Product Discovery is the key to avoiding a “blind” project launch and concentrating your investments on high-value features. In the healthcare sector, this approach helps mitigate regulatory and user risks through early, iterative field validations.

By placing the user at the heart of the process and combining UX, technical, business, and compliance perspectives, you quickly identify real needs and eliminate unverified internal assumptions. The result is a useful, adopted, and compliant product whose development remains agile and financially controlled.

Understanding Users with a Pragmatic Field Approach

User research isn’t limited to theoretical surveys. It relies on targeted interviews, concrete observations, and an analysis of real constraints.

In a digital patient record project, conducting short field interviews captures caregivers’ frustrations and availability constraints. This approach goes beyond a simple meeting-room questionnaire: it integrates into rounds, briefings, and informal breaks.

Observing the current use of existing tools often uncovers unofficial workarounds. These in-situ observations help explain why certain “non-compliant” practices persist and enable you to build workflows truly adapted to the hospital context.

Analyzing internal and external constraints—such as administrative burden, staff rotation, or GDPR requirements—immediately guides priorities. These operational factors directly influence technical feasibility and the overall user experience. IT specifications.

Understanding security protocols, GDPR requirements, or internal validation processes is crucial for aligning the design. These elements guide design and architecture from the discovery phase.

Short, Targeted Field Interviews

Focused interviews on specific scenarios provide immediate feedback on users’ real needs. They typically last 30 to 45 minutes to avoid encroaching on medical time.

Conducted with diverse profiles (nurses, doctors, pharmacists), these exchanges reveal divergent expectations and highlight convergence opportunities. For example, a nurse may need a concise alert while a pharmacist wants a detailed history.

Observing Actual Usage

Shadowing a user during their movements helps identify friction points that remain unheard during interviews. This reveals uncovered areas or time-consuming detours.

These observation moments uncover everyday actions, makeshift workarounds, and informal detours that signal gaps in current systems. These insights immediately translate into UX and technical improvement opportunities.

Documenting user journeys with photos and annotations contextualizes each usage phase, facilitating the creation of prototypes centered on real needs rather than idealized processes.

Analyzing Operational Constraints

Understanding security protocols, GDPR requirements, or internal validation processes is crucial for aligning the design. These elements guide design and architecture from the discovery phase.

Factoring in team availability, IT maintenance windows, and integration constraints with existing systems prevents unusable developments. This way, technical feasibility is assessed in advance.

A university hospital adjusted its deployment schedule by aligning Product Discovery workshops with caregiver rotations. This example shows that identifying availability windows is as critical as determining needs.

Generating and Prioritizing Ideas Based on Business Value

Co-creation workshops must remain short, focused, and decision-oriented. Prioritization is done through mapping features based on ROI, risks, and effort.

In a co-creation session, each idea is compared in terms of its impact on the value chain and its technical complexity. This method prevents feature bloat and encourages stakeholder buy-in. Should you create an MVP?

Low-fidelity prototyping (paper mock-ups or interactive wireframes) fuels discussion and supports quick decisions. Unvalidated intuitions give way to quantified and compared options. Understanding prototypes.

The resulting functional mapping is structured along three axes: user-perceived value, risk level (technical, regulatory, operational), and development effort. This visual overview immediately guides stakeholders.

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Short, Efficient Workshops

Keeping workshops to a half-day maximizes focus and avoids unproductive debates. Each session begins with a recap of field insights and ends with clear priorities.

Having the executive committee, business leaders, and IT representatives present is essential. The clash of perspectives accelerates decision-making and strengthens ownership of the action plan.

Rapid Low-Fidelity Prototyping

Using tools like Figma or paper mock-ups enables testing multiple versions within hours. You explore several hypotheses without heavy investment.

Each low-fidelity prototype focuses on key journeys and critical screens. Users promptly validate or reject navigation, wording, and element placement choices.

These early feedback cycles feed a backlog prioritized and justified by evidence. This avoids developing features whose value hasn’t been proven.

ROI, Risk, and Effort Mapping

Each feature is positioned on a three-dimensional matrix: business value, technical complexity, and risk level. This consolidated view guides trade-offs.

High-impact, low-effort initiatives rise to the top, while high-risk or low-return options are postponed or deprioritized.

A Swiss pharmaceutical lab abandoned a visually appealing but underused advanced analytics module. This mapping-driven decision saved over 25% of the initial development budget, demonstrating that prioritizing business value limits unnecessary expenses.

Prototyping and UX: Test Early to Focus on What Matters

Interactive prototypes tested from day one quickly reveal journey inconsistencies. Design focuses on accessibility, compliance, and seamless integration with business workflows.

Wireframes are designed to validate the most critical use scenarios. Each iteration incorporates user test feedback, ensuring the UI robustly supports operational processes. High-fidelity wireframe guide.

The interactive prototype measures task completion times, identifies error sources, and refines navigation before a single line of code is written.

The emphasis is on information architecture and visual simplicity: the goal is a task success rate above 90% in the first test cycle.

Wireframes and Use Case Scenarios

Wireframes are developed to illustrate key journeys. They integrate healthcare-specific regulatory constraints, such as capturing consent and action traceability.

Each scenario focuses on a critical task: creating a patient record, prescribing treatment, or reviewing histories. Tests rely on short but reproducible protocols.

Initial feedback often highlights minor tweaks—button placement, labels—that greatly enhance ergonomics and execution speed.

Early Interactive Testing

Offering the prototype to a caregiver panel and measuring interactions in real conditions uncovers ergonomic errors. Task completion time, error rates, and qualitative comments are analyzed.

These tests also reveal users’ emotional expectations—crucial in a patient context. They highlight needs for immediate feedback or visual confirmation.

An outpatient care center reduced administrative data entry time by 30% after two test cycles. This example demonstrates the tangible impact of early UX iteration.

Accessible, Compliant, and Scalable Design

Design takes accessibility standards (WCAG) and MDR UX/Use-Safety requirements into account. Each screen is validated for contrast, readability, and keyboard navigation.

The prototype’s modular structure makes adding or modifying components easy without disrupting existing journeys. This ensures controlled scalability.

The hybrid approach—open-source building blocks and custom modules—ensures technological freedom and limits vendor lock-in while providing a secure, scalable foundation.

Evaluation, Testing, and Proof of Utility

Validation unfolds across three axes: desirability, feasibility, and business alignment. Operational risk analysis and regulatory compliance are systematically integrated.

After prototyping, the testing phase includes extreme scenarios and human error simulations. This verifies that the tool remains reliable even under misuse or overload. IT project governance.

Predictive performance tests measure scalability and technical robustness before final implementation. They anticipate load peaks and ensure service stability. Total cost of ownership.

Finally, IT feasibility is validated through a high-level architectural review, ensuring cohesion with the existing ecosystem and identifying critical integration points.

UX and Technical Validation

The prototype is presented to an end-user panel to measure satisfaction and ease of use. Quantitative and qualitative feedback feed a recommendations report.

Meanwhile, the technical team assesses feasibility through lightweight proofs of concept, validating architecture decisions, APIs, and key components.

This dual perspective ensures the promised experience is technically feasible without budget overruns or major delays.

Regulatory and IT Compatibility

In the medical field, MDR compliance and UX/Use-Safety requirements impose strict constraints. Each requirement is mapped and validated before development.

The high-level architecture review secures integration with existing IT systems: ERP, electronic health records (EHR), directories, and secure messaging solutions.

This upfront verification prevents delays and aligns deployment schedules with regulatory approval windows and IT maintenance cycles.

Move from Uncertainty to Product Certainty

Product Discovery provides a clear vision of what to build, what not to build, and what to prioritize. By combining field research, rapid prototyping, and multi-faceted evaluations, you limit risks, control costs, and foster strong alignment between business and IT.

When healthcare and compliance are at the core of the project, this pragmatic approach helps avoid critical errors, shorten time to market, and ensure sustainable user adoption.

Our experts are here to guide you in implementing an accelerated, flexible approach perfectly tailored to your organization’s size and challenges.

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In an environment where reliability and predictability are imperative, software version management goes far beyond a mere technical detail. It serves as a genuine governance lever, ensuring transparency around changes, risk anticipation, and seamless coordination between IT, business units, and executive management.

Semantic Versioning, or SemVer, structures your software lifecycle around three levels of change—patches, backward-compatible enhancements, and breaking changes—and creates a common language for all stakeholders. This article demonstrates how such syntactic simplicity translates into operational robustness, contractual confidence, and performance control in the demanding context of Swiss companies with over 20 employees.

A Common Language Between Technical Teams, Business Units, and Management

Semantic Versioning provides a simple framework for aligning IT strategy with business expectations. It transforms version numbering into a clear message about the impact of changes. By establishing a universal communication protocol, it reduces friction between developers, project managers, and decision-makers.

Core Principles of SemVer

SemVer relies on the MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH format, a concise syntax that immediately signals the nature of an update. Each segment serves a precise role: patches, compatible feature additions, and breaking changes.

By reading a version number, you instantly know whether it’s a hotfix with no functional impact, an incremental enhancement, or a major change requiring careful planning. This vocabulary standardizes risk perception, regardless of the recipient’s profile.

This clarity benefits both technical teams—who organize their test and deployment pipelines—and business and finance leaders—who manage budgets using a software requirements specification and assess training or support needs.

Aligning Software Governance

Beyond the code, SemVer integrates into the IT roadmap and steering committees. Each MAJOR release triggers a review of resources, deadlines, and contractual terms, while MINOR and PATCH releases can often follow a streamlined approval process.

This establishes a predictable rhythm for production deployments, reduces unplanned emergency fixes, and strengthens trust between the company and its service providers. SemVer thus becomes a pillar of your innovation governance.

In a Swiss context—where service level agreements (SLAs) and compliance are closely monitored—this alignment helps secure commitments and demonstrate organized control over software changes.

Example: IT–Business Alignment

A Swiss logistics organization adopted SemVer for its internal business application. Previously, every deployment sparked disputes between IT and operations over the true criticality of changes.

After implementing SemVer, project managers now use the MAJOR segment for each critical API overhaul, MINOR for new business features, and PATCH for immediate bug fixes. This convention reduced post-deployment incidents by 40%.

This case shows how a standardized versioning protocol serves as an implicit contract, clarifies priorities, and eases the balance between stability and innovation.

Clarifying Risks and Planning Updates

SemVer structures update management across three impact levels, simplifying risk assessment. It becomes a steering tool for the IT department and finance team. By distinguishing patches, compatible enhancements, and breaking changes, each release is tied to a tailored level of effort, testing, and support.

Distinguishing PATCH, MINOR, and MAJOR

The PATCH segment denotes quick fixes with no functional impact. It can follow an automated pipeline and be applied continuously without disturbing users.

The MINOR segment covers backward-compatible enhancements. These require thorough test scenarios but do not demand rewrites or extensive training.

Finally, the MAJOR segment signals a potential breaking change. It engages a steering committee to validate specifications, adjust maintenance contracts, and prepare users for a paradigm shift.

Anticipating Operational Impacts

Each MAJOR release requires a rigorous deployment plan: sandbox environments, acceptance testing, phased rollout, and rollback procedures. This level of vigilance minimizes service interruptions in critical environments.

MINOR releases, though compatible, may require internal communication, documentation updates, and adoption monitoring. PATCH releases fit into the regular maintenance cycle.

By planning updates this way, the IT department optimizes costs and avoids unexpected workloads—crucial for controlling IT budgets through effective technical debt management.

Example: Version Classification

A Swiss financial services firm once used unstructured version numbering, leading to schedule delays and misunderstandings about deliverable criticality.

After adopting SemVer, it segmented deployments: regulatory changes became MAJOR releases, reporting improvements MINOR, and bug fixes PATCH. This shift boosted business-user satisfaction by 30% and cut support costs by 50%.

This case illustrates how SemVer can align technical and business priorities while facilitating budgeting.

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The Role of Pre-Releases in Securing Production

Alpha, beta, and release-candidate labels introduce structured, gradual test phases. They reduce production risks by spreading validation across multiple stages, ensuring enhanced quality before reaching a stable release.

Alpha: Initial Internal Testing

The alpha pre-release is distributed internally to detect major issues early. It allows development and QA teams to identify blocking points and stabilize the architecture using user stories.

This phase isn’t intended for end users; it focuses on system foundations, API robustness, and data-model consistency.

Feedback gathered during alpha defines the priority fix list before opening the beta to a broader circle.

Beta: Validation with a Wider Group

The beta phase involves a limited group of users or pilot clients. It aims to test functional fit and refine the user experience.

Compatibility with existing environments, performance under load, and relevance of new features are all verified.

Feedback feeds the backlog, ensuring the stable release meets real needs without surprises.

Release Candidate: Final Verification Stage

The release candidate is almost identical to the expected stable version. It undergoes final test suites: regression, security, and load testing.

This stage simulates production deployment and validates installation scripts, migration processes, and rollback procedures.

One RC may suffice if results are satisfactory; otherwise, further iterations address the remaining issues. This rigor greatly reduces post-production incidents.

Example: Pre-Release Usage

A Swiss document-management operator integrated pre-releases into its delivery cycle. Each MAJOR release passed through three alphas, two betas, and one release candidate before production.

This discipline uncovered a critical incompatibility with a third-party database early, preventing a multi-hour service outage. The process cut emergency rollbacks by 70%.

This case highlights the importance of these stages for ensuring business continuity in high-demand environments.

Traceability and Governance with a Structured Changelog

A detailed changelog, aligned with SemVer, turns version history into a governance tool. It makes decisions visible and holds each change accountable. By formalizing every update, you maintain living documentation for audits, maintenance, and future decision-making.

Changelog as a Governance Tool

The changelog lists patches, enhancements, and breaking changes chronologically, tied to their respective SemVer releases. It becomes the single source of truth for all stakeholders.

Project managers rely on this document to plan tests, prepare training, and inform executives of expected impacts.

This traceability helps reduce misunderstandings and redundant work during evolution cycles.

Archiving Decisions and Responsibilities

Each changelog entry can reference tracking tickets, authors of modifications, and reviewers responsible for approval. This mechanism documents not only the “what” but also the “who” and the “why,” ensuring a complete history of decisions.

Enhancing Budget Transparency

The MAJOR, MINOR, or PATCH level translates into estimated cost and project effort. IT and finance leaders can then allocate budgets by version type and anticipate necessary investments. The SemVer–changelog pairing creates operational reporting, offering reliable metrics on the frequency of breaking changes or the scope of patches via business intelligence. This transparency helps optimize resources and justify technical choices to governance bodies.

Semantic Versioning: A Governance and Trust Lever

Semantic Versioning is more than just a numbering format; it structures your software evolution management and clarifies contractual commitments. By distinguishing patches, backward-compatible enhancements, and breaking changes, you anticipate risks, secure production deployments, and facilitate collaboration between IT, business units, and management.

Combined with gradual pre-releases and a detailed changelog, it allows you to document every decision, assign accountability, and support budget performance. In a Swiss context demanding reliability and compliance, these best practices offer a competitive advantage and a trust guarantee for your users and stakeholders.

Whether you plan to formalize your versioning or optimize your evolution governance, our SemVer experts are ready to assist you.

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In a landscape where customer expectations evolve rapidly, simply adding more touchpoints is no longer enough to guarantee a satisfying experience. Too many organizations still deliver fragmented journeys, leading to frustration and breakdowns. To turn seamless customer experience into a competitive advantage, you must move beyond deploying standalone tools and adopt a holistic approach centered on customer understanding, customer journey mapping, data-driven personalization, automation, and continuous management fueled by real feedback.

Align Strategy with Customer Expectations

Journey consistency begins with an in-depth understanding of customer needs and motivations. Without a unified view of expectations, each touchpoint remains isolated and interactions lack fluidity.

Gather and Analyze Customer Feedback

To build a coherent customer journey, collect qualitative and quantitative data from every interaction, whether digital or physical. Surveys, interviews, and real-world observations enable granular mapping of emotions and expectations. At the same time, analyzing behavioral data (clicks, session duration, cart abandonment) completes the picture and uncovers hidden friction points. This evidence-based approach gives teams the foundation to prioritize optimizations by their impact on the overall experience.

Adopt an active listening posture through in-app feedback tools or panels of loyal customers to strengthen the relevance of insights. Direct feedback often emerges from moments of intense frustration, where dissatisfaction is most palpable. Synthesizing these responses reveals recurring pain points and moments of delight, each presenting opportunities for improvement. Segmenting feedback by customer profile then allows you to tailor journeys to the real needs of each group.

Finally, collaboration among business units, marketing, and IT is crucial. Customer insights must be shared transparently to align operational priorities and prevent departmental silos. This cross-functional governance ensures every improvement addresses a clear customer issue and measures its impact on satisfaction and retention.

Map the Customer Journey to Identify Breakdowns

Customer journey mapping visually represents each step of the customer’s path, from initial contact through post-purchase. This map highlights transitions between channels and key moments when consistency is tested. By pinpointing breakdowns—missing information, long response times, or contradictory experiences—teams can target precisely where reinforcement is needed. A well-constructed map also integrates associated emotions to prioritize actions based on perceived customer impact.

Co-creation workshops with stakeholders from across the organization bring diverse perspectives and enrich the journey view. Customer service representatives, business leads, and developers share frontline experiences to refine the map and define success metrics. This collaborative process fosters collective commitment to improving overall consistency, a prerequisite for adopting the recommendations.

Once formalized, the journey map serves as the reference for all digital projects. Every new feature must be validated against its contribution to end-to-end journey fluidity. This strategic framework prevents piecemeal solutions or disconnected initiatives that undermine consistency and brand perception.

Example: A Swiss Multi-Line Insurance Company

Swiss insurer with multiple subsidiaries discovered that customers received conflicting communications depending on whether they contacted online support, local branches, or the call center. Mapping revealed that warranty details and processing times varied by channel, causing growing confusion. After unifying scenarios and centralizing customer knowledge on a shared platform, the insurer reduced information-error complaints by 30%. This case demonstrates that rigorous mapping combined with cross-functional governance eradicates inconsistencies and strengthens trust.

Intelligently Leverage Data to Personalize the Experience

Personalizing each touchpoint relies on the strategic use of customer data. Without centralization and clear governance, personalization initiatives remain isolated and ineffective.

Implement a Unified Data Platform

The first step is to centralize customer data from diverse sources—CRM, ERP, website, mobile app, and in-store interactions—into a single platform. This unified hub ensures a 360° view of each customer profile and feeds real-time personalization tools. A coherent data model synchronizes information, avoiding duplicates or discrepancies. This approach simplifies audience segmentation and granular qualification, which are prerequisites for meaningful personalization.

By adopting modular open-source tools, you avoid vendor lock-in and maintain the flexibility to add new sources or predictive analyses. Integration is orchestrated via open APIs and hybrid middleware, ensuring lasting interoperability. This architecture adapts to technological and business changes while guaranteeing security and GDPR compliance.

Data governance must clearly define roles and responsibilities: who collects, who cleans, who exposes, and who uses each dataset. Regular refinement and update processes prevent data obsolescence and ensure personalization scenarios remain accurate. This operational rigor builds stakeholder and customer trust.

Design Dynamic Personalization Scenarios

Personalization scenarios should be defined based on identified segments and key moments in the customer journey. Each scenario dictates the content displayed, the channel used, and the engagement timing. For instance, a cart-abandonment scenario triggers a personalized email, while a frequent mobile app user receives tailored push notifications based on browsing habits. The effectiveness of these scenarios hinges on clear, measurable engagement rules.

AI and machine learning enrich these scenarios by anticipating future needs and behaviors. Recommendation algorithms suggest relevant products or services based on similar purchase patterns or industry trends. Continuous performance monitoring is essential to avoid adverse effects (irrelevant recommendations, marketing fatigue) and to adjust parameters based on real-world feedback.

Finally, a personalized interaction must never feel intrusive. Respecting the customer lifecycle and communication preferences ensures a fluid experience. Balancing proactive messages with pauses strengthens engagement without causing resentment.

Example: A Swiss Retail Chain

A multi-location retail chain brand struggled to re-engage loyal customers. Using a centralized platform, it segmented customers by purchase frequency and average basket size, then crafted in-store and online personalized campaigns. This approach drove a 20% increase in customer reactivation rate. This example shows how combining unified data with well-orchestrated personalization scenarios turns customer knowledge into measurable value.

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Automate and Promote Self-Service to Improve Efficiency

Automation and self-service boost satisfaction by accelerating request resolution. Deploying isolated chatbots or automated workflows without a holistic vision creates service silos and customer frustration.

Self-Service Portals and Knowledge Bases

Self-service portals give customers direct access to dynamic FAQs, video guides, and interactive tutorials. By structuring and prioritizing these resources clearly, visitors quickly find answers without contacting support. Adding a semantic search engine and a feedback system on answer relevance continuously enriches content. This approach reduces incoming call volume and improves overall satisfaction.

Seamless CRM integration ensures automatic tracking of requests, linking each consultation to a precise customer profile. Internal teams then gain a detailed history of inquiries, feeding continuous improvement processes. Automating feedback collection and knowledge-base updates enhances operational agility and prevents resource obsolescence.

To ensure consistency, every new digital feature must include self-service documentation alongside development. This organizational habit prevents the knowledge base from becoming a mere file repository and guarantees a smooth transition between self-service and human support when needed.

Chatbots and Real-Time Assistance

Advanced chatbots powered by language models and constantly updated knowledge bases provide instant initial responses to simple questions and guide users to the right resources. This automation reduces wait times and routes complex requests to better-prepared human agents. An intelligent routing scenario connects channels—website, mobile app, instant messaging—to ensure conversation continuity.

Analyzing chat transcripts identifies question trends, refines scripts, and prioritizes knowledge-base enhancements. Natural language processing algorithms detect user intent and adapt responses in real time. This machine learning loop continuously improves the chatbot without requiring systematic manual intervention.

First-contact resolution rate and post-interaction satisfaction scores are key metrics for managing automated assistance performance. By pairing these metrics with the voice of the customer, you ensure qualitative and quantitative oversight and adjust service governance to maintain high consistency levels.

Example: A Swiss Logistics Provider

A mid-sized logistics company faced increasing volumes of parcel-tracking requests and claims. By deploying a self-service portal coupled with a multichannel chatbot, it automated 70% of recurring inquiries, cutting average handling time by 40%. Transcript analysis also enabled continuous updates to the knowledge base, improving response relevance. This example shows how a holistic automation approach—combining self-service and AI assistance—transforms operational efficiency and customer experience quality.

Turn Your Customer Journeys into a Strategic Lever

A seamless and consistent customer experience rests on deep expectation insights, rigorous journey mapping, intelligent data use, and judicious service automation. When orchestrated within cross-functional governance and fueled by a continuous improvement cycle, these elements become powerful drivers of loyalty, growth, and efficiency.

Adopting a seamless customer experience is not a one-off project but the implementation of a living system that evolves with your customers and your organization. It requires uniting strategy, organization, and technology to deliver lasting omnichannel consistency.

Our Edana experts are here to help you define how to structure and steer your CX transformation, avoiding silo traps and vendor lock-in, and favoring a modular, open-source architecture tailored to your business context.

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In many software projects, the pitfall isn’t the choice of technology or code quality but a partial understanding of the business domain to be digitized. All too often, traditional workshops generate ideas without ever creating an operational, shared vision of how the organization actually works. It’s in this upstream scoping phase that Event Storming reveals its full strategic power.

This collaborative method, devised by Alberto Brandolini, focuses on analyzing past events to map business processes, identify areas of uncertainty, and jointly lay the foundations for a coherent, evolvable architecture. By placing the business domain at the center, Event Storming turns each workshop into a driver of lasting alignment between decision-makers, business experts, and IT teams.

Why Event Storming Is Essential to Prevent Project Drift

Event Storming confronts technical assumptions with the reality of business operations to uncover inconsistencies from day one. Its event-driven approach fosters a common understanding of processes and drastically reduces the risk of later misunderstandings.

A Swiss cantonal bank recently ran an Event Storming workshop to digitize its online application journey. This exercise exposed several regulatory exceptions and implicit management decisions, showing that a standard kickoff meeting would never have revealed these dependencies. That insight immediately allowed them to adjust the project scope and avoid months of misguided development by defining an IT requirements specification document.

Identify Key Business Events

The first step is to list every past event that marks the process you’re modeling. Each event should be phrased in the past tense—such as “Order Confirmed” or “Invoice Generated”—to focus on what was actually observed rather than assumed needs.

In a stock management project, identifying the “Goods Receipt Recorded” event immediately integrated quality-control procedures into the digitized workflow.

By naming events precisely, teams often discover different terminologies across departments, revealing misunderstandings that, if unaddressed, would lead to software misaligned with real business practices.

Step-by-Step Guide to Running an Event Storming Workshop

The workshop is structured in clear phases: preparation, event exploration, aggregate modeling, and policy formulation. Each phase produces immediate visual deliverables, ensuring transparent tracking and continuous alignment.

Preparation and Initial Scoping

Before the workshop, define objectives, the functional scope, and the expected level of detail. This includes creating an initial list of business events identified by the experts.

The facilitator’s role is crucial: clarifying the work’s scope, selecting a suitable space, and preparing visual supports (walls fitted with flipcharts, colored sticky notes). Precise scoping prevents drift and ensures efficient use of time together.

In the SME example, this alignment phase immediately ruled out non-priority topics—like detailed archiving of old production orders—that would have needlessly weighed down the process.

Collecting and Structuring Events

Participants gradually place sticky notes representing identified events along a timeline. Each new event is collectively challenged to verify its relevance and wording.

This exploration often uncovers omissions or terminology errors. It also allows grouping or splitting events for greater clarity.

When the SME documented its procurement process, adding the “Supplier Compliance Check” event late in the game completely reshaped the validation sequence, demonstrating the importance of including all concerned parties.

Defining Aggregates and Policies

Once the events are validated, the workshop moves on to identifying aggregates: the entities responsible for maintaining business-data consistency (for example, “Order,” “Customer,” or “Product”).

At the same time, policies or business rules (events triggering an action, rerouting conditions) are mapped using arrows or specifically colored sticky notes.

This work transforms the timeline into an initial Domain-Driven Design (DDD) skeleton that will underpin future architectural decisions.

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Delimiting Bounded Contexts for a Coherent Architecture

Event Storming naturally delineates functional contexts, avoiding purely technical partitions. These boundaries, defined by business criteria, guide the choice between a modular monolith and event-driven microservices.

Understanding Business Boundaries

Each bounded context corresponds to a set of coherent tasks within a single expertise domain. The workshop aligns events with associated responsibilities to draw these territories.

This step challenges participants on the data flows crossing boundaries and any redundancies. The goal is to isolate domains that can evolve independently.

This clear separation between “Order Preparation” and “Delivery Tracking” enabled shorter deployment cycles for each module.

Drawing Contextual Boundaries

Using distinct colors or graphic outlines, you visualize functional zones on the Event Storming map. This view becomes the foundation of your architectural documentation.

These boundaries aren’t set in stone: they evolve with the project during design reviews. But they provide an initial guide for distributing technical responsibilities.

Guiding Architectural Choices

With bounded contexts defined, you can assess the suitability of a modular monolith, microservices segmentation, or a global event-driven approach.

You base decisions on business criteria—event volume, lifecycle independence, scalability requirements—to choose the most appropriate model.

In our example, the high autonomy of modules justified a microservices architecture, delivering better operational resilience and scalability for seasonal activity peaks.

The Human and Organizational Benefits of Event Storming

Event Storming strengthens cohesion between business and IT by making processes and decisions visible. It fosters a culture of continuous collaboration, where every trade-off is documented and shared.

Team Alignment and Engagement

Active participation from every role—from sponsor to developer—fosters ownership and reduces resistance to change. Everyone sees themselves in the model and commits more readily to implementation.

This collective process cuts down on back-and-forth and later misunderstandings, since assumptions are explicitly discussed and validated up front.

Decision Clarity and Risk Reduction

With each event and policy recorded visually, prioritization or arbitration decisions are documented and retrievable later. This secures project governance and minimizes drift risks.

Tracking invalidated assumptions prevents falling into the same traps during future system evolutions.

Strengthening Cross-Functional Collaboration

Event Storming creates a common language free of technical jargon, so every stakeholder can contribute and understand the system map. This practice nourishes cross-functionality and can be replicated in future development phases.

The method also facilitates onboarding new team members, who quickly gain a holistic view of the project without enduring exhaustive, tedious documentation.

Clarify Your Digital Project with Event Storming

Event Storming is a lever for collective clarity, refocusing scoping on the business domain. By identifying real events, defining contexts, and involving all stakeholders, this approach significantly reduces the risk of misunderstandings and misdirected development.

The benefits go beyond technology: human alignment, decision clarity, and organizational agility are powerful assets to ensure the success and longevity of the solution delivered.

Whether your project involves custom business software, an application overhaul, or a distributed platform, our experts are ready to orchestrate an Event Storming workshop tailored to your context and lay the foundations for a successful digital transformation.

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Software developed in-house or outsourced to a third party can become a decisive financial pillar for a Swiss company, beyond its mere operational function. By capitalizing development costs, you can accurately reflect economic reality and improve solvency ratios—crucial during growth phases or fundraising.

The Swiss Code of Obligations provides a flexible framework, subject to principles of prudence, traceability, and rigorous documentation. This practical guide explains how to transform a software project into a solid intangible asset, aligning IT strategy and finance to sustainably strengthen the balance sheet.

Swiss Legal Framework: Flexibility and Rules of Prudence

The Code of Obligations permits the capitalization of software development costs, provided that accounting prudence principles are observed. Strict application of these rules ensures a credible valuation that can be defended in the event of an audit or transaction.

Regulatory Basis for Capitalization

The Code of Obligations (articles 960b and following) specifies that only costs related to a development phase can be recorded as assets. You must demonstrate technical feasibility, the intention and ability to put the software into service, and provide a reliable estimate of the expenses incurred.

The prudence principle prohibits overvaluing these assets: the company must be able to justify each recorded amount and estimate the software’s useful life. A chartered accountant or external auditor may intervene to validate the chosen method.

Furthermore, preliminary research expenses, which do not generate immediate evidence of value, must be expensed. Only the development phase, once recognition criteria are met, can be capitalized.

Company Limitations and Obligations

Each software asset must be tracked in a dedicated register, detailing costs, assigned human resources, and timelines. This traceability is essential to comply with accounting standards and to respond to any requests from the audit body.

The treatment in the income statement is limited to depreciation, spread over the estimated useful life. Subsequent maintenance or minor upgrade costs are, except in specific cases, expensed immediately.

In the notes to the financial statements, a concise yet precise description of the valuation methods and assumptions used must be provided. This transparency builds stakeholders’ trust and facilitates merger, acquisition, or financial leverage transactions.

Example: A Swiss Logistics SME

A Swiss SME specializing in warehouse management developed a stock-tracking platform. After validating technical feasibility and setting up a detailed cost log, it recorded CHF 250,000 as an asset over three years.

This approach improved its debt ratio and reassured an investor during a financing round. The example shows that rigorous documentation and adherence to accounting criteria can turn an IT project into a strong negotiating tool.

Moreover, tracking man-hours and software licenses enabled workload adjustments and budget overrun control, highlighting the importance of governance from the project’s outset.

Distinguish Research from Development: Keys to Capitalization

It is essential to separate the research phase, which is not capitalizable, from the development phase, which may be recognized as an asset. A clear understanding of these concepts avoids rejection of capitalization and enhances the credibility of the financial statements.

Non-Capitalizable Nature of the Research Phase

Research comprises work aimed at acquiring new knowledge or technologies without immediate industrial application. These expenses are systematically expensed because their outcome is not guaranteed.

Exploratory prototypes, preliminary market studies, and proofs of concept fall into this category. Their expensing reflects the uncertainty surrounding their future exploitation.

This distinction protects the financial statements from excessive valuation based on uncertain outcomes, consistent with the prudence principle in the Code of Obligations.

Criteria for Recognizing a Development Phase

Development begins once there is a clear technical plan, a dedicated budget, and demonstrated feasibility. Coding costs, preliminary testing, and integration expenses can then be capitalized.

Concretely, the company must prove the finished product will be operational and generate positive economic flows. Developers’ salaries, specific tool licenses, and validation tests fall within the scope of capitalization.

A steering committee, including the CIO and finance representatives, validates this transition from research to development phase, ensuring shared governance and minimizing the risk of divergent interpretations.

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Documenting and Tracking Costs: Foundation for Reliable Capitalization

Rigorous expense tracking assigns responsibility to each stakeholder and ensures the essential traceability in case of an audit. Implementing appropriate tools and processes promotes coherent and compliant capitalization.

Comprehensive Identification of Eligible Costs

Each assigned human resource must be logged by project and phase. The hourly rate and time spent are centralized to accurately calculate the capitalizable amount.

Software licenses necessary for development, test environment costs, and external services (design, architecture) can also be capitalized if directly linked to the project.

It is crucial to exclude general or administrative costs, which remain expensed as current charges. This rigor prevents overvaluation and adheres to prevailing accounting criteria.

Governance and Internal Processes

Defining governance involves creating a mixed Finance–IT validation committee responsible for deciding on cost capitalization and periodic monitoring.

Pre-approval workflows, via a project management tool, ensure each expense is approved before posting. This approach strengthens traceability.

Quarterly reviews verify the consistency between the initial budget, incurred costs, and technical progress. This synchronization prevents discrepancies and secures the balance sheet.

Example: A Swiss Public Institution

A cantonal agency carried out the redesign of a user platform. All man-hours were tracked in a monitoring system and linked to specific tasks, validated weekly by the financial controller.

Development costs totaling CHF 450,000 were capitalized over five years, in accordance with internal guidelines aligned with the Code of Obligations.

This example illustrates that shared governance and well-calibrated processes enable the drafting of solid notes and confident preparation for external audits.

Choosing an Appropriate Depreciation Policy

The duration and method of depreciation directly affect profit and key financial ratios. A policy aligned with the software’s useful life enhances the relevance of the financial statements.

Depreciation Period by Software Type

Standard software generally has a depreciation period of three to five years. Custom developments, tied to a specific industry, may justify a longer period, up to seven years.

The chosen duration should reflect the persistence of economic benefit and the frequency of major updates. An annual review allows adjustment of the policy if the innovation pace demands it.

The straight-line method remains the most common, offering a consistent expense allocation. Other, more dynamic methods can be considered, but they must be specified in the notes.

Impact on the Balance Sheet and Financial Ratios

An overly short depreciation period generates high expenses over a short timeframe, weighing on results. Conversely, a period that is too long can artificially inflate assets and delay expense recognition.

The depreciation period choice impacts the debt ratio, return on invested capital, and EBITDA. An appropriately smoothed approach optimizes the presentation of expense flows.

Financial analysts and banking partners examine these parameters to assess performance robustness and predictability. A policy justified in the notes strengthens credibility.

Example: A Tech SME in Scale-Up Phase

A rapidly growing company opted for a five-year depreciation period for its internal CRM, aligning with a major upgrade cycle planned every two years.

This approach maintained stable annual expenses and anticipated partial application replacement at the end of the period. Investors praised the consistency of the financial strategy.

This example shows that a depreciation policy aligned with the technical roadmap supports the clarity of financial statements and stakeholder confidence.

Make Your Software a Strategic Asset

Recognizing and capitalizing developed software is a powerful lever to align IT strategy with financial performance. Mastery of the legal framework, rigorous phase distinction, comprehensive documentation, and an appropriate depreciation policy are the pillars of successful capitalization.

Embedding these practices in your governance enhances investment visibility, smooths expense impact, and strengthens your financial ratios—essential during growth or restructuring phases.

Whatever your industry or organization size, our Edana experts support you in structuring this process and securing your balance sheet.

Discuss your challenges with an Edana expert

The next generation of CRM is no longer limited to enriching dashboards or automating email delivery. Agentic AI injects an unprecedented level of autonomy into customer journeys, executing tasks, learning from each interaction, and adjusting actions in real time.

This major evolution requires a comprehensive overhaul of IT architecture—API-first, interoperable, and modular—to integrate AI agents into every component of the sales, marketing, or support cycle. For medium to large Swiss organizations, transforming a CRM into an orchestrated platform powered by Agentic AI represents a significant strategic advantage to industrialize personalization, automate qualification, and improve response times without vendor lock-in.

Rise of Agentic AI in CRM

Agentic AI paves the way for CRMs that learn and act without constant supervision. This new era turns customer relationships into proactive, predictive experiences.

Evolution of CRM Toward Autonomy

Traditional CRMs focus on centralizing and analyzing data, leaving teams to interpret the insights. With Agentic AI, intelligent agents operate autonomously, capable of running campaigns, segmenting databases, and responding to subtle signals without continuous human intervention.

These agents drive complex workflows across multiple channels—emails, chatbots, push notifications, and calls. They identify high-value customers and tailor automated messaging to each profile, all while ensuring compliance with local regulations and data security standards.

By reducing time spent on repetitive tasks, this autonomy frees teams to concentrate on higher-value challenges such as content strategy or new service development.

Continuous Learning and Scalable Personalization

An autonomous AI agent learns from every interaction, improving its conversion rate and the relevance of its actions. It optimizes send times, messages, and offers based on individual prospect and customer behavior.

Rather than delivering static recommendations, the agent tests new approaches through rapid iterations, measuring impact in real time and refining its decision model to boost customer satisfaction.

In a complex B2B environment, this process ensures an ultra-personalized experience that can adapt to long sales cycles, multiple stakeholders, and sector-specific regulatory requirements.

Illustrative Industry Example

An industrial SME integrated an AI agent to automate lead scoring and trigger contextual follow-ups. The agent automatically identifies interest signals at a virtual trade show and schedules demos with warm prospects.

This case shows how Agentic AI can manage an entire mini sales cycle, freeing sales teams for strategic meetings and improving the initial conversion rate by 25%.

It demonstrates an autonomous CRM’s ability to combine continuous learning, operational execution, and reliable reporting without overburdening internal teams.

Orchestrating the Customer Experience with Autonomous CRM

Autonomous CRMs don’t just provide insights—they drive chained interactions. Proactive orchestration ensures end-to-end consistency across marketing, sales, and support.

Automated Sales Qualification

An AI agent embedded in the CRM evaluates each new opportunity against business criteria and purchase history. It prioritizes leads and triggers appropriate actions, such as sending technical documentation or scheduling a call.

This automation significantly shortens the time between first contact and in-depth conversation, which is crucial in competitive environments where response time directly impacts conversion rates.

The agent adjusts its qualification rules based on detected interest levels and feedback from the sales team, ensuring continuous feedback loops and refined scoring.

Predictive Marketing and Multichannel Engagement

With Agentic AI, marketing campaigns become intelligent and adaptive. The agent analyzes past interactions across channels to determine the optimal timing and channel for each message.

It orchestrates the delivery of personalized content, handles social media follow-up, and automatically updates nurturing scenarios based on prospect reactions, ensuring a cohesive experience.

This approach boosts engagement and reduces marketing churn by avoiding excessive or poorly targeted sends, while optimizing digital budget and campaign performance.

Proactive Support and Autonomous Resolutions

In customer support, an autonomous AI agent collects tickets, identifies recurring issues, and proposes resolutions even before a formal case is opened. It guides users with tailored responses, tutorials, or direct handling.

When the agent detects a critical incident, it automatically escalates to an expert with a contextual summary, speeding up resolution without unnecessarily involving support staff.

This proactivity enhances satisfaction, reduces average handling time, and strengthens the perception of attentive, responsive customer care.

Example: a Swiss financial cooperative deployed an AI agent to sort and resolve common requests, halving advisors’ workloads and maintaining over 90% customer satisfaction.

Building an API-First IT Architecture for Agentic AI

An autonomous CRM requires a modular infrastructure driven by APIs and ready to embed AI agents in every component. The architecture must ensure interoperability and scalability.

Modern Foundations and Service Decoupling

At the core of the architecture, each microservice exposes clear, documented endpoints, allowing AI agents to interact, trigger actions, or collect data in real time. For more on these concepts, see our study on web services: key use cases, architectures, and differences with APIs.

Decoupling ensures granular scalability: each component can evolve independently according to load or business needs, without risking regressions across the CRM.

This modularity also simplifies replacing or upgrading proprietary components, minimizing vendor lock-in and ensuring platform longevity.

Interoperability and Data Management

Customer data flows through unified APIs and secure event buses, ensuring consistency between CRM, ERP, marketing platforms, and support tools. AI agents leverage these streams for a 360° view of every contact and confident decision-making. Learn how to build a data platform to unlock your organization’s hidden value.

Governance, Security, and Controlling Autonomy

Every automated action by an AI agent must adhere to a well-defined governance framework. Rights policies, action quotas, and escalation workflows ensure AI remains aligned with strategic objectives and regulatory constraints.

Execution logs and traces are centralized, audited, and timestamped, providing full traceability of agent decisions.

To manage these processes effectively, integrate dedicated administration dashboards that offer real-time visibility into each agent’s performance and flag any out-of-range KPIs immediately.

Deploying an Autonomous CRM: Challenges and Success Factors

Adopting Agentic AI in a CRM requires rigorous autonomy management and tailored change management. Both technical and human challenges must be anticipated.

Governing Autonomy Without Losing Control

It’s crucial to define clear boundaries for AI agents—daily action limits, experimentation budgets, or functional scopes. A steering committee should approve scenarios and regularly adjust business rules.

This oversight prevents drift, where agents might develop non-compliant or ineffective behaviors, while preserving their self-optimization capabilities.

Dedicated dashboards provide real-time insights into each agent’s performance and immediately flag any KPIs outside predefined thresholds, enabling swift intervention.

Avoiding Vendor Lock-In and Preserving Technological Freedom

To limit dependence on a single vendor, adopt open-source components and design generic API connectors. AI agents can then be replaced or upgraded without overhauling the entire CRM.

Training Teams and Managing Change

Introducing an autonomous CRM transforms internal roles and responsibilities. Co-creation workshops with business and IT teams are essential to define workflows, validate automation scripts, and anticipate organizational impacts.

A pilot project showed that an AI agent built on an open-source stack and LangChain integrated seamlessly into an existing CRM, delivering continuous operations and reducing overall maintenance costs.

A continuous training plan, combining hands-on workshops and e-learning, enables employees to understand AI agents’ mechanics, analyze their reports, and fine-tune configurations.

This collaborative approach ensures rapid adoption and lasting skill development, reducing resistance and fostering long-term buy-in.

Transform Your CRM into an Orchestrated Autonomous Platform

The rise of Agentic AI marks a paradigm shift: CRMs are no longer mere decision-support tools but platforms for execution and perpetual learning. To fully leverage their potential, you need an API-first architecture, a preference for open source, and robust governance. Organizations that embrace these levers gain responsiveness, precision, and scalability in their customer relationships.

Our digital transformation experts are ready to assess your technological maturity, architect an autonomous CRM solution, and support your teams through this transition. With our contextual, modular approach, you’ll minimize vendor lock-in and maximize your platform’s long-term ROI.

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Discuss your challenges with an Edana expert

In an environment where competitiveness depends on seamless processes and intelligent data usage, ERP is no longer just a functional tool. It becomes either a genuine strategic foundation or, conversely, a barrier to innovation and growth.

With the explosion of digital channels (CRM, MES, e-commerce, industry-specific applications) and the demand for agility, it’s essential to conduct an objective assessment before deciding on a change. This article offers a structured analytical framework to determine whether your current ERP is a solid base or a glass ceiling, and to explore modular, extensible, and interoperable models tailored to your company’s real needs.

Identifying the Early Signs of an Outdated ERP

An ERP must do more than just “get the job done”; it must support growth and performance. Several early warning signs indicate a growing misalignment between your solution’s capabilities and your organization’s ambitions.

Functional Limitations and Rigid Usability

When an ERP no longer covers certain key business processes or features a non-intuitive interface, users quickly seek workarounds. These deficiencies lead to a proliferation of complementary tools or spreadsheets, increasing manual tasks and error risks.

Missing functions—such as managing complex promotions or tracking logistics returns—force teams to cobble together scripts or perform manual exports. Time spent on these tasks grows while overall productivity declines.

Over time, interface rigidity hampers solution adoption by teams. The lack of ergonomic customization creates internal resistance and fragmented usage, indicating that an ERP overhaul or replacement might be justified.

Manual Workarounds and Shadow IT

Workarounds using Excel, embedded Power BI, or ad hoc applications emerge whenever the ERP lacks real-time reporting or advanced analytics. Finance, sales, or operations teams then build in-house tools to fill these gaps.

This shadow IT undermines data governance. Information gets duplicated, poorly synchronized, and hard to consolidate, compromising any 360° view. Strategic decisions end up based on fragmented sources.

Ultimately, the systematic use of external solutions signals not only functional dissatisfaction, but also heightened security and compliance risks. This should trigger a deeper ERP evaluation.

Organizational Signals and Hidden Costs

Extended financial closing cycles, frequent stockouts, or persistent gaps between forecasts and actuals all indicate a misfit ERP. Operational responsiveness is lost in manual processes and repeated data entry.

The cost of evolutionary maintenance—equivalent to the total cost of ownership (TCO)—often rises non-linearly, consuming an increasing share of the IT budget. Updates become risky and require lengthy testing phases, extending deployment cycles.

These hidden costs, combined with rising support tickets and productivity losses, reflect a significant financial and operational impact. They serve as a strong warning to consider an ERP audit or to compare existing ERP solutions.

Diagnosing Technological Obsolescence

An aging architecture and outdated technologies limit ERP scalability and increase vulnerability. A technical audit helps precisely measure these risks and quantify their performance impact.

Monolithic vs. Decoupled Services

Monolithic solutions—where each module is tightly integrated—hinder flexibility. Updating one component can require a full redeployment, causing downtime or prolonged testing phases.

In contrast, a microservices or decoupled services architecture enables independent evolution of functional blocks. This reduces maintenance windows and accelerates the integration of new software components.

The audit should map internal dependencies, identify friction points, and assess the feasibility of a progressive decoupling to gain agility and limit regression risks.

Technical Dependencies and Vendor Lock-In

Proprietary or partially proprietary modules often expose organizations to costly vendor lock-in. Licenses, customization options, and vendor lead times directly affect the ability to innovate quickly.

An evaluation must list each third-party dependency, assess its lock-in level, and compare recurring costs against open-source or more flexible alternatives. This enables planning for a partial or complete migration to open components.

This groundwork provides a clear view of the risks associated with a single vendor and outlines a strategy for diversifying technologies.

Data Silos and Systemic Integration

An ERP should be the hub of an interconnected ecosystem: CRM, MES, e-commerce, EDI, or BI. When data exchanges remain manual or partial, the company loses coherence and response time.

The technical audit evaluates API integration, synchronization latency, and data format compatibility. It identifies breakpoints in data flows and interfaces requiring adaptation or additional development.

This analysis lays the foundation for planning appropriate connectors or middleware, ensuring continuous and reliable data exchange between the ERP and all business systems.

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Assessing Scalability and Extensibility

The ability to scale and accommodate new processes or volumes is crucial for supporting growth. A modern ERP must offer a modular and extensible architecture.

Load and Performance Under Constraint

Activity peaks (summer season, promotional campaigns, year-end closing) can test an ERP’s load capacity. Processing times lengthen, interface responsiveness drops, and transaction errors increase.

A logistics company, for example, experienced critical slowdowns when issuing delivery notes during peak periods. Its native platform could not handle concurrent users on the same module.

This example highlights the importance of stress-testing the solution with real volumes and planning for elastic scaling or a cloud architecture capable of dynamically allocating additional resources in real time.

Modularity and Progressive Integration

Modularity allows features to be activated or deactivated according to business needs without impacting the entire system. Each module can evolve at its own pace and be replaced or updated independently.

Scaling is then achieved by adding specialized modules (quality management, advanced planning, external branches) connected via APIs or a data bus. This prevents overrun costs associated with monolithic deployments.

The combination of ready-made modules and custom components provides the flexibility needed to support geographic or sectoral expansion.

Adapting to New Use Cases

Use cases are changing: increased mobility, mobile access, self-service portals, chatbots, or IoT. The ERP must integrate these channels without disrupting the existing system.

Availability of RESTful APIs, webhooks, and SDKs facilitates opening the ERP to mobile applications or real-time notification services. New use cases then plug in seamlessly.

This level of extensibility ensures the organization can quickly respond to emerging digital markets or growing demand from employees for modern, streamlined tools via mobile access.

Exploring Modern ERP Models and Alternatives

Beyond the binary choice of proprietary vs. open-source ERP, there are hybrid, modular, and tailored architectures offering the best blend of scalability and cost control. This mix adapts to business priorities.

Modular and Headless ERP Solutions

Headless ERPs decouple the backend and frontend, allowing the user interface to be composed through specialized applications. Each front end can evolve independently, delivering a contextualized experience by role.

Business modules (procurement, sales, inventory) connect to a central core via APIs. Cloud-native extensions enrich the base without technological disruption or blocking proprietary licenses.

This approach ensures targeted scaling, fine-grained customization, and a broader choice of providers for each component, thus mitigating vendor lock-in.

Hybrid Architecture and Microservices Integration

A hybrid architecture combines an existing ERP with dedicated microservices for critical or emerging processes. Microservices manage, for example, complex calculations, AI, or specific workflows.

Each microservice is deployed in a container or as a serverless function, allowing independent scalability. The ERP serves as the reference core, while microservices deliver agility and targeted performance.

This model enables adding innovative technology components without a complete ERP overhaul, while keeping technical debt under control.

Custom Development and Open Source

In some contexts, custom development offers a competitive edge by addressing very specific needs. By prioritizing open-source technologies, the company retains code ownership and avoids excessive licensing fees.

A robust open-source framework, combined with DevOps practices and CI/CD pipelines, ensures fast, continuous delivery aligned with the business roadmap. Common components benefit from an active and secure community.

This case-by-case approach enables building a digital core truly aligned with the organization’s strategy and structure.

Evaluating Your ERP as a Growth Lever

A modern ERP must be evaluated on its ability to support agility, scalability, and openness to a broader ecosystem. Key metrics include update cycle speed, evolutionary maintenance cost, and ease of integrating new components.

The decision to migrate, optimize, or evolve an existing ERP is based on a precise diagnosis of functional, technological, and organizational limitations. The goal is not change for change’s sake, but to build a flexible, interoperable, growth-oriented digital foundation.

Our experts are available to assess your situation, define modular scenarios, and guide your project toward a sustainable, scalable solution.

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ERP projects don’t fail overnight: they gradually slide into a spiral of misunderstood delays, indecisive meetings, and exhausted teams. When the system finally reveals its limits, executives often blame the software—whereas the real breakdown occurred much earlier, in leadership and governance.

Diagnosing a drifting ERP, seizing back control, and restoring positive momentum require a clear-eyed audit, defined accountability, and a focused operational recovery plan. In this article, discover how to spot early warning signs, what actions to take in the first thirty days, and why the support of an independent third party is often indispensable to reestablish effective management.

Real Reasons Behind ERP Failures

An ERP fails when no one steers the program and roles are not clearly assigned. It’s not a matter of code, but of leadership, governance, and fragmented responsibilities.

Lack of Clear Governance

In many organizations, no executive has sole responsibility for driving the ERP project forward. Committees multiply, trade-offs remain vague, and decisions keep getting deferred to the next meeting. Without a clearly designated project owner, each department treats the initiative as just one option among many—devoid of priority or urgency.

This dynamic creates a constant mismatch between the project’s actual scope and the resources allocated. Dashboards show a “green” status, even as teams struggle to finalize configurations without rapid approvals. Meanwhile, the toll of IT budget overruns mounts, yet no one sounds the alarm.

Example: A public-sector organization assigned its ERP oversight to a committee made up mainly of functional managers, without a single dedicated project manager. After eight months, success criteria were still ill-defined and the budget was already 20% over forecast. This case demonstrates that even in the public sector, the absence of a sole pilot transforms a planned deployment into an endless, inefficient endeavor.

Hidden Scope Creep

The original ERP scope evolves almost daily: new business requirements, regulatory adjustments, and bespoke demands from each department. Yet tracking indicators rarely reflect these shifts. Dashboards stay frozen, masking the program’s true state.

This illusion of control fosters false confidence. Sponsors continue to believe the implementation is on track, even as unbudgeted modifications accumulate day by day. The real human and financial costs only emerge at the final escalation.

Successive postponements, excused as “minor tweaks,” eventually erode team commitment. Deadlines slip, fatigue grows, and political support wanes. It’s governance drowning in details—not the software failing.

Lack of User Adoption and Data Quality

An ERP only takes root if users embrace it fully. Too often, employees revert to their Excel spreadsheets or local solutions at go-live, due to insufficient training or poorly managed process changes.

At the same time, master data (products, customer accounts, bills of materials) remains incomplete or outdated. With no designated data steward to uphold information quality, the ERP is fed degraded data and cannot deliver a reliable overview.

The fallout is twofold: loss of business confidence and a proliferation of emergency fixes. Maintenance tasks take precedence over true enhancements, plunging the project into an unending tunnel of patches and workarounds.

Signs an ERP Is Derailing

The first warning signs are often hidden by overly optimistic status reports. As enthusiasm wanes, regressions to Excel and deserted committees reveal the problem’s breadth.

Misleading Metrics

When milestones slip, dashboards may still show a “green” light. This discrepancy stems from a lack of on-the-ground verification and a tendency to conceal delays to avoid confrontation.

Progress reports fill up with percentages that bear little relation to operational reality. Behind the scenes, teams juggle incidents and cobble together fixes, while management remains unaware of the scale of failures.

Disillusionment strikes when budget and schedule overruns exceed safety margins. Only then does the steering committee realize it’s been guiding a ghost project, with no real visibility into completed tasks.

Parallel Processes and Reversion to Local Tools

Weeks after go-live, a poorly adopted ERP gives rise to parallel processes: manual data exports, shared spreadsheets, order management outside the system.

These workarounds reveal unmet needs and growing distrust of the ERP. Users stick to familiar tools rather than expose the system’s gaps.

This return to informal solutions undermines information consistency and creates additional silos. The project slides into an unmanageable hybrid model, where the ERP gradually loses its raison d’être.

Ineffective Committees

Steering meetings become mere information sessions, devoid of concrete decisions or trade-offs. Participants simply approve reports—often drafted by consultants—without challenging or adjusting the course.

The meeting frequency may drop, a telltale sign of mounting disinterest: no one believes the program will progress as originally planned. Sponsors postpone decisions, waiting for a reassuring new report.

This dynamic breeds a vicious cycle: the less we decide, the deeper the project sinks, and the less attention it draws from leadership. The drift becomes silent, until the budget or schedule finally explodes.

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Real ERP Turnaround in 30 Days

Turning around an ERP is more a governance reboot than a methodological tweak. It rests on a clear appointment, an uncompromising audit, and a tightly scoped plan executed with authority.

Day 1 — Take the Helm

On day one, a single leader must be appointed. This individual becomes the interface between executives, business teams, and service providers, empowered to make critical decisions.

Ending ambiguity requires publishing a concise governance charter: who decides what, under which rules, and with which priorities. Every stakeholder must see authority clearly exercised.

It’s also the moment to reaffirm zero tolerance for unapproved scope changes and unjustified delays. Transparency becomes the norm, and reporting shifts to genuine KPIs rather than rough estimates.

Week 1 — Diagnose Without Compromise

A rapid audit of business scope, vendor deliverables, and master-data quality is launched. Its goal is to map deviations from the initial plan and pinpoint major risk areas.

This analysis covers critical process dependencies, technical bottlenecks, and organizational friction points. Each gap is quantified in terms of time and budget risk.

The objective is a factual status report—free of blame—to build a prioritized correction plan. Results are presented as impact scenarios, ranging from quick wins to major redeployments.

Weeks 2 and 3 — Realignment and Validation

Post-audit, all key stakeholders—business teams, IT department, service providers—gather for a realignment workshop. Objectives are challenged, true KPIs are redefined, and hidden tensions are exposed.

A prototype of a critical process may be redeployed on a limited scope to test execution capability: data cleansing, access validation, authorization compliance.

In one case, a Swiss B2B services SME applied this protocol to its billing modules. Within fifteen days, it cut data discrepancies between the ERP and business spreadsheets by 40%, demonstrating the feasibility of tight governance and the need to hold each contributor accountable.

Why Internal Teams Fail with ERP

Internal profiles are often too politically entangled and overstretched between day-to-day operations and ERP crisis management. They lack the maneuvering room and credibility to enforce a rapid turnaround.

Political Proximity and Lack of Authority

Internal managers are frequently tied to existing power plays. Their legitimacy to impose a radical plan is limited by alliances, budget balances, and certain departments’ preferences.

Without a formal mandate and impartiality, they risk alienating sponsors or straining relationships with key vendors. The result: a diluted recovery, lacking strong impetus or sanctions for deviations.

Saving an ERP requires a figure who can decide swiftly, even if it means upending habits and cutting superfluous budget lines.

Conflict Between Business as Usual and ERP Crisis

Internal teams juggle system maintenance (Business as Usual) and ERP crisis management. This dual burden quickly leads to burnout and a loss of focus on recovery priorities.

While BAU demands reactive fixes and interventions, the ERP project requires long-term vision and structural changes. Resources are never sufficient to do both simultaneously.

Without dedicated reinforcements, recovery comes at the expense of daily operations, fueling business distrust and increasing team stress.

External Consultants and Legitimacy

Consultants often led the initial implementation. Their agenda may diverge from the company’s, as they aim to maximize billable days rather than close the project quickly.

Internal teams sometimes lack the legitimacy to challenge these providers and redefine engagement terms. The absence of an authoritative, neutral third party prolongs dependence on those who have already proven unable to meet deadlines.

Bringing in an external expert—with no political ties or prior contractual relationships—rebalances responsibilities and restores clear operational momentum.

Breathe New Life into ERP Governance

An ERP in drift is defined by fragmented governance, misleading metrics, and a lack of operational leadership. The first signs—scope creep, empty committees, reversion to Excel—should trigger an immediate turnaround plan based on:

– Appointing a single, legitimate project lead.
– Conducting a clear-eyed audit of scope, data, and critical processes.
– Aligning stakeholders on genuine KPIs and a tight thirty-day plan.

Internal teams often fail due to limited authority, time constraints, and lack of neutrality. To steer back on course, an external, neutral, and decisive profile is the best guarantee of an effective, lasting recovery.

Discuss your challenges with an Edana expert

Changing software often raises concerns: activity interruptions, productivity loss, internal resistance. Yet, the real issue is not the technological change itself but the governance and methodology employed. Retaining an outdated tool becomes an invisible brake on innovation and corporate performance.

As processes evolve, manual workarounds accumulate, hidden costs explode, and rigidity sets in. Therefore, it’s not the migration that should be feared but inaction. A controlled transition relies on precise scoping, business prioritization, an organization designed for continuity, and transparent governance.

Risks of Obsolete Software

Maintaining unsuitable software generates inefficiencies and hidden costs. The true danger lies in inertia and systematic workarounds.

Invisible Barriers to Agility

Prolonged use of legacy software often necessitates ad hoc processes that go undocumented. These informal adaptations multiply the interfaces between departments and increase the risk of operational errors. With each unplanned update of other IT system components, these manual workarounds must be readjusted, impacting timelines and deliverable quality.

The lack of technical flexibility reinforces departmental silos. Business units end up developing their own makeshift solutions, multiplying data silos and undermining the coherence of shared information. This situation delays innovation cycles and erodes responsiveness to market changes.

Ultimately, the company loses its agility: each new project becomes heavier to implement, and the digital strategy suffers from a lack of confidence in IT. Focus then shifts to resolving recurring crises rather than driving high-value initiatives.

Hidden Costs and Inefficiencies

Maintenance fees for obsolete software are rarely assessed at their true cost. The hours spent fixing legacy-related bugs, managing incompatibilities, and maintaining workarounds weigh heavily on budgets. These indirect costs appear in every department that relies on the tool.

Beyond labor hours, the accumulation of overruns impacts cash flow and diverts essential resources from innovation. Improvement or upgrade projects are postponed indefinitely, creating a widening gap that is increasingly difficult to bridge with market standards.

The lack of consolidated visibility into these expenses often conceals the full extent of the problem and delays decision-making. This opacity fosters a status quo mindset that hinders leadership in its modernization ambitions.

Rigidity of Business Processes

A rigid system forces business functions to align with the tool’s features, rather than the other way around. Standard workflows do not always cover specific use cases, prompting users to perform manual tasks and data exports/imports. Each new business requirement then becomes a complex undertaking.

In one case, a small services company relied on a series of spreadsheets to compensate for the shortcomings of its ERP. This internal hack extended billing consolidation by two days per cycle, delaying receivables collection and penalizing cash flow. This example shows that inertia costs more than investing in a suitable solution.

Over time, these rigidities compromise customer service quality, operational performance, and the ability to comply with new regulations. Inaction thus becomes a structural risk for the company.

Scoping and Prioritization Before Any Migration

A successful migration begins with a detailed mapping of usage and dependencies. Clearly defined business priorities guide the project into manageable phases.

Mapping Critical Processes

The first step is to list all processes supported by the existing software and assess their criticality. This analysis should result in a map that identifies data flows, control points, and revenue impact levers.

At this stage, the company can distinguish areas where continuity is imperative from those that can undergo gradual overhaul. This visibility work allows risk areas to be anticipated and fallback scenarios to be prepared.

By prioritizing high-value processes, governance can align the migration schedule with the most sensitive business constraints, reducing interruption risks and promoting a quick return on investment.

Analysis of Technical Dependencies

Beyond the target application, it is essential to inventory interfaces and integrations with other systems: ERP, CRM, reporting tools, cloud services. Each touchpoint represents a potential break risk if poorly managed.

This analysis identifies the most critical dependencies and plans for temporary bridges or workaround solutions. It also clarifies data migration needs, schema transformations, and compatibility testing.

An accurate estimate of development and testing efforts for each integration helps structure the project into technical and functional work packages, ensuring controlled and measurable progress.

Defining Business Priorities

Selecting functionalities to migrate first is based on a trade-off between business impact and technical effort. This ranking determines phase order and guides resource allocation.

For example, a professional association ranked its membership management module as priority number one because it generated 70% of recurring revenue. This decision focused the first iteration on data migration and customized configuration of that module, thereby ensuring dues collection continuity. The example demonstrates that a project breakdown aligned with business goals significantly reduces time to value.

The task prioritization stabilizes the roadmap, aligns teams on clear objectives, and limits resource dispersion—conditions sine qua non for a controlled migration.

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Ensuring Operational Continuity

Continuity is not limited to technical implementation: team organization is critical. Rigorous coordination of coexistence and ramp-up phases minimizes disruptions.

System Coexistence Strategy

A big-bang migration can compromise service availability. Conversely, a dual approach allows the old and new tools to operate in parallel, ensuring a progressive switchover.

This coexistence requires synchronizing incoming and outgoing data via reconciliation scripts or temporary microservices. Teams can then switch process by process, with quick rollbacks if an incident occurs.

Scheduling these switchover points during off-peak hours or in functional batches mitigates risks and secures user adoption.

Progressive Data Migration Plan

Data transfer is often the crux of the battle. A phased strategy, with test sets and incremental validations, prevents surprises during go-live.

Each data batch is extracted, transformed, and loaded into the new system according to a dedicated script validated by business stakeholders. Anomalies detected are corrected in the old repository before the next switchover, ensuring integrity and traceability.

This approach limits operational impact, refines transformation rules, and gradually builds confidence in the quality of migrated data.

Training and Change Management Support

Adopting new software depends as much on technique as on user buy-in. Targeted training, calibrated to roles and responsibilities, ensures progressive skill development.

An example from a public institution illustrates the importance of this approach: implementing e-learning modules reduced support requests by 60% during the pilot phase. This finding shows that investment in pedagogy and support prevents usage roadblocks.

Simultaneously, deploying business ambassadors facilitates information relay and fosters a positive internal dynamic. The organization thus becomes an active participant in its transition.

Discover our change management guide to effectively prepare your teams.

Value of Custom-Built Software

A tool designed or heavily configured to fit your needs aligns with real processes and minimizes friction. The flexibility offered by a contextual solution strengthens adoption and system longevity.

Alignment with Real Processes

Off-the-shelf solutions offer generic workflows that do not always match business specifics. Custom development incorporates the nuances of the organization’s operational cycles.

By tailoring screens, sequences, and controls exactly to use cases, users access precisely what they need without extra steps or third-party tools.

This alignment with business realities reduces cognitive load, accelerates task execution, and minimizes error risks, translating investment into tangible productivity gains.

Reducing User Friction

Each unnecessary interface or redundant form causes frustration and prolongs task completion. A custom approach dedicates time to listening and iterative testing with the relevant teams.

An industrial SME integrated specific business widgets for production management, reducing manual entry by 30% and error rates by 40%. This example shows that fine-tuned configuration enhances user buy-in and overall performance.

Reducing friction also improves skill retention and decreases turnover due to user frustration.

To learn about effective custom CRM development, see how to develop a custom CRM.

Transparent Governance and Project Discipline

The success of a custom project hinges on clear management: steering committees, defined milestones, and shared KPIs. This governance provides consolidated visibility on progress and bottlenecks.

Technical and functional decisions are validated collectively, ensuring accountability. Test plans and load scripts are formalized for each work package, reducing deviation risks.

This organizational rigor gives leadership the visibility needed to make informed decisions and control progress, costs, and timelines throughout the transition.

Rely on IT project governance to secure long-term value and ensure the success of your software migration.

Steering the Software Transition

Modernizing the information system is not a risky bet if it relies on precise process scoping, prioritization aligned with business stakes, and an organization designed for continuity. Progressive system coexistence, phased data migration, and team support are levers to avoid disruptions.

Custom-built or heavily adapted software enhances adoption and provides the flexibility needed to grow with the company. Project discipline and transparent governance ensure milestone tracking and key indicator monitoring.

Our experts are available to support this management approach: from initial scoping to ramp-up, through dependency management and organizational change support.

Discuss your challenges with an Edana expert

In a landscape where IT projects are becoming increasingly complex and teams demand authentic leadership, managerial credibility is an indispensable lever. It cannot be mandated; it is built daily through a clear stance and consistent behaviors.

Without trust or commitment, even the best-defined processes encounter invisible roadblocks. This article explores the essential dimensions of managerial credibility: asserting one’s role, balancing proximity and professional distance, aligning words with actions, and the capacity for growth. Each dimension, illustrated by a Swiss case study, shows how a credible manager becomes the cornerstone of success in demanding software projects.

Confidently Assert Your Managerial Role

A clear declaration of responsibilities establishes a reassuring framework for the team. This assertive posture limits uncertainty and secures initiative-taking.

Define Responsibilities Clearly

A credible manager begins by delineating the scope of their authority. They distinguish what falls under their decision-making and what can be delegated to avoid operational ambiguity.

This clarity enables team members to know exactly whom to approach regarding specific issues, reducing unnecessary back-and-forth. Approval timelines thus become more predictable, as shown by best practices in successful Agile project management.

In a mid-sized Swiss IT services company, the IT director formalized each person’s role at the outset of a critical project. This step reduced the number of bottlenecks during the industrialization phase by 30 %.

Make Assertive Decisions

Deciding swiftly and explaining the rationale behind choices strengthens a manager’s legitimacy. Clear decisions prevent the buildup of deferred choices, a common source of frustration.

An assertive stance doesn’t mean imposing, but rather making decisive calls based on data and a shared vision. Team members can then align their efforts with confidence.

When a manager fully owns their decisions—even unpopular ones—they demonstrate accountability for outcomes and provide the team with an anchor amid uncertainty.

Communicate with Clarity

Managerial credibility hinges on transparent communication about objectives, constraints, and priorities. Ambiguous messages breed divergent interpretations and delays.

Every meeting or report should reinforce shared understanding and clarify expectations. Well-structured documents become reliable reference points.

This level of transparency fosters a culture where everyone knows what they can expect from their manager and what is expected of them, eliminating gray areas that undermine engagement.

Maintain the Balance Between Proximity and Professional Distance

Being accessible without slipping into complacency builds the team’s respect. Maintaining appropriate distance ensures impartiality and consistency in decisions.

Empathy and Active Listening

A credible manager takes the time to understand each person’s concerns. Active listening creates a climate of trust where team members feel safe expressing their challenges.

This availability doesn’t undermine authority; it reinforces it by showing genuine care for the team’s issues.

By listening attentively, a Swiss CIO discovered a recurring issue with the scalability of an internal application. By quickly incorporating this feedback into the roadmap, he demonstrated that field input is a fundamental aspect of effective management.

Acknowledge and Celebrate Efforts

Sincere recognition of individual and collective achievements acts as powerful relational cement. It motivates teams and fosters loyalty to the manager.

A simple positive comment or a public thank-you during a meeting can encourage initiative and ownership of strategic objectives, as described in our article on people-centered leadership.

When done regularly, these gestures reinforce the belief that every contribution matters and that the manager fully acknowledges the work accomplished.

Maintain Professional Distance

Keeping a professional stance ensures impartiality, even as interpersonal bonds strengthen. A credible manager sets clear boundaries to avoid any hint of favoritism.

This measured distance ensures that decisions are seen as fair and made for the collective good, not based on personal relationships.

By separating personal and professional spheres, a project team at a Swiss financial group strengthened cohesion. Balancing availability with impartiality showed that credibility thrives in a professional framework respected by all.

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Ensure Alignment Between Words and Actions

Trust is built when every promise leads to concrete results. Unmet commitments quickly erode a manager’s credibility.

Commit to Results

A credible manager sets realistic goals and regularly checks progress. They share key metrics and hold transparent status reviews, following the example of PMO as a Service practices.

Monitoring results closely allows risks to be anticipated and efforts redirected before major roadblocks arise.

By involving the team in progress reviews, the manager demonstrates commitment to their own promises and expects the same rigor from everyone.

Honor Commitments

Every promised deadline must be met, or, if unforeseen circumstances arise, clearly explained. A credible manager doesn’t allow confusion to take root.

Keeping one’s word fosters an environment where teams know they can rely on their manager, even under high pressure.

When the lead of an IT project in a Swiss hospital began providing weekly updates on actual progress, he solidified his reputation as a dependable leader, even during periods of high technical stress.

Be Transparent About Changes

Anticipating and communicating roadmap changes prevents frustration. A credible manager shares the reasons for a shift and explains its implications.

This transparency turns a top-down decision into a collective choice and maintains team engagement, even when initial features must be dropped.

By organizing open scoping workshops, the manager illustrates consistency between words and deeds while reinforcing trust in their ability to steer the project.

Cultivate Humility and Continual Self-Reflection

Questioning oneself demonstrates managerial maturity and encourages continuous improvement. Admitting mistakes builds more trust than denying faults.

Admit and Learn from Mistakes

A credible manager is willing to identify decisions that didn’t yield the expected results. This transparency fosters collective learning.

Owning up to an error and proposing a corrective plan shows the focus is on resolving issues, not justifying past choices.

In a Swiss fintech startup, the CTO shared a detailed post-mortem after a failed load-testing event. This approach highlighted his commitment to analysis and learning from challenges.

Make Managerial Credibility Your Strategic Asset

Managerial credibility is forged through confident role assertion, balancing proximity and distance, aligning words with actions, and humility. Each dimension strengthens trust, buy-in, and commitment—essential pillars for successful IT projects.

In a demanding and evolving context, having a credible manager becomes a differentiator for navigating tense phases, securing deliverables, and showcasing each team member’s skills.

Our experts at Edana support Swiss organizations in developing this strong managerial stance. Through a contextual, evolving, and trust-centered approach, we help instill the behaviors that make the difference.

Discuss your challenges with an Edana expert