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[Music] welcome everybody to this uh digital transformation in the real estate market uh webinar i'm happy to welcome today to uh speaker so welcome martin thank you hello my name is martin fry and i'm the chief digital officer at verit immobilian i started working at varied almost around three years ago and my mission was very clear bring very to the digital age and it has been a great journey so far and i'm very happy to speak a little bit about that in this webinar maybe let me first introduce the company a little bit that you know where we are working at we are working in the real estate business and we have a close focus on property management most of our employees are working there nevertheless we have a lot of different departments that are working along the life cycle of the house so that means we are doing a purchase of a house sales construction we are doing marketing we are also doing renovation reconstruction so it's pretty much everything around the life cycle of the house we're located in all over switzerland our head office is located in zurich and we have nine regional branches and it's founded in the early 60s as a family business it's around 170 employees that are currently working as i said most of them in the property management business you martin um roland uh can you tell us a bit more about alca and also why very chose to work with avocad on this project my name is roland gabertuller i'm working at elka since 10 years now in the area of enterprise content management elka is a swiss company as you can see with over a thousand employees all over switzerland as well as some offshore centers where we implement solutions for our swiss customers as well as order services and solutions uh so from where we started with elk was uh that we have an archiving solution which already was in place at verit so then uh where it was contacting us yeah how they can implement really a future uh solution and the platform how they can then in the future work with their own processes so that was the beginning of our discussion and as we have also quite a lot of experience with over 80 consultants and engineers in this area yeah we convinced them to to work with us and also we have several years of experience with bonita and of course this was also a plus as well as we are located also over uh different cities in switzerland where we can have quite close collaboration with each other okay so talking about collaboration then uh can you tell us a bit more about how you spread the responsibilities between the two companies so did you assign role and responsibilities and how did you maintain a good level of collaboration to avoid of course the duplication and the inefficiencies within this project yeah what i said we have already several years of experience with bonita and over 20 years of experience in the digitalization of processes and therefore we started really as a consultant and where we discussed of course the whole solution the platform how it will be implemented uh we advise them how they can prepare the platform and infrastructure to be ready then to digitalize all those processes of course the main responsibility was then to implement the solution and deliver that to varied so they can start really work with it as well what we did from our side was also training because where it was planning to build up some own knowledge in the engineering area and we helped them to bring up this knowledge quite fast and on our side we do the project management we are making sure that all the implementations are quite on a good level and interact with our subsystem we have the process owner we have uh the the training of our employees and we also started to uh to engineer our own processes so for us it's really important that we not only our users but we we see that process management as the core and the center of operation where we will like to to start uh building new processes on our own with the help of elca so this interaction between elka and vari this is very key to make the whole project a success okay great so now we know a bit more about the team and how you've separated all the responsibilities let's go a bit deeper and martin can you tell us a bit more how you initiated the project and and what led you to this need for for transformation as we stated in the title yes well at the beginning of this journey we knew we would like to modernize the company we would like to start a digital transformation but it was not very clear on how to do that always when you thinking about this transformation you very soon start with technical issues you will think about the different tools you think about the different platforms that you could implement and this is always the first or the the most obvious discussion that you have internally but then soon after you realize this is just uh that the one side of uh of the whole project uh it's further more an organizational uh change it has to do with the change of of the culture employees will get used to the digital new age they have to get adapted uh with with their processes there were analog and become now digital so it's it's all around this transformation and you have to discuss it from wide angles uh for for making it a success in the end and for us it was very obvious that on a paper-based process management you need to get rid of the paper this is the first initial step without getting rid of paper you cannot digitalize and cannot go into digital processes so this was very key and one of the first steps to get rid of the paper to uh do the in initial scanning for for our two million actively managed papers and also making sure that when a physical mail is coming in that they get digitalized as well which is the starting point most of the time for a process taking pla taking place so one one of the key uh elements was just to make the realization that it's not only a technical change but this is an important technical change but it's just one side of the whole digital project okay and and you spoke about company culture what what um how did it translate really in terms of governance of this whole project as i said at first it was just a discussion about the technical issues and i started as a head of department for projects of in the digital age and we soon realized that this is just not enough because the discussions go a little bit higher than just about the technical uh issues so very fast in the organization i was talking a lot to the ceo because a lot of topics are just a company concern not only technical so this evolutionary process for us was relevant to create the new function as a chief digital officer that is reporting directly to the ceo that is pushing and driving the whole transformation process which is very important without having a person the ceo that is driving this process it's probably failing so for us it was an evolutionary process creating this role as a chief digital officer and i believe this is really a very good idea to do that in such a huge digital transformation situation yes because the the digital transformation was pushed by elements from the outside i would say or from also the top line and everything can you tell us a bit more about that yes sure um we realized that we run into an efficiency problem whenever you are working in a mass market and in terms of property management we are talking about the mass market because we are handling 50 000 objects almost and if you're doing every single process step on a manual base and on paper um you're not very efficient and you're too expensive and your competitors that are also working on the digital transformation are just way ahead so we realized we need to do something and we need to get rid of the paper and in order to do that we we need to to digitalize and create new automated processes that are more cost effective and of course it was also very important that we can deliver the demands from our customer they realized on a digital age they would like to get real-time data they realized they would like to have new interfaces to to work with with data on their system they would like to have new reports so that needs for us to be just ready to get everything in place in order to meet this to to this demand okay we we um we touched a bit and maybe we can go deep deeper martin about the cdo because you are the cdo so can you tell us a bit more what you wanted to achieve with with this role and um how it plays into the project yes um for the whole digitalization process you need to have a specific role that is taking care of just everything um because it's a new business nothing has been in place so far so you need to have a role a specific role that takes care of just everything it's the the technical deep dive it's the organizational part is that the communication part taking all the employees on this journey so this is uh very important for us to to have a specific role taking care of that and being the the spokesman for this digital transformation and with this role of course we would like to gain efficiency but this is just the first step for digital transformation it's about new products it's about interacting with platforms it's in creating an ecosystem and of course coming up with new business models generating new income streams from from digital business and this is only possible if you have a very structured clear business strategy and this has to be in one place uh which is organized through the whole company thank you martin so let's now go deeper about the the solution and how your two teams worked on uh one work on uh on a solution and how um the project was tackled and what best practices you you have for these kind of projects um well at the beginning you have no idea how to do that it's all new and it's very important to get a clear view on how the big picture would look like in the end and we're talking about uh the future of five two to seven years maybe when you start at the phase number one you still need to have in mind how does my result look like in the end and how does it come all together it's like a big puzzle and you start with just the first ankles and you you start generating these pieces and bits together to make it the big picture and at the beginning you have to gain a lot of a lot of knowledge you have to get aware of uh how your system works at the moment and what you have to do to achieve your goals for the big picture so the initial phase took i would say almost a year to just getting clear what we really want and what we need and how this path could look like and one of this path was also to come up with the right partner that can support us which brings me to roland the wrong hell yeah yeah yeah as we were involved before we started implement any pieces of the solution we spoke with varied about the i.t strategy and the architecture of the of the whole platform because you probably are aware that a lot of companies have quite a lot of different applications already in the house so the goal is to combine them to all together to really a proper platform where you can use then your new solution so it's really important to have a proper architecture from our side it's important to have clear strategy how you would like to implement really then the processes and we recommend really to have a specific system for each uh functional uh requirements especially in the archiving area and then the business process execution so after defining this architecture uh we discussed with varied also how we would like to achieve than the end result of the whole digitalization platform yeah you have to be aware you cannot implement everything at the beginning because that's quite a huge project so and you have to start small with the small part of the of the whole solution also the organization has to learn how to use then the new platform and how to work with the digital process because so far as you have heard from from martin they were working really on a paper-based process which is then quite different to a digital process and of course then during the first phases of the project people and organization learns how to use how to work with the system and they have a lot of new ideas how the solution can be improved and optimized for future needs and projects there yeah and i think uh martin you had also some requirements based on the way your ecosystem is is organized yes absolutely um it's it's always a matter of make or buy decision i mean there are great startups coming up also in the real estate business it's a hundreds of new companies coming up with good solutions and for us it's always important to realize would we like to do something on our own and spend a lot of time and money there because maybe it's unique and nobody else could do that or is it something that is more commodity and it's a good idea to share a platform with uh with competitors and then other companies that having the same problems and having a different company giving us a solution for that so this ecosystem thought is very key in our strategy we would like to have a property management platform that is uh elementary for our property managers but then if there is a platform doing a good solution for a specific problem we would like to implement it a hundred percent into our platform so this thought of ecosystem is very key for our whole strategy okay so uh let's uh let's go now uh into the the actual solution and um and see uh how it was uh how it was uh deployed first maybe we can start in terms of organization yes um this is something very key to us that we know as i said what is the big picture what is our strategy how can we go from phase number one to phase let's say number ten um the realization of a new role of a chief digital officer is very important and for us it's also very important that we come up with the solutions that are for our employees because they're working with it all the time and they need to feel comfortable they need to be happy with it and it needs to solve a lot of problems for them to make the their day their way easier in the daily business and it's also about the communication that they know exactly what's going on what are the the past steps what are the next steps and that we have also a synchronized process that everybody knows and is aligned uh what's going on okay and then maybe uh now that the solution is operating uh what value does it bring to uh to both the business and uh and the it teams well we have a lot of different core processes and one of the first processes that we've done with elka and is now already in production is the input channel so we're receiving a lot of incoming mail mails still physically and we need to get them digitized so we can have a pdf and working with that so one of the biggest benefit is that this physical mail will get scanned we do uh some sort of a triage that means not all of the documents that are coming in needs to be digitized but those documents that are in need of digitalization we do that with an external partner that is doing that on a daily basis and then we need to make sure that this letter which is addressed to a person comes digitally to the correct person or the team or maybe also the regional office depending on what it is and who is addressed and then this is most of the time the starting point of a process that is taking place further digital so the value for the property manager is that he receives everything from an external source in one place as i said before we are eager to create a property management platform where bonita is in the background taking care of all these tasks and the property manager has everything in one place he sees exactly which deadlines are due for which uh documents or which tasks and it's everything structured for him and also for people that are working with the property manager to support so the goal is to get more transparency more quality and also an efficient way of working on the the processes and in terms of i.t it is very important that we have a streamlined it architecture we need to reduce the complexity of single interfaces in the past there were hundreds of interfaces between programs and between tools and platforms and this is almost not to be handled in this digital uh world with the with processes so the reduction of complexity is one of the key solutions that we are aiming for that we have one structured system that have adapters to different platforms and this is a one of the key uh important uh things that we are aiming for okay and in this example maybe in this example maybe when we are talking as an example of a termination letter coming in through mail then it goes through all the processes and this this letter of termination is the starting point of the process termination of a client of a tenant and this is then the phase number one or task number one and all the further tasks are then managed in bonita and this is uh important that we have all in one platform okay and and roland maybe you can tell us a bit more about how all of this is is working together technically yeah as marty mentioned so it's really important to have proper interfaces for each application or service which is used in this whole process therefore we implemented a service oriented architecture which is based on our elk backbone framework which have clear focus on using existing services where we are able to to use them um because some applications don't have right now proper services which are available available for such a process uh there we implemented additional adapters uh for using those application as a service and if there is a replacement of those applications we can easily replace the adapter and then adapt directly those services and from the application side nothing has to be changed so that's really the the focus to have a clear proper architecture which can be used and involved in the future also what we have seen the digitalization of paper was quite a big task during this project right now we have about 75 000 dossiers in the platform and more or less half a million documents which are managed from the system um from the arc they are stored in the archive system and uh bonito is taking care of the processes right now what is really used is this incoming mail process what martin was speaking about and over all this different location as you can imagine uh now with the digital uh process you can easily switch the process from one location to another which was uh with the paper-based process uh quite inefficient and this helps very a lot now in the daily business okay and you spoke about a platform martin and roland most of you mentioned this term and um how do you think this platform approach supports really the digital transformation uh so as you know has quite a lot of functionality and different benefits for helping you in the digital transformation and in those processes our approach was really to use bonita as a service platform to execute all the tasks all the processes there and on the application side so user interface we have her own framework which we use to proper integrate the archive system with the process platform so there we have then the the integration and so people can easily work with the process and the papers and collaborate on each task also in a team because all the the people which are taking care of those real estates they're working in teams together and so they can share tasks between team members and assign it to a team member and work on that so that means at the end we have really an end-to-end business process which is covered with this platform of course there is a continuous improvement and optimization uh which is going on and also will go on uh in the next months and your years for sure to be at the end and more efficient uh on the daily basis okay so so yes you you you uh you spoke about this continuous improvement uh this is something that you you do in collaboration with was varied right yes of course from from our side we we help them to bring up new ideas uh new solution new ideas how to implement things and of course from the process side where it brings up their new ideas how the process can be improved so and and martin the the story doesn't stop with the first process right what was the what's our the next step to uh to this project yes this is just the beginning it is phase number one this is our homework in order to uh come to the the fun part and the fun part is that we would like to come up with this uh very process management platform uh the first initial steps were done the first step is to bring in all the information coming through physical mail and it's not stopping there then the process for the the property managers start there are checklists there are different things they have to do in order to perform their processes and our goal is to bring everything together our own processes and also integrate the third-party platforms and tools uh in our platform management uh situation because then everybody knows that is working on a task when is it's due when do we have to do the next step and everybody knows exactly what is going on and there is no missing parts in our processes so third-party platforms is very important and of course that we have a structured task management system um when we are talking about nine different branches doing actually the same work but in different locations and with different leadership so sometimes it just happens that the process looks a little bit or slightly different in terms of the regional offices and what we need to achieve is that we come up with a structured process and task management that every process in switzerland is exactly the same every uh employee is working the same way on the same processes that are done every day and in the end we're looking forward to having an ecosystem where we can integrate different partners and if there is a new startup coming up maybe next year with a great solution we would be able to implement their ideas as well so we can make the best benefit out of it and this is our goal and i would say it takes some years to go but the winning was done and we're very happy that now it works every employee is now working digitally and especially in a corona time like this it's so important that our employees can work from home and they have access to all their dossiers that they have access to the incoming mail and so it helps us a lot to get organized during these hard times and you really benefit from an extensible platform in in all terms extensible place extensible to systems yeah absolutely uh we will now have a conclusion and summarize best practices and takeaways before we go to the conclusion i remind our audience that if you want to ask a question you can use the the panel that is in in your interface so you can write the question and i will read it for our speakers uh just after our takeaways so martin let's uh let's conclude and and summarize for our audience the the key takeaways that you you got uh from from the project so far yeah at least for our learnings from the last two or three years and uh we realized that it is so important that the top management and especially the ceo pushes this project and every employee knows that this is one of the key projects for the future success and alongside with that to create a special role in my case as a chief digital officer taking care of the whole digital transformation and not only the technical part is very key to make the whole project a success and what we've also learned at the beginning is that we need to have a clear view on the big picture and when you know exactly how it should look like then you can start with phase number one but all those phases that you're doing has to benefit the big picture of course when you're working on something and you realize that there might be a slight uh difference and it makes sense to adapt this strategy this is always possible but you should be aware of the big picture before you start and then plan the iterations as roland also was telling before um do the agile approach start small do little pieces little releases do an incremental change of the platform so it's not a huge release and you work for three years and then you have a big release start small do the first initial phase and then do process after process and so enlarge the whole system this is definitely the the right approach in such a big project and it's also very important that the change management becomes a critical role inside the company it's not only technical it's a lot about culture its processes in the whole organization that is different so you need to have an established change management system to to communicate to take all the employees with you on this journey because without the employees accepting it it won't be a success and the last one is one of the most important parts be sure who to choose as a partner because it's not just one project and it's done in half a year this is all almost like a marriage uh you do this system with a partner and you need to be sure at the beginning that this partner can hold up these expectations in terms of uh technical issues in terms of of communication in terms of size you would like to have a suitable partner that takes this whole journey with you and supports you in all these manners that you need to perform alongside his journey thank you martin um i already have uh so let's move to questions because i think they are a good transition um we have already some questions here martin when you look back uh what would you do uh differently um actually not not so much i think we've done it quite well we took enough time to make a proper plan and even though that it meant that we had to to postpone some of the phases maybe a month or two month or a quarter or so um i believe that we've handled it quite well and i wouldn't change so much i just uh realized that it turned out well and taking enough time is certainly important but i wouldn't change it because i i think it we did it quite well okay roland maybe on your side anything that you would do differently or you you were also comfortable with the way everything uh was happening yeah in general what uh i agree to martin um what what you have to know it's always uh difficult if you start new with a new solution and no one has really worked with it so far it's quite difficult for them to understand how the this new system is working so that's always a little bit the challenge at the beginning how do you start with the business that they are familiar uh with the solution and they can also give already some good input in the beginning of the project but of uh it's it's also really important that you as a company which supports this digitalization yeah that you have a close collaboration collaboration really with the business side as well as also with the id side really to work close together and i think that that was the case with verity okay and i i have a question more on on the resistance to change so how many employees resisting going digital and how did you convince them to do it did you have resistance well not really well there is always a little bit of resistance and it's it's funny um it's not about the age there are older people that are not resilient at all and there are young 20 year old employees that are resilient totally and they opposed to it so i think it's more about a personal approach of every employee how they are handling digitalization also in their private life and it's uh in in our case um we are not having so much uh opposition everybody knows that we have to do that everybody knows that it will become better um sometimes of course of course people wish that we were already there so one or two years later because now we're working on it it's hard for everybody to change and there is this extra work for everybody so sometimes people wish that we were a little bit further down the road but in general uh there is a big understanding and almost everybody is uh is looking forward to this this move but uh definitely if there is opposition you have to explain why you're doing something why it's important and sometimes you need to take the feeder away from the employees and with a good communication most of the time you're very lucky and you bring everybody aligned on the project okay um so i have a question about the frequency well the the changes and um um do you consider that that changes is uh there is a loop in the life cycle of changes and i think we we touched it a bit with iteration and everything and and the need for smaller steps iterating yes i mean we have different iterations of course we have a roadmap what we would like to do in the future so that this is something that we can plan in terms of releases so we have specific projects where we have a special focus on it and we try to do that on a regular basis on an agile approach and then of course there are demands from customers and demands from our employees and this is a continuously improvement part that we need to take care of that we can implement good ideas from the employees that they all also know that they are relevant when they experience something that is not perfect in their mind that we can work something out and uh to create new features and so we have the roadmap that we're implementing but also continuously improving the system which we have in smaller releases okay so like a product yeah um so i have a question more in terms of uh of financial effort question the question is the following in your opinion what financial effort so percentage of turnover and in terms of resources increased percentage in resources dedicated to digitization that you must invest in this digital transformation i think there is two questions in one so it's more does it have an impact on on the uh the turnover in your team and the the resource that you need after and before digitization maybe that's uh yeah yeah we certainly see a shift going on from the business itself towards digitalization uh skilled person working in in our department so when we used to have maybe a hundred people for the same amount then we look forward that we that the employees are more efficient with the new tools and in order to do that we need employees that are working on a digital solution so we see a little shift in uh going towards uh the skills of i.t and project management and digitalization but in the end there is no need to to reduce the amount of employees working on the business side because we would like to expand our business to get new business so that just means that people are getting more efficient so they can do more work in the same amount of time but there is definitely a shifting towards i.t and their digitalization and of course more people means it costs money and this is always something that you have to consider but in terms of a big digital transformation it's a plan that you're doing a return on invest that usually takes care it depends on how deep you do that uh from at least five to seven years and if you consider that um it depends on your integration and how many people are or skilled workers working in your company already how much can you do on yours on your side and where do you need uh the support from a company like elka for example that is supporting you so in the end it's a return on invest calculation that is relevant also for top management in order to make the right decisions and and maybe um some other point here is um of course you you want business improvement so you probably already see the best the bet a better uh customer service and everything but do you think or do you already see some uh new business models or new business uh possibilities from this digitization yes absolutely i mean at the moment we are we're eager to be more efficient but this is not very much a new business model it's the same the same work just digitalized but this is the base on how we can improve uh or go towards new business that is not existing at the moment um and of course we are looking into new business models uh where we can benefit from this homework that we're doing at the moment i cannot talk too much at the moment but there are some serious thoughts how we can do that in the future um because we also see in a mass market where we are in property management it gets more and more a commodity market and in a commodity market you do not gain a lot of percentage and margin so of course we are looking into new business models where we can complement these actions and take benefit of this platform and maybe we can make this platform available for for other sources and go in a different digital age and where we are performing a service for somebody else which was not the case before because we were just focusing on our own stuff and when we were able to do that in our platform we can think about releasing that to different companies maybe so this are a lot of thoughts that we're all already taking but now we are first need to have the property management platform in place that is working perfectly and then we go to the next level it's phase number 20 the business models and we have number one at the moment yeah this could have been a very nice conclusion but i have a another uh little question uh that i will take which is uh how do you handle other communication channels like email whatsapp uh are they also connected to the bonita platform yes this is absolutely the goal at the moment we have so many different channels and most of the time if a tenant for example doesn't get a receipt or an answer within 10 minutes then they just take the next level of of communication so they are calling up they're writing an email maybe they send a message on whatsapp so we have for the same situation three different input channels and this is something that we're really keen of to have a structured way of input channel so wherever the input comes it will flow directly to the task management and bonita in the background where can handle that so in the end it doesn't matter where it comes from it needs to be structured and it needs to go directly into the task management system um a little question that is speaking about case management versus bpm so i don't know if it's more roland that wants to answer this or when someone asks and says uh when we start modeling from the current situation isn't it case management instead of bpm i think it really i mean i'll start answering this but it really depends on your process so if you have what we call a structured process where you know each of the steps like for example the termination it's always happening in the same way so that's a structured process then it's bpm when there is a decision that needs to be made at some point of the process and when the decision will trigger a different process than its case management but uh within bonita the the the good thing is that you can handle both uh structured or unstructured i don't know if roland or martin do you implement unstructured already or for the moment you just implement structured processes the moment is just structured okay maybe roland can uh tell a little bit more about that yeah right now there is only approach to have structured processes um but of course with the solution they have that they can still collaborate with each other so over the platform but it's not really a case management solution yeah but it could be i mean the the platform has the capacity right so it depends exactly but yeah yeah yeah okay i think that was uh the last question that i got so um i thank you very much for your time and your uh sharing your story and uh maybe we can speak in uh in a year to to see where you are uh and and who you gain from from this project um i wish you a very uh a very good day uh and um and if you have other questions for our audience uh i mean from the audience to martin or roland feel free to reach out to us we can we can contact them for you and they will be happy to answer thank you very much all right thank you thank you bye [Music]