Manuel Wagner
is the CEO of Cosh Consulting. The Nuremberg-based IT service provider specializes in proactive
IT solutions for companies in the upper midmarket and supports customers
with Workplace as a Service concepts: from the company’s own online self-service portal for hardware components and rentable IT workstations to service desk, on-premise server and storage systems and Microsoft’s hyperscaler Cloud Azure and the associated Microsoft365 products. With the “Workplace as a Service Enterprise” solution launched in January 2020, Cosh also offers a web configurator that digitizes and simplifies the sales funnel: from the standardization of migration processes and the selection of IT workplace components such as PCs, monitors and mice to the implementation and commissioning of the workplace.

Outsourcing IT processes enables companies to manage IT structure and administration without having to establish lengthy processes themselves. In this interview, Manuel Wagner from Cosh Consulting explains what can be outsourced, what advantages this brings and what to look out for before outsourcing. Interview: Diana Artist

funkschau: Simplify IT purchasing processes, reduce costs for support and maintenance, relieve the internal IT department: before many companies are facing these challenges. To what extent can targeted outsourcing help here?

Manuel Wagner: Efficient and thus cost-effective processes are achieved above all when a high level of standardization is achieved. and little administrative effort. This requires that the organization is appropriately structured and automated. A IT outsourcing company is keen to integrate these processes in Develop and execute perfection. The development time for such process efficiency, both logically and in terms of personnel, costs a company a certain investment. Through outsourcing buys you get this intelligence directly. Furthermore, it must be taken into account that in many cases, the necessary personnel in the basic IT operation cannot be found on the market. This leads to additional Costs due to further qualification of the team required for the time being or internal employees, as the case may be. Driven by this this shortage of skilled workers, internal IT departments are increasingly focusing on the application landscape and interfaces, because this is where direct added value can be generated for the company’s business area.

funkschau: Which IT processes can be outsourced at all?

Manuel Wagner: All routine processes falling under the scope of basic IT are suitable for outsourcing. In addition to classic hardware processes such as IMAC (Install, Move, Add, Change), user-based processes can also be outsourced. In the Workplace area that especially:

– First, the “joiner process,” or the onboarding of new employees. This also includes the initial provision of hardware, software licenses and access authorizations.

– The “mover process” describes the change within the company. This requires changes, for example in licenses or the allocation of access authorizations. Mostly these are Changes to licenses and access authorizations.

– At the end, the “leaver process.” If an employee leaves the company, accesses must be blocked or deleted, hardware taken back and licenses pooled.

In addition to these processes, companies are also increasingly outsourcing support hotlines for well-defined services, such as Hardware damage, from. Then the service provider takes over the handling of the problem. In general, almost all commodity services can be outsourced. These services describe standard or Routine services that are often also automated.

funkschau: Outsourcing is often seen as an annoying necessity. How do you see it?

Manuel Wagner: It’s in the nature of us IT people to do as much as possible ourselves. and save money in the process. I know this and sometimes that works, too. The typical IT crack also sees the additional costs that come with outsourcing, as well as a lack of quality of performance. In fact, in this Fear also a little truth. But just a little bit. From a management perspective, the IT crack looks at a variable unfortunately often not. Namely themselves. From the point of view of the company many more factors than cost and quality are involved in order to make well-founded decisions about outsourcing or insourcing. bring about. Outsourcing is a strategic management decision on a planning horizon of at least three, if not even five years. It is not for nothing that there are management consultancies that specialize in developing a sourcing mission statement for develop the future of the company.

funkschau: How much or what can you actually save with an as-a-service model?

Manuel Wagner: Basically, the main thing that can be saved is time. The in-house development of a Workplace-as-a-Service model such as the ours with all the building blocks such as cost centers, service catalog, product management, purchasing platform and so on would be a Cost companies at least 2,000 person-days internally just for development. This effort can be saved by directly selects a best-practice model and implements it. For a medium-sized company with 1,000 workplaces, a maximum of five percent of the aforementioned sum can be estimated for this.

funkschau: How long does it usually take to implement a such solution? How quickly can it be used?

Manuel Wagner: Commodity service outsourcing is worthwhile from about 100 workplaces. The implementation times are primarily geared according to the sourcing depth. For a process map of medium quality of about 100 person-days per 1,000 IT workstations. go out. From 5,000 users upwards, further economies of scale can certainly be achieved list. Complexity factors in the international environment can one can add depending on the region. European countries are familiar with the factor of 1.5, in the Asian area it is a factor of 3.

funkschau: What aspects should companies factor into their choice of the right rentable IT workstation solution? Keyword Inventory determination, data protection, cost transparency, resilience.

Manuel Wagner: Ich denke, da haben Sie schon den Großteil der wichtigen called. Preliminary analyses and workshops to determine inventory, Workshops on target image, data protection, regulatory requirements

– for example, KRITIS and BAIT (editor’s note: bank regulatory requirements for IT) -, transparent cost mapping, risk assessments, and so on. I assume that in every company the priorities are different, even if the disciplines are always the same are. One should definitely invest initial time and money in Invest in workshops with potential service providers, because this is where it usually becomes apparent where real added value can be achieved.

funkschau: Cosh offers its Workplace-as-a-Service enterprise solution since January 2020 “My Workplace” What are its distinguishing features?

Manuel Wagner: What’s special about us is that we don’t just deliver the actual outsourcing services, but also a management platform for them, which is developed jointly with IT departments and other outsourcing service providers was developed. We can This interaction reduces the total cost of ownership by around 25 percent. of ownership can be saved. The web platform takes over the entire Communication between the end-users, the IT department, the departments and the outsourcing provider. In this way, many administrative processes can be highly automated and thus cost-efficiently through. An example: The IT department decides that in the next quarter the workstations will be replaced by the HR department with new ones. should be. The project manager for this exchange creates a migration job in the web platform and selects the HR department from. The platform automatically informs all employees in the department that they can choose new devices and sends a store link with it. Once the employees have made their selection, an approval process starts, which, if successful, will order triggers at the service provider/outsourcer. At the same time informs the platform fully automatically connects several stakeholders involved in the migration, such as internal IT, by opening a ticket there. or the purchasing department or the purchasing system that a new order has been placed. The special feature is, that you don’t have a lengthy implementation period, as is the case with many business process automation (BPO) platforms, but that the platform delivers the most important processes directly. funkschau: Which technology partners – both software and hardware – do you work with and why? Wagner: We mainly work with our own technology. Since four years we are developing the Workplace Enterprise platform, which enables a high degree of digitalization in workplace management enables. For hardware we work closely with Lenovo, Apple, Samsung and other world market leaders, as their portfolio is available internationally and the devices are known for their durability and build quality.

funkschau: Cosh Consulting has already developed an IT lifecycle management concept with Berlin Hyp, a bank for real estate and mortgage bonds implemented. What were the biggest challenges in this project? And what were the learnings from this?

Manuel Wagner: With the support of Cosh Consulting, Berlin Hyp’s IT departments were able to outsource routine tasks and focus on the company’s own digitization strategy and related projects. The challenge consisted above all in transporting and transferring the existing organization through the new roles of the bank’s employees in such a way that the end users perceive a smooth transition. One of the most important learnings was a positive one: working with Berlin Hyp once again confirmed that our Workplace concept with its flexibility and scalability works particularly well for larger companies. Even with more than 1,000 employees, Berlin Hyp maintains a clean and structured overview of all its Workplace assets, while end users benefit from Cosh’s fast response times and highly trained support staff.