Bucket wheel excavator for digital transformation

businessPaaS: Select rental model. Hire service-orientated. Mastering digital challenges.

Steffen Schaar, Member of the Board of The Quality Group GmbH
Published in: DiALOG - THE MAGAZINE FOR DIGITAL CHANGE | 2023

The changes in life, in organisations and in our daily interactions are tangible and sometimes disruptive. Yes, they are doing away with what was "state of the art" just a few years ago, a generation ago. Lifelong learning, improvement and reorientation will keep us on our toes. More and more new tools, at some point only with IT, processors, memories and artificial intelligence, will cause familiar patterns of the working world to disappear. Our culture of life, but also our behaviour, is taking on new, unpredictable agile forms. The day before yesterday we lived without mobile phones, yesterday with text messages and iPods, today with chatbots and emails and tomorrow truly paperless. Technologically, this has been possible since yesterday, but why is it not working?
At a tech conference the other day, a participant said to me: "There are only suppliers of shovels everywhere, nobody has the solution, the blueprint, the concept for the construction of a sustainable building". He didn't mean shovels, of course, but IT tools, typically AI, whether for searching for information, automation or generating documents. To use the language of my interlocutor: "Where are the shovel excavators, the real result generators, the long-term measurable benefit creators?", I ask and yet I know that they exist. Why do we not see them or allow ourselves to be dazzled? The hype is AI. Just a few months ago, it was the cloud, blockchain, smart contract. As if success, performance or results depended solely on this, far from it! Awareness and sustainability could sharpen our focus again and it is worthwhile focussing on virtues that have helped our economy and our prosperity to achieve its good reputation in the first place.
It is therefore definitely worth trying to answer this question. On the one hand, technology and innovations are disruptively changing entire industries, with specialists becoming technology companies. New specialists are emerging around the digital data knowledge managers - the big players on the platforms. In order for them to become and remain interesting, they produce shovels, i.e. tools (and at an ever faster pace) that bring technological innovations into everyday life. The other side are the applications, so-called software products or solutions, which have been constantly developing business progress through automated and more efficient working methods with functional modules since the beginning of the IT age. In other words, the excavator manufacturers for lasting benefits with integrated shovels, which, however, cannot always withstand the fast-moving progress. So while one side breaks down the technological limits, the other ensures stable, long-term usability in everyday use. Inevitably, ever more powerful needs arise from both sides in order to maximise economic and commercial results. For example, a highly complex unit in the construction industry, the bucket wheel excavator, was created from many hundreds of individual buckets for very large tasks.
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Our culture of life, including our behaviour, is taking on new, unpredictable agile forms.


If we leave the symbolism of the shovels and look for the bucket wheel excavator in the digital world, we will quickly find it. The two sides or worlds are easy to find in our administrative organisations. Digitalisation is progressing, too quickly for some, too slowly for most. Innovations are visible everywhere, and organisations are defining headlines such as LegalTech, RegTech, FinTech, SupTech and so on. This is actually nonsense when you consider that digitalisation knows no sectors and certainly doesn't stop at different organisational processes. Wherever potential for optimisation, efficiency or quality is discovered, the use of technology and digital transformation is appropriate. Aristotle said: "We are what we repeatedly do. Therefore, excellence is not a one-off act, but a habit." He probably had no idea that this approach would be valid for centuries.

This is where businessPaaS, a digital platform for information in the context of business data, documents, contracts and processes (files), comes in. Repeated, permanent, efficient and binding documentation, management and archiving of information, which is now undisputedly the most important competitive factor in the context of business processes. The businessPaaS (business platform as a rental and service model) combines what users are interested in today: "service - clarity - cost awareness". Based entirely on the bucket wheel excavator approach: Get in. Set up. Get started.
And of course there are any number of ways to expand the switches, extend the functions or even replace the buckets (tools). According to the motto: "Digital transformation - if you want it" (take a look at our short films on the TQG YouTube channel). Decide when it is time to take the next step. Either by expanding employee utilisation or the professional integration of divisions and departments. If the benefit is not only in daily, efficient, digital work, but also later, the historical creation process of digital information can be called up immediately with a "click", the filing of data becomes company-wide knowledge management in the context of individual organisational processes.
Clearly, today you no longer need to buy a bucket wheel excavator to reduce the many heterogeneous software applications that have been created as part of a digital corporate strategy. Cloud models, like the outsourcing models of a few years ago, offer the opportunity to rely on standards in the long term, to secure the best support and service from IT and applications and to always be release and update-proof with the latest technologies.

businessPaaS is based on a tried-and-tested EIM solution and the tried-and-tested SaaS approach. Enterprise Information Management (EIM) structures data and information in cross-departmental organisational processes and thus offers data security, sustainability, transparency and commitment in the information age. The SaaS approach is a monthly usage fee model, the functionality of which can be expanded on a modular basis. The customised support and assistance services are transparent and can be called up as services.

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The businessPaaS (business platform as a rental and service model) combines what users are interested in today: "service - clarity - cost awareness".


What does businessPaaS stand for?

  1. The platform, the framework in which all data, processes and information are stored, structured and secured, is a cloud-based IT architecture that has been tried and tested for many years and is geared towards so-called SLAs (Service Level Agreements). Technological standards such as encryption, LDAP/SAML for single sign-on, audit-proof versioning for documents and much more are integrated into a fast data structure. The data is secured, validated and protected by certified and regularly audited processes. A team of IT experts carries out automated, precautionary checks and measures to ensure compliance with current data protection and security requirements at all times.
  2. In every organisation, whether a public authority, small or global company or in any industry, business is characterised by administrative processes that have grown over the years. These are often individualised, certainly legally compliant, but always competitive and very different in the transformation from paper-driven to paperless departments and areas. The businessPaaS provides various sample templates for specialist apps, standardised function blocks and modules as well as template structures for processes and files. In the case of workflow automation, a sample case of constantly growing application possibilities can be easily used in businessPaaS by means of activation.

    3. Examples are for
    • businessApps: Compliance, data protection, LkSG, CRM, eLearning, purchasing or ISO
    • modules: Clause Management, TrustCentre (Collaboration Room) or Workflows (BPM)
    • Files: Contract file, company file, litigation file, personnel file, property file, legal file, marketing file, project file or maintenance file
    • Workflows: Contract and document creation, any eSignature integration, authorisations and approvals, form creation or retention policies
    The entire user interface in the standard entry-level module is preconfigured and corresponds to the latest operating convenience such as apps, folder structures, relation explorer, any filter structures and view or drag & drop support. Thanks to an easy-to-learn configuration, you can add customisation for your company, individual departmental use or any specialist support. Each employee can personalise the data level, the daily digital work, themselves and thus achieve efficiency and clarity. In the shared service, views or entire views with columns and filter sorting can be used by users with the same role authorisation.

  3. Service SaaS (PaaS) includes the entire responsibility of the IT architecture, the reliability, the application and the service in the hands of a provider. The advantages are obvious. No subsequent budgets for update projects, one point of contact for everything, guaranteed service quality, predictable runtime and long-term reliability.
    4. Our Managed Services SLA is based on:
    • 24/7 operating times with monitoring, backup and data recovery
    • Certified hosting services with DIN ISO9001, ISO20001 ....
    • Compliance with German framework conditions for data centres
    • Security infrastructure with firewall and VPN/VLAN
    • 256-bit encryption during transmission
    • 99.5 % availability

So your digital transformation is in good hands too!


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Your path to businessPaaS

  1. Choose your entry-level model. Even the simplest entry-level businessPaaS, the small bucket wheel excavator for the garden, so to speak, contains the same full range of components as the expansion level for a global organisation. The number of buckets, engine power or performance can be expanded in a comparable way, as can the number of users, storage space or module support (e.g. additional AI integration via a standardised API) in the businessPaaS. The monthly businessPaaS fee is designed for both entry-level and usage-based expansion.

    2. It includes:
    • Complete licences incl. user package
    • No additional update costs for major/minor & service release updates
    • Sustainability / Service Operation & Security in the selected utilisation period of 36, 48, 60 months with extension options or terms on request.

    Whether as a small department (1-5 users), medium-sized organisation with several departments or especially for initial automated workflow use, simply select your platform deployment based on your starting parameters. Your start is based on a modern digital platform for electronic contract files, file and process management, contacts, reminders/appointments and documents.

    Integrated are:
    • Full text search (OCR), search with smartSearch
    • Drag&Drop Addin (MS Outlook), DropZone
    • Audit security through history management, user help
    • Document preview for Office and PDF documents
    • OneClick-Edit editing convenience (automatic checkout)
    • Flexible document filing structure
    • Relation explorer
    • 10 named users (additional user models available on request)
  2. Support for an efficient (scheduled) start. After the start, the set-up follows. Just like in an excavator, get to know the levers, adjust the seat(s), learn the rules, clarify the processes and off you go. An experienced team of experts will support you from the first step through to commissioning, the start of utilisation, with the following measures and support services:
    • Workshop/planning of the standardised milestones of the implementation consultation
    • If necessary, data transfer from the existing system/move to the cloud
    • Provision of the user area and data configuration according to the workshop results
    • Induction and training
    • HyperCare real operation support

    These services are implemented according to the standard methodology and billing in a transparent and results-orientated manner and accompany your implementation team along a jointly agreed schedule.

  3. Your benefit with businessPaaS: You will very quickly be able to manage your everyday digital life more efficiently and sustainably thanks to the intuitive operating and configuration options via views, shared services, filtering and excellence ad hoc reporting. You will then discover potential in your processes, be able to integrate completely new requirements into your daily routine and focus on the possibilities of automated processes with your tasks. The BPMN2.0 workflow engine with numerous model processes is available to further improve your processes in terms of quality and reliability. The individuality of your organisation can be implemented quickly and efficiently with the modelled support of the expert team. You can contact the team via the service and support provided or register your requirements directly via the platform.

    4. So your digital transformation is also in good hands!

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TQG businessApp cloud platform 

As a leading German standardised solution, the TQG businessApp cloud platform supports audit-proof and structured information and knowledge management in organisations for any objects in their life cycle, such as contracts, files, processes, cases, applications or notifications.

Special features of the configurable platform include the structuring, bundling and linking of data and responsibilities to information for a specific purpose on the one hand and the support of employee interaction by embedding the information in the context of action through freely definable business processes on the other.

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Author

Steffen Schaar

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