement agile organization models
• Discover organization structures

Geomapping: Combine Social Graph with Social Map

Social Map, based on Google Maps, provides geographical allocation of users and organizations including information and direct interaction. Integration of Social Graph data: Locations of any organization on any view can be plotted.

Link to Liferay Marketplace

Buy

Obtain Standard Version on Liferay Marketplace or
• Discuss requirements for API and integration
• Initialize individual project scope with other portals

Contact

Links

• Our Products
• Video Networking by Social Graph 2.0
• Liferay Marketplace, Social Graph 2.0 Standard
• Enterprise Know How on the web

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