Our moti­va­ti­on

“Thank you for visi­t­ing our First­Wa­re site.

I would like to tell you how the idea of the First­Wa­re soft­ware app­li­ca­ti­on came to life.

Many years ago I ran an IDM con­sul­ting pro­ject with one of our custo­mers. My task was to roll out an IDM solu­ti­on to the busi­ness units, which had been pre­vious­ly laun­ched at the company’s head­quar­ters.

I sen­sed that the­re was a dis­so­nan­ce bet­ween the cen­tral IT team and the teams in the divi­si­ons. It was evi­dent — the belief in the addi­tio­nal bene­fit of the new soft­ware wasn’t the­re. The cen­tral IT team, on the other hand, couldn’t under­stand the resis­tan­ce. They wan­ted to pro­ceed with trai­ning cour­ses and imple­ment their solu­ti­on as fast as pos­si­ble, irre­spec­tive of whe­ther it was a good or bad solu­ti­on. Any solu­ti­on see­med bet­ter than none.

Soon I rea­li­sed that it was important to reflect upon the views and opi­ni­ons of the busi­ness units and the end users. I came to the con­clu­si­on that the pro­blem actual­ly deri­ved from wit­hin the IT-admi­nis­tra­ti­on. They wan­ted to hold on to old per­spec­tives, well-trod­den paths and pro­ces­ses.

Try­ing to chan­ge the per­spec­tives of the IT depart­ment felt like til­ting against wind­mills. Tog­e­ther with one bra­ve admi­nis­tra­tor I went on the jour­ney to tell my sto­ry:

IT has to shift its focus to the end user.

The­re has to be an added value for the end user. At the end, employees earn money for the com­pa­ny. Pro­vi­ding them with solu­ti­ons with which they can ful­fill their poten­ti­al is key to run­ning a suc­cess­ful busi­ness.

Even­tual­ly I found the right con­tact per­son in the com­pa­ny who was bra­ve enough to lis­ten to the voice of the user.

We intro­du­ced a simp­le web inter­face which all employees were able to use wit­hout atten­ding any trai­ning cour­ses. Then we adjus­ted the pro­ces­ses while stay­ing focus­sed on the bene­fits for the end users.

This hap­pen­ed many years ago.

As a result the com­pa­ny achie­ved an acce­le­ra­ti­on of their pro­ces­ses. A chan­ge of loca­ti­on – inclu­ding the adjust­ment of per­mis­si­ons, homesha­res etc. – sud­den­ly was a mat­ter of seconds whe­re befo­re it had taken several days to chan­ge user data accord­in­gly. Busi­ness units were able to per­form tasks inde­pendent­ly. The roll out hap­pen­ed in a few weeks time. No trai­ning cour­ses were requi­red due to the intui­ti­ve and user-fri­end­ly web inter­face of the app­li­ca­ti­on.

From expe­ri­ence we know that the added bene­fit of a user-centric approach in IT pro­jec­ts accu­mu­la­tes to several thousand Euros dai­ly:

fas­ter busi­ness pro­ces­ses,

bet­ter infor­ma­ti­on,

more secu­ri­ty and

less IT-admi­nis­tra­ti­ve effort.

We would be plea­sed if you join us on our jour­ney of user centric iden­ti­ty manage­ment. As a result you will have hap­py users, effi­ci­ent busi­ness pro­ces­ses and a high­ly appre­cia­ted IT divi­si­on.

Yours sin­ce­rely, Andre­as Mar­tin