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01 July 2020

Crisis as an opportunity in the [HELIOS] project

FULL SERVICE WITH AUSTRIA CARD

The streets were emptied, planes grounded, restaurants closed. Corona caused what appeared to be a complete standstill. Complete? Not really. 

In the home offices of INFORMATICS, work continued just as hard as before, as the introduction of S/4HANA at Austria Card AG in Austria and Romania shows. In 2019, the kick-off of one of INFORMATICS' currently largest projects took place and in 2020, the implementation of the project called [HELIOS] started. COVID-19 burst into the middle of this phase.

"The suitcases for the business trip were already packed, the hotels booked," Gernot Huber describes the situation. It was quickly agreed with the client to use video conferencing. "Practically over the weekend, the home offices of the project participants were set up, video conferencing tools were purchased and the ability to act was fully restored. Within 48 hours of the lockdown, we switched to online training."

OFTEN MORE PRODUCTIVE THAN FACE-TO-FACE

"There were still some questions to be answered, including: How do you reach the staff you need, what's the next step and who is available when?" But the concerns quickly dissolved into thin air. "Our IT did a great job. Everything worked flawlessly right away." Every Tuesday, the virtual INFORMATICS team met to discuss the project status across modules. In addition, there were customer meetings and workshops.

"In part, it worked better than face-to-face. It was often more productive because you focused on one area and worked through each step. So we focused on one issue with the client for four hours and had another four hours to think it through. The next day there were all the results immediately."

ALWAYS TRANSPARENT PROJECT PROGRESS

With the tool "GoToMeeting", not only were the individual partners brought together via ideoconferencing, but screens can also be mirrored and shared. In addition, "GoToMeeting" is extremely secure. "The client was so enthusiastic about our tool that he immediately bought licences for himself." This highly efficient form of collaboration took the project even further than originally planned.

"We have also already implemented the challenging best-practice approach." A dedicated test tool allows the project progress to be simulated and "ticked off" upon acceptance by the client. "This means we always have a complete project overview and full transparency." And the INFORMATICS helpdesk is available for all cases.