Kurtz Ersa P01
Kurtz Ersa promotes digitalisation
Within the framework of the steering group in spring, Kurtz Ersa launched the “P01” project. A telling title for the project with which the management is addressing the major trend, digitalisation, and at the same time underscoring its importance.
Digitalisation has been around since 1970. In the intervening period, the capability of information technology has doubled every two years. New technologies permit new business models and are revolutionising industries. The increasingly digitalising customer expects digital technologies. The LP shrank, mutated into a CD – and headed off to the cloud as online music. Collections of books no longer fill the shelves but are archived in the slim e-book. Today’s smart phones have more processing power than yesterday’s bulky mainframe computers. One of the former market leaders in photography, Kodak, failed to spot the development of information technology and has disappeared from the market. The German Federal Government, in contrast, recognised the significance of digitalisation, initiated a future project for comprehensive digitalisation of industrial production with Industry 4.0 and launched a billion-figure development scheme for broadband expansion.
Greatest possible exploitation of digitalisation
With Project P01, Kurtz Ersa aims to ensure that the group gains the greatest possible benefits from digitalisation, and becomes even more competitive for its customers around the world. All business processes can be affected by digitalisation. Anything that can be digitalised, will be digitalised. Opportunities and risks will be assessed, ideas collected, initiatives launched. The ideas will be generated, discussed and developed further in sub-groups, and decided on in the monthly meetings of the management. The following sub-groups have been defined: Production, product, administration and communication. At present, around 40 smaller and larger initiatives are active – from the idea to the ongoing major project.
Expansion of available networks
In its implementation as a business strategy, digitalisation requires a supporting IT strategy. The Kurtz Ersa IT Team is working feverishly on improving the capability and availability of the networks. “We are presently increasing the band widths of the internet connection, developing the internal Wi-Fi nets, working on replacing the old telephone arrangements and installing reliable video conference systems. The networks are being examined for weak spots, obsolete components have to be replaced, security system configurations upgraded. And of course we want to enhance the customer service provided by our IT hotline. We are challenging our current IT service provider to prove that they can supply the necessary capability,” says Kurtz Ersa Chief Information Officer, Peter Stärk, summarising the ongoing measures. And that is just the beginning of P01!