When a company rolls out a new IT tool, success is not measured solely by the technical quality of the solution but also by the teams’ ability to adopt it quickly and effectively. Training thus becomes a crucial lever to turn a mere deployment into a performance driver.

By anticipating user needs, designing tailored learning paths and establishing continuous support, organizations maximize engagement and reduce resistance to change. This article offers concrete tips for structuring an internal training approach, boosting the adoption of business software and generating sustainable return on investment.

Understanding Needs and Preparing the Ground

A thorough analysis of user profiles and usage patterns is essential to align training with your business objectives. Careful context preparation makes it easier for teams to buy in.

Mapping Users and Their Expectations

Before defining a training program, it is crucial to inventory current skills and specific needs for each profile.

Analyzing Business and Technical Challenges

Well-designed training must be based on a clear understanding of operational processes and strategic goals. Each tool feature should be linked to business priorities, whether productivity, compliance or service quality.

Engaging Stakeholders from the Start

To ensure sustainable adoption, business leaders, IT managers and future users must be involved in designing the training plan. This co-creation of the digital solution promotes collective ownership and allows content to be adjusted based on field feedback.

Designing a Multimodal Training Path

A mix of instructor-led sessions, e-learning modules and practical workshops maximizes engagement and effectiveness. Integrating collaborative tools and active learning methods enhances retention and autonomy.

Structuring Progressive Modules

For example, a manufacturing company segmented its modules into “Introduction,” “Business Functions” and “Advanced Optimization.” By ordering the progression in this way, its online course completion rate reached 95%.

This breakdown also enables micro-learning, short sequences focusing on a specific skill, supporting learning on the job and limiting cognitive overload.

Combining E-learning and Instructor-Led Sessions

E-learning offers on-demand access and replay capability, while in-person training fosters direct interaction and collaborative problem-solving. The two formats complement each other when orchestrated coherently.

Implementing Contextualized Practical Workshops

Workshops in real-world conditions, where participants work on cases drawn from their daily tasks, validate the immediate applicability of new skills. These sessions encourage peer support and collective skill building.

{CTA_BANNER_BLOG_POST}

Establishing Ongoing Support and Follow-up

A continuous support and knowledge-sharing framework sustains user engagement and cements adoption. Appointing internal champions and conducting post-training follow-up ensure lasting skill development.

Appointing Internal Champions

Identifying “super-users” within business teams creates a local training relay. These champions receive advanced certification and host regular meet-ups with their colleagues.

By appointing five ambassadors per department, informal self-training initiatives multiplied. These champions organized “digital cafés” and shared best practices, reinforcing a culture of mutual support.

Building a Shared Resource Repository

An internal centralized platform brings together tutorials, FAQs, demonstration videos and best-practice feedback. Quick access and smart search promote autonomy and reduce reliance on the help desk.

A Swiss SME in the healthcare sector implemented an internal wiki, kept up to date by user contributions. Within six months, its daily consultation rate exceeded 70%, significantly easing the support team’s workload.

Scheduling Follow-up and Feedback Sessions

Beyond the initial phase, it is essential to schedule experience-sharing workshops at regular intervals. These sessions measure tool usage, identify roadblocks and gather suggestions for improvement, such as tracking key performance indicators.

Measuring Effectiveness and Fostering Continuous Improvement

Tracking key metrics and analyzing usage data demonstrates training impact and informs adjustments to the learning strategy. An iterative approach ensures the tool’s ROI is optimized.

Defining Relevant KPIs

To evaluate effectiveness, monitor indicators such as adoption rate, reduction in support tickets and task completion speed in the new tool. These metrics provide a quantifiable view of progress.

Conducting Qualitative Assessments

Beyond numbers, satisfaction surveys and one-on-one interviews shed light on user perceptions, pain points and motivating factors.

Embracing a Continuous Improvement Loop

Training never truly ends: each new tool version or business process change should be accompanied by content updates and pedagogical refreshers.

Turn Training into an Adoption and Performance Accelerator

A structured approach—grounded in needs analysis, multimodal design, ongoing support and impact measurement—makes training a genuine adoption and performance lever. By engaging stakeholders, appointing internal champions and fostering a culture of continuous improvement, organizations maximize ROI and ensure the longevity of their digital tools.

Our experts guide companies through context-sensitive, evolving training solutions that empower users and strengthen their digital ecosystem. To turn your deployment into a lasting success, let’s talk.

Discuss your challenges with an Edana expert

Legacy software interfaces inherited from the web—made up of menus, dashboards, and complex trees—struggle to meet users’ current expectations. Thanks to the rise of Large Language Models (LLMs), a new “intention-first” paradigm is emerging, where AI becomes the interface and anticipates needs without forcing rigid navigation.

For CIOs, CTOs, and heads of digital transformation, this shift requires rethinking UX from the ground up to unlock AI’s full potential. This article explores why tomorrow’s AI products won’t resemble today’s applications, the strategic stakes of this transition, and best practices for designing truly AI-native experiences.

The End of the Traditional Interface

Dashboards and multiple menus are the result of logic inherited from the web. This “interface-first” approach creates complexity and frustration rather than fluidity.

A Web Legacy Breeding Complexity

Back when websites were limited to static pages, trees and menus were the only way to structure information. Dashboards became standard to consolidate metrics, but their proliferation has weighed down navigation. Dashboards

Every new feature adds another tab, button, or sub-section, forcing users to memorize multiple paths. This cognitive overload distracts from the business objective.

As a result, the learning curve lengthens and the risk of errors grows. Even minor updates become a challenge for product and support teams, limiting delivered value.

AI as the Main Interface

Prompts and contextual suggestions are gradually replacing buttons. AI becomes the interface, adapting UX in real time.

Prompts and Contextual Suggestions

The first “AI-enhanced” products simply added “Generate” or “Suggest” buttons to a classic UX. Today, the approach goes further: AI automatically offers options based on business context, without manual action.

For example, in a writing tool, AI anticipates the next sentence or refines style in real time, with no menu clicks. The prompt becomes invisible and seamlessly integrated.

This conversational design reduces cognitive effort and accelerates decision-making. The user retains control while benefiting from proactive assistance.

Conversational Memory and Chat/GUI Hybridization

Contextual memory enables AI to maintain the conversation flow, remember preferences, and deliver coherent interactions. It becomes an essential asset for complex workflows.

Hybridizing chat and GUI combines the best of both worlds: the flexibility of a text interface and the clarity of targeted graphical components. Users can switch at any time between free text input and structured results display. To learn more about creating a voice assistant.

This hybrid approach meets diverse needs: free exploration followed by synthetic visualization. UX builds dynamically according to intent, without locking users into a fixed tree.

Example: A Swiss Industrial SME

A Swiss industrial SME specializing in equipment manufacturing replaced its inventory management dashboard with an intent-entry module. Instead of navigating five screens to generate a report, managers now enter requests in natural language.

This simplification cut average report creation time by 60% and reduced related support tickets by 40%. The example demonstrates how a menu-free approach directly boosts team productivity.

It also confirms that shifting to an “intention-first” model can be implemented without a full back-end overhaul, thanks to an AI layer placed at the front end.

Why This Transition Is Strategic for Businesses

Embracing an AI-first UX answers an unprecedented acceleration in AI usage. It’s a key differentiator in a saturated market.

Accelerated AI Adoption and User Expectations

The maturity of LLMs and the democratization of APIs have exploded AI use cases in just a few months. Understanding the importance of API idempotence is crucial to ensuring interaction reliability.

Failing to meet these expectations leads to frustration and adoption of third-party solutions. Conversely, an AI-first interface fosters loyalty and positions a company as innovative.

In a market where speed of adoption makes the difference, anticipating these usages becomes a strategic priority to maintain a competitive edge.

Product Differentiation in a Crowded Market

In an environment where every vendor claims to be “AI-enhanced,” it’s vital to go beyond mere feature integration. True innovation lies in reworking UX around intelligence.

A conversational or contextual suggestion system becomes a unique value proposition, hard to replicate without expertise in prompt engineering, conversational design, and modular architecture.

Early adopters of this approach position themselves as leaders and capture attention from both end users and IT decision-makers.

Example: A Swiss Logistics Provider

A logistics services provider replaced its order-tracking portal with an integrated voice and text assistant linked to ERP and WMS systems. Operators make requests in everyday language, AI extracts relevant data, and replies instantly.

This project not only cut helpdesk tickets by 70% but also improved the accuracy of shared information. It illustrates how hiding complexity simplifies the experience and creates a competitive advantage.

It also shows that an AI-first approach can apply to demanding industrial contexts with heterogeneous systems and high security requirements.

{CTA_BANNER_BLOG_POST}

How to Design a Truly AI-Native Experience

The key to AI-native UX lies in fine-grained user intent modeling and a modular architecture. Safeguards ensure trust and control.

Modeling User Intent

First, define business intents: what requests will users make most frequently? This analysis enables designing an optimized and relevant use case mapping.

A use case map should specify entities, constraints, and expected outcomes to guide the LLM and limit semantic or functional drift.

This initial phase requires close collaboration among business stakeholders, UX designers, and AI experts to capture intent diversity and calibrate responses.

Conversation-Driven Journeys

Instead of fixed workflows, create adaptive dialogues. Each AI response opens new branches based on the request and context, with dynamic suggestions to guide the user.

These conversation flows include validation checkpoints and feedback loops to ensure coherence and transparency of automated actions.

The result is a modular, evolvable experience that grows with user feedback and maturity.

Adding Safeguards (User-In-The-Loop)

To build trust, every AI action should be validated or adjusted by the user before execution. This “user-in-the-loop” system limits risks associated with LLM hallucinations.

You can offer writing suggestions, corrections, or operational decisions, while keeping the final control in human hands.

These validations also serve as opportunities to gather feedback and continuously improve the models.

Combining Generative AI, Business Logic, and Progressive UX

Generative AI provides the interaction surface, while business logic, implemented in microservices, ensures coherence and traceability of actions.

Progressive UX exposes features gradually as user proficiency grows: start with simple queries, then unveil advanced options based on usage.

This model promotes adoption and enriches the experience without creating discontinuities or surprises.

Designing a Modular, Scalable System

A microservices and serverless architecture makes it easy to add or modify AI modules while ensuring isolation and scalability. Each component can be updated independently.

Using open-source models and container orchestrators ensures both flexibility and cost control. You avoid vendor lock-in and maintain data ownership.

Such a design allows rapid integration of new use cases, performance optimization, and solution longevity.

Embrace an AI-Native UX to Gain Agility

Transforming from an “interface-first” to an “intention-first” model represents as much a cultural shift as a technological one. By making AI the main interface, companies simplify the experience, accelerate adoption, and stand out in an increasingly competitive market.

To succeed, you must precisely model intents, design conversational journeys, implement safeguards, and build a modular, scalable architecture. AI-native projects rely on a synergy of generative AI, business logic, and progressive design.

Our experts at Edana guide organizations through this transformation—from identifying use cases to deployment—focusing on open-source, scalable, and secure solutions. Discover our proven strategies for digital transformation.

Discuss your challenges with an Edana expert

In an environment where customer experience has become a key differentiator, understanding the unresolved frustrations that hinder satisfaction and loyalty is essential. Identifying and addressing these “pain points” aligns offerings with real expectations, optimizes processes, and strengthens long-term relationships. This article presents the four major types of pain points, outlines concrete methods to prioritize and resolve them, and provides practical advice for cultivating a continuous customer listening culture.

The Main Types of Customer Pain Points

Pain points manifest in four complementary forms, each having a distinct impact on overall experience. Categorizing them enables precise identification of challenges and the adaptation of solutions.

Productivity Pain Points

When users waste time on repetitive tasks or navigating complex interfaces, their perception of the solution deteriorates. These operational frustrations lead to decreased adoption and trust, as each additional step feels like an obstacle.

For example, a Swiss logistics company implemented a customer portal for shipment tracking. The lack of automation in report generation required tedious manual entry—nearly 30 minutes per file—causing widespread dissatisfaction. This example highlights the importance of optimizing workflows and eliminating redundant tasks.

By adopting modular interfaces based on open-source components and clear APIs, it is possible to automate workflows, making the ecosystem more scalable and efficient.

Financial Pain Points

Businesses react poorly to unexpected costs or complex pricing models. Opaque billing can be perceived as a lack of transparency and erode trust in the vendor-client relationship.

This type of frustration often arises when an additional pay-as-you-go service leads to budget overruns. It discourages the adoption of new features and hinders future investment.

By offering modular, clear solutions without vendor lock-in, it becomes easier to manage expenses. Transparent pricing communication is essential for reassuring and retaining customers.

Internal Process Breakdowns

Discrepancies between documented processes and actual practices create misalignments. Teams turn to support services to fill the gaps, increasing touchpoints and processing times.

Fragmented support or lengthy approval chains cause bottlenecks and reduced responsiveness. Project managers spend time mediating between stakeholders instead of driving business value.

Documenting clear, standardized workflows while retaining contextual flexibility ensures smoother operations. Hybrid solutions combining existing modules with custom developments better address specific business needs.

Customer Support Dissatisfaction

Slow, unresponsive, or hard-to-access support intensifies dissatisfaction. Customers expect immediate guidance, and every open ticket increases the risk of churn.

For example, a Swiss IT service firm in the German-speaking region experienced an incident escalation rate of over 40% due to the lack of a dedicated communication channel and automated follow-up. This case shows that implementing alerts and transparent reporting reduces resolution times and builds trust.

Incorporating a multichannel strategy, automating request routing, and defining service quality metrics helps anticipate issues and respond quickly.

Methods for Identifying Pain Points

Several complementary approaches facilitate the uncovering of unexpressed frustrations, from market analysis to direct listening. Each provides unique insights into unmet needs.

Competitive Analysis and Market Research

Comparing your offering with competing solutions reveals functional or pricing gaps. This analysis includes benchmarking features, pricing, and user experience.

Reviewing public feedback and testimonials on specialized platforms helps identify recurring trends. Negative feedback on a competitor can become an opportunity to position a better-suited offering.

Creating a consolidated matrix of market strengths and weaknesses, built using open-source alternatives and agile methodologies, enables quick visualization of improvement areas and innovation without vendor lock-in.

Customer Feedback Collection and Analysis

Satisfaction surveys, qualitative interviews, and in-app or email forms provide direct feedback. Automated sentiment analysis of verbatim responses reveals keywords and associated emotions.

A Swiss financial services firm implemented a post-interaction feedback system that achieved response rates above 30%. Aggregated comments highlighted a need for real-time reporting, demonstrating the importance of personalized, responsive follow-up.

Establishing continuous satisfaction indicators and NPS (Net Promoter Score) metrics ensures an up-to-date view of pain points and guides product priorities.

Sales Team Observation and Feedback

Sales representatives are on the front lines, capturing objections, specific requests, or reasons for churn. Systematically collecting their reports feeds the internal knowledge base.

Holding regular reviews (monthly or quarterly) to share these insights fosters collaboration between business and IT teams. Use cases gathered from the field guide the development of high-value features.

Using CRM tools integrated with data modeling analytics modules centralizes this feedback and quickly identifies the most frequent pain points without relying on a single vendor.

{CTA_BANNER_BLOG_POST}

Prioritization and Internal Resolution Organization

A structured, business-aligned approach ensures efficient resource allocation and quick wins. Prioritization is based on impact and risk.

Impact and Risk Assessment

Each pain point should be scored based on its influence on revenue, satisfaction, and operational risk. A quantitative scoring system allows for ranking these irritants.

A Swiss distribution company noted that order processing delays led to a high volume of complaints. By assigning a score to this issue, it was able to justify reallocating resources to optimize the process, demonstrating the effectiveness of data-driven prioritization.

This framework enables the creation of a clear roadmap, anticipates skill requirements, and plans development efforts in line with strategic objectives, while maintaining a modular and scalable vision.

Brainstorming Sessions and Internal Focus Groups

Bringing together business, IT, and support stakeholders around pain points fosters idea generation. Collaborative workshops promote a shared vision of possible solutions.

Some ideas can be quickly tested through prototypes or proofs of concept, minimizing risk and creating a virtuous cycle of rapid iterations. This agile format emphasizes contextual expertise over one-size-fits-all solutions.

This approach supports hybrid architectures, combining open-source components with custom development to precisely meet needs while minimizing vendor lock-in.

Establishing an Action Plan and Iterative Follow-Up

The action plan outlines quick wins and medium-term initiatives. Each item is assigned an owner, a deadline, and validation criteria.

Implementing dynamic dashboards that integrate performance and satisfaction indicators enables tracking of metrics related to pain points. Regular reviews ensure continuous reassessment.

This agile setup, supported by adaptive project management tools, guarantees transparency, traceability, and ongoing improvement of the customer experience.

Fostering a Customer Listening Culture and Encouraging Regular Feedback

Retention depends on continuous dialogue and responsiveness. Structuring open and incentivized listening channels strengthens engagement.

Loyalty Programs and Targeted Incentives

Loyalty programs reward the submission of feedback or suggestions. Offering early access to new features or exclusive perks increases participation.

A Swiss healthcare institution set up a user club that provided dedicated workshops for active members. The feedback collected enabled adjustments to its patient application interface, illustrating the power of an engaged community.

Such programs create a virtuous cycle where co-creation boosts satisfaction while feeding the product roadmap with real needs.

Proactive Listening via Social Media

Social media is a rich source of informal feedback. Setting up automated monitoring enables the identification of brand mentions and sentiment analysis.

Open-source semantic analysis models facilitate sorting and categorizing comments. A rapid response to negative posts demonstrates responsiveness and attention to the customer’s voice.

This continuous listening complements formal surveys and provides a real-time barometer of customer experience.

Personalized Communication and Continuous Follow-Up

Personalizing communications based on profile, history, and interactions strengthens the sense of being heard. Segmented email campaigns and targeted in-app notifications sustain engagement.

Deploying a CRM system integrated with modular, secure components ensures message consistency and feedback traceability. Automated reminders encourage responses without overloading teams.

Regular content and feature updates based on this feedback demonstrate effective responsiveness to expectations, building trust and loyalty.

Turning Customer Pain Points into Growth Drivers

Mapping and analyzing customer frustrations across the four main categories (productivity, financial, internal processes, support) helps shape priorities. The methods described—competitive analysis, feedback collection, social listening, and field insights—provide a holistic view of unmet needs.

Scoring-based prioritization, collaborative workshops, and the implementation of iterative follow-up ensure a structured resolution aligned with business objectives. Finally, establishing loyalty programs, social monitoring, and personalized communication strengthens the listening culture and sustains continuous improvement.

While digital transformation requires in-depth handling of these pain points, our experts are available to support every step from diagnosis to implementation, prioritizing open-source, modular, and scalable solutions without vendor lock-in.

Discuss your challenges with an Edana expert

In the landscape of collaborative solutions, Microsoft SharePoint is often presented as the universal tool to centralize documents and business processes. Yet its effectiveness is largely determined by the nature and complexity of real-world needs.

This article offers an objective analysis to help IT and business decision-makers understand where SharePoint excels, where it stalls, and which pitfalls emerge after prolonged use. We also present open source alternatives and the benefits of custom development to ensure cost control, scalability, and freedom from a single vendor. You’ll gain a clear perspective to choose the document management platform best suited to your organization.

Real Advantages of SharePoint for Document Collaboration

SharePoint provides centralized document management with robust version control and built-in compliance. Its native integration with Microsoft 365 makes collaborative work seamless for organizations already invested in the Microsoft ecosystem.

Document Management and Compliance

SharePoint offers a document management engine that tracks every change, automatically archives versions, and defines retention rules according to regulatory requirements. This traceability is crucial for companies subject to ISO 27001 or financial audits.

Structured metadata enables classification of documents by project, department, or content type, and generates compliance reports via PowerShell or the admin center. These features largely eliminate the need for third-party extensions to meet legal obligations.

A financial services company standardized its document retention policy on SharePoint to satisfy regulatory demands. After six months, the team saw a 40% reduction in time spent on internal audits, demonstrating SharePoint’s ability to streamline compliance processes.

Native Microsoft 365 Integration

SharePoint libraries sync automatically with Teams, OneDrive, and Office. Users can co-edit a Word document in real time, add comments, and assign tasks without switching interfaces. This convergence reduces friction and encourages adoption among teams familiar with Microsoft 365.

Outlook allows emails to be saved directly to a SharePoint library, with a unified search index covering mail, Teams files, and intranet sites. This technical consistency enhances usability and limits the need for third-party search tools.

Flexible Sharing and Permissions

SharePoint offers a granular permissions system, allowing rights to be configured at the site, library, folder, or even document level. You can delegate management to business owners without exposing the entire repository.

External sharing relies on one-time links or password-protected links with scheduled expiration. These options enable collaboration with partners or subsidiaries while maintaining strict control over sensitive information.

In an industrial SME, engineers worked with external suppliers on technical drawings. Thanks to SharePoint’s secure links, they reduced repetitive access requests by 25%, showing that the solution can simplify inter-company collaboration when properly configured.

Structural Constraints and Hidden Costs of SharePoint

SharePoint’s architecture can become complex to configure and maintain, increasing IT dependency. License fees and third-party extension costs quickly add to the total cost of ownership (TCO), often underestimated during the decision phase.

Configuration Complexity and Maintenance

Setting up a multi-site architecture, defining content types, and creating Power Automate flows require specialized skills. Without an internal documentation repository and formal governance, operational upkeep becomes a constant challenge.

Each update to SharePoint Online or SharePoint Server may require extensive testing to validate customization compatibility. This phase prolongs deployment cycles and introduces regression risks.

Indirect Costs and Additional Licenses

Beyond Microsoft 365 subscriptions, organizations often turn to third-party solutions to fill missing functionality: advanced metadata management, complex workflows, or richer intranet interfaces. These costs stack on top of the base price and are not always anticipated.

The services of a specialized integrator quickly become indispensable to deploy complementary solutions or address functional gaps. A SharePoint consultant’s hourly rate can reach 150 CHF/hour, which heavily impacts the overall budget.

A financial institution invested in a third-party UI module, increasing its TCO by 30% over two years, confirming the necessity to evaluate all costs before committing.

Vendor Lock-in and Structural Rigidity

SharePoint enforces architectural choices that can be rigid: maximum library size, metadata column limits, storage quotas, and restrictive server configurations. Exceeding these thresholds requires refactoring or partial migration.

Deep customization via SPFx or the Power Platform can become fragile with each publisher update, leading to technical debt when scripts and web parts become incompatible.

{CTA_BANNER_BLOG_POST}

Pitfalls and Drift After 12–24 Months of Use

Over time, SharePoint can turn into a behemoth, generating functional debt and stifling innovation. Internal adoption often wanes, resulting in knowledge loss and a static intranet beyond its original scope.

Behemoth and Functional Debt

An accumulation of workflows and Power Automate scripts, combined with web parts and heavy customizations, quickly creates an ecosystem that’s hard to document. Each update carries regression risk, and any partial overhaul can become an endless project.

Functional debt mounts when quick fixes pile up without a strategic plan. Teams ultimately bypass official tools, resorting to Excel files or traditional folder shares, undermining the initial centralization goal.

Low Adoption and Knowledge Loss

Although improving, SharePoint’s interface is still seen as austere by some business users. Limited training, a shortage of internal champions, and incomplete documentation lead to reluctance in daily use.

When a team abandons the portal, documents accumulate in untracked storage, and project knowledge disperses. Reactivating an inactive SharePoint site then becomes a challenge, as processes and permissions have fallen into disuse.

A Swiss healthcare SME saw half its users abandon SharePoint in favor of alternative solutions after one year. This decline highlighted the need for ongoing change management to maintain engagement.

Static Intranet and Document Management Misuse

Rather than evolving, some SharePoint intranets remain static, limited to a document library and a few home pages. The site then loses its added value, as it’s no longer aligned with business processes and evolving needs.

Organizations may also misuse SharePoint as a pseudo-ERP, creating lists to manage inventory, quotes, or HR — use cases for which the platform was not designed. These workarounds result in poorly optimized interfaces and nonstop maintenance.

Open Source Alternatives and Custom Development

Open source solutions like Nextcloud, Alfresco, or OnlyOffice offer similar document management features without vendor lock-in. Custom development lets you align the platform precisely with your business processes and control its long-term evolution.

Nextcloud, Alfresco, and OnlyOffice for Modular DMS

Nextcloud provides an ecosystem for storage, sharing, and document co-editing, with mobile apps and desktop sync. Its open source model frees you from licensing costs and allows deep customization of workflows.

Alfresco Community Edition delivers a rich document management engine, lifecycle rules, and an archiving system. Coupled with OnlyOffice for co-editing, this stack rivals SharePoint while ensuring full control over your data.

A Geneva institution migrated its document archives from SharePoint to Alfresco Community Edition, cutting license costs by 45%. This example highlights the appeal of an open source foundation for organizations seeking both scalability and cost control.

Elastic and Business Search Solutions

For advanced search and document analytics, Elastic offers a powerful engine capable of massive indexing, semantic queries, and integration with Kibana for dynamic dashboards.

Complementing an open source DMS, Elastic enables the creation of a tailor-made document directory with full-text search, custom filters, and automated report generation.

Custom Platforms and Avoiding Vendor Lock-in

Building a custom document platform lets you implement exactly your internal processes: approvals, workflows, dashboards, and ERP or CRM integrations, without vendor-imposed constraints.

By choosing an open source technology stack (Node.js, Spring Boot, PostgreSQL), you retain the freedom to host wherever you wish and optimize code to meet performance and security requirements.

A major logistics group entrusted its document portal overhaul to a ground-up custom development. The result: a 60% reduction in request processing time and complete independence from a third-party provider. This case demonstrates the value of a thoughtful bespoke solution.

Toward a Flexible, Controlled Document Platform

SharePoint remains a robust solution for document collaboration within a Microsoft ecosystem but quickly reveals its limitations when business processes become mission-critical over the medium and long term. Hidden costs, functional debt, and structural dependency can impede innovation and inflate maintenance.

In contrast, leveraging open source solutions or custom development ensures precise alignment with your needs, cost control over time, and freedom to evolve. Modularity, scalability, and data ownership then become genuine competitive levers.

Our experts are available to review your current platform, assess SharePoint-related risks, and guide you to a document management solution tailored to your business challenges. Whether migrating to open source alternatives or implementing custom development, we help you secure your transformation.

Discuss your challenges with an Edana expert

Monolithic architectures, long synonymous with stability, are now a major barrier to agility. In the face of shifting markets, growing regulations, and exponential data volumes, every improvement demands weeks of development, extensive testing cycles, and increases technical debt.

To remain competitive, a company must be able to reconfigure its processes, adapt its business rules, and integrate new services in hours rather than weeks. That’s the heart of transitioning to a composable, modular, configuration-driven system—one that keeps pace with the business, not the other way around.

Isolate Critical Functions with Packaged Business Capabilities

Packaged Business Capabilities segment your key processes into independent modules. They reduce interdependencies and speed up enhancements without impacting the entire system.

Understanding the Principle of Packaged Business Capabilities

Packaged Business Capabilities (PBCs) are self-contained functional blocks dedicated to a specific business capability. Each PBC includes its own logic, data storage, and interface.

This approach relies on the principle of separation of concerns (Domain-Driven Design): by decoupling functionalities, you avoid side effects and simplify maintenance. The scope of each PBC is defined according to the company’s strategic objectives.

Concretely, a PBC can handle billing, inventory management, or authentication. Teams can improve or replace a PBC without verifying compatibility across the entire platform.

Advantages of Functional Isolation

Isolation through PBCs enhances flexibility: each module can be deployed independently and evolve at its own pace. Unit and integration tests target a narrow scope, reducing regression risk.

Scalability is also optimized: you can allocate dedicated resources to the most in-demand modules without overprovisioning the whole system. This granularity facilitates scaling and peak-load management.

Finally, this approach follows an open-source, vendor-neutral logic, avoiding closed proprietary solutions. PBCs encourage reusing existing building blocks and limit vendor lock-in.

Concrete Example: A Mid-Sized Manufacturing Company

A Swiss precision-machining firm segmented its customer order management into a dedicated PBC. Previously, every sales-flow update disrupted its monolithic ERP and halted production.

After decomposition, the order-management PBC was deployed independently and connected via an API-first approach to the existing ecosystem. Teams could adjust manufacturing priority rules in half a day instead of three weeks.

This case shows how PBC modularity can transform a rigid platform into an agile ecosystem that quickly integrates new business rules and supports growth.

Externalize Business Rules with a Dedicated Engine

Business rules should reside in a dedicated engine, not in code. This ensures responsiveness and adaptability without redeployment.

Rules Engines at the Heart of Composability

A centralized rules engine lets you define, store, and execute business logic outside the application code. Rules are modeled via a business user interface and stored in a single repository.

This decoupling accelerates updates: simply modify or activate a rule through the interface—no redeployment or service interruption required. Rules can be hierarchized and versioned to ensure traceability.

A configuration-driven design approach reduces developers’ burden and entrusts rule evolution to business experts, while automated testing maintains rigorous control.

Continuous Update Process

Updating business rules follows an agile cycle: proposal, validation, versioning, and production deployment. Each change undergoes auditing and automated quality checks.

Rules engines integrate via API-first into the ecosystem, orchestrated by open middleware. They can notify affected systems in real time and trigger workflows or alerts based on defined scenarios.

By centralizing rules, a company gains a unified view of its business logic, facilitates impact simulations, and drastically reduces risks associated with traditional deployments.

Concrete Example: A Cantonal Bank

A regional bank externalized its pricing and credit-approval rules into a dedicated engine. Previously, each new rate table required the IT team to recompile and redeploy multiple microservices.

After migration, retail-banking managers adjust scoring criteria and commission rules directly in the engine’s interface. New rules take effect within hours, complete with history tracking and impact assessments.

This experience demonstrates that centralizing business rules enhances responsiveness to regulatory changes and delivers measurable competitive advantage.

{CTA_BANNER_BLOG_POST}

Configuration-Driven Workflows and Flexible Orchestrations

A configured workflow engine removes the need for custom development for each business sequence. A configuration-first approach shortens lead times and reduces validation complexity.

Configuration-Driven Workflow Concept

In a configuration-driven approach, business sequences (web business workflows) are defined through a visual editor. Each scenario is stored in a human-readable, editable format.

Administrators can activate, deactivate, or modify steps without changing a single line of code. Scenario tests run automatically on the same platform, ensuring compliance with business processes.

This method fosters collaboration between technical and functional teams while maintaining up-to-date documentation and a complete evolution history.

Process Orchestration and Monitoring

The orchestration engine connects PBCs, the rules engine, and external services via APIs. It handles error retries, timeouts, and approval loops based on configured rules.

A monitoring dashboard displays real-time executions, latencies, and bottlenecks. Proactive alerts notify stakeholders immediately of any anomalies or threshold breaches.

This oversight enables rapid intervention, configuration adjustments, and performance optimization without affecting the user experience.

API-First Middleware and Technical-Functional Governance

Open, API-first middleware is the backbone of a composable architecture. Technical-functional governance tracks and secures every modification.

Principles of an API-First Architecture

The API-first approach treats every service as a consumable, documented, and versioned API. Interface contracts are defined in initial workshops with business stakeholders.

Each team builds services according to these specifications and exposes them through a secured API portal. Third-party developers and partners can integrate functionality without knowing the internal system.

This method ensures technological independence, simplifies multi-layer alignments, and allows services to be replaced or added without impacting the broader ecosystem.

Governance and Evolution Auditing

Technical-functional governance relies on an API repository where every change requires approval. Modifications are tracked, versioned, and documented automatically.

Approval workflows involving IT leadership, architects, and business owners ensure compliance with security standards and regulatory requirements. Each API version is archived to facilitate auditing.

This mechanism boosts transparency around changes, enables controlled production releases, and reduces service-interruption risks.

Concrete Example: A National Retail Chain

A retail group implemented API-first middleware to connect its POS systems, ERP, and e-commerce platform. Previously, every update demanded point-to-point development and lengthy integration tests.

The new middleware centralizes APIs and orchestrates commercial flows. Business teams draft specifications and approve API contracts via a portal—no coding required.

This case illustrates how open, governed middleware can deploy new omnichannel features in hours while ensuring data security and consistency.

The Benefits of a Composable Architecture

By isolating critical functions into PBCs, externalizing business rules, driving workflows by configuration, and adopting API-first middleware, you transform your system into an agile, modular ecosystem. Each evolution becomes faster, safer, and more cost-effective, while minimizing technical debt and vendor lock-in.

Our experts are ready to assess your current architecture, define the strategy best suited to your context, and guide you step by step toward a composable enterprise that moves at the speed of your business, supported by effective change management.

Discuss your challenges with an Edana expert

A custom software project involves much more than technical expertise: it fundamentally shapes an organization’s structure, teams and trajectory. Adopting a clear stance on what we refuse to do is part of our professional responsibility.

By refusing certain practices—deliveries without proper scoping, vendor lock-in, low-cost offers, rushed projects or unrealistic promises—we lay the groundwork for healthy collaboration. This approach ensures relevant, sustainable solutions aligned with the business objectives of Swiss stakeholders, whether they are IT Directors, CIOs/CTOs, COOs or executive management.

In-Depth Understanding of Business Needs

We refuse to deliver software without a thorough understanding of business challenges. We believe every project demands a robust scoping phase and a critical review of requirements.

Scoping and Functional Alignment

A project built without a detailed scoping phase often relies on incomplete or outdated assumptions. This lack of overall vision prevents anticipating friction points between existing processes and the future software solution. It also denies decision-makers a clear map of priorities, risks and critical milestones.

Scoping is not just a documentation exercise: it is a collaborative session among business experts, IT leaders and stakeholders aimed at identifying operational constraints and formalizing strategic objectives. This phase must rely on analyses of real use cases, workshops and sometimes validation prototypes.

By integrating regular feedback from end users from the very beginning, we avoid major discrepancies between the delivered product and actual needs. The investment made during scoping then results in smoother development cycles, increased adoption and a significant reduction in post-deployment adjustments.

Consequences of Insufficient Understanding

When business objectives are not clarified, software may appear technically compliant yet remain unsuitable for daily use. Teams may bypass the tool, maintain parallel manual processes or apply local workarounds to compensate for perceived shortcomings.

This situation creates functional technical debt: every quick customization becomes a breaking point during future upgrades, inflating maintenance costs and complicating updates. In the long run, the tool survives more by inertia than by delivering real added value.

Lack of user buy-in can also boomerang on project sponsorship, undermining trust among IT Directors, management and the service provider. Once this trust is eroded, it becomes very difficult to restore without starting new audit and redesign phases.

Concrete Example of Inadequate Scoping

A Swiss SME in the logistics sector launched an internal portal without a thorough scoping workshop. Business teams discovered too late that certain storage rules and delivery-deadline constraints were not taken into account. Each omission led to several additional hours of manual work per week.

In the end, although the software was technically complete, it was set aside pending a full redesign of business rules. This example demonstrates that not allocating time to formalize requirements can result in double investment: the initial development and a full project restart a few months later.

It also highlights the importance of valuing the scoping phase upfront, recognizing it in the commercial proposal as a standalone stage essential for project success and team adoption.

Opposition to Vendor Lock-In

We refuse all forms of vendor lock-in, whether technological, contractual or operational. We favor open, well-documented and reversible architectures that ensure independence and longevity.

Dangers of Vendor Lock-In

Choosing a proprietary solution without an exit plan exposes the company to heavy reliance on a vendor or service provider. Every update or modification becomes a tacit renegotiation of rates and terms. This leads to vendor lock-in, longer development timelines and rising costs due to the complexity of interfacing with other systems.

Vendor lock-in can also hinder innovation, as adding new components often requires adopting the vendor’s ecosystem, even if it does not fully meet the needs. This leads to license inflation and a heterogeneous portfolio of applications that is hard to maintain.

Open and Reversible Architectures

To avoid these pitfalls, prioritize modular, standardized solutions. A hybrid approach combining open-source building blocks with well-isolated proprietary components ensures an evolving platform while keeping license costs under control.

Comprehensive documentation of data flows, APIs and exchange formats is essential. It helps limit technological disruptions and facilitates switching to another provider or technology if needs evolve.

Reversibility can also rely on clear contracts: data portability clauses, source code delivery guarantees or split-billing provisions for licenses. This contractual transparency builds trust and commits the provider to long-term support.

Example of Technological Lock-In

A Swiss training organization had invested in a proprietary SaaS platform to manage registrations, billing and assessments. After two years, upgrade costs had tripled and adapting to new course curricula became prohibitive.

Migration to an open-source solution orchestrated by another provider proved complex because the data could not be exported in bulk. Several tables had to be recreated manually and billing processes rewritten.

This case illustrates that unanticipated vendor lock-in generates significant extra costs and undermines organizational agility. It also shows that implementing open standards and interchangeable formats is key to long-term autonomy.

{CTA_BANNER_BLOG_POST}

Rejecting Price-Focused Proposals

We refuse to sell projects based solely on price or billable-days. We favor a value-driven, governance-focused and sustainable approach.

Drawbacks of the Cost-Per-Day Model

A proposal based on the daily rate often conceals a project’s real complexity. It creates an illusion of budget control while generating hidden technical debt whose bill surfaces after kickoff.

Teams under pressure to stay within budget may be tempted to cut test coverage, skimp on documentation or favor ill-suited standard components. Ultimately, the software becomes costly to maintain and hard to evolve.

In a Swiss context where software-driven processes are often critical, this approach frequently backfires, generating hidden costs and extending deployment timelines for each new version.

Governance and Long-Term Vision

Rather than focusing on billable days, it’s better to clarify expected deliverables, success criteria and business milestones. This shared governance allows measuring the actual value produced at each stage.

Implementing indicators—time to production, number of incidents, adoption rate—makes project performance more transparent. It also encourages informed trade-offs between delivery speed and code quality.

A long-term vision includes planning for future evolutions and identifying consolidation points in advance. This limits the proliferation of disparate tools and maintains a coherent, enduring foundation.

Example of an Ill-Fitting Low-Cost Offer

A Swiss financial company chose the cheapest offer to overhaul its reporting module. Under time pressure, the developers delivered an “MVP” with no documentation or load testing.

Two months after go-live, the platform maxed out during a semi-annual closing period, causing delays of several days and regulatory penalties. Bringing it up to standard cost three times the initial budget.

This experience shows that an initially attractive price can lead to overruns and jeopardize the company’s compliance and reputation. It underscores the importance of a value-based proposal and comprehensive project governance.

Uncompromising Stand on Poorly Scoped Projects and Unrealistic Promises

We refuse to take on rushed projects based on vague assumptions and embellished pitches aimed solely at securing a signature.

Preventing Poorly Scoped Projects

Starting without a clear vision merely shifts risk rather than absorbing it. Unverified assumptions can lead to cascading change requests, lengthening timelines and increasing complexity.

To limit these deviations, an audit and prioritization phase is indispensable. It allows needs to be tested against real processes and identifies critical functionalities that justify early investment.

This step, often seen as an unnecessary cost, is actually a protective investment. It limits surprises and aligns expectations of business units, IT teams and the provider on a shared ground of truth.

Integrity in Communication and Realistic Promises

Software projects always involve uncertainties: validation timelines, integration complexity, regulatory or business changes. Hiding these uncertainties undermines mutual trust.

A clear and transparent discussion of risks, necessary trade-offs and available leeway fosters a sustainable partnership. It allows scope adjustments based on real constraints and anticipates potential bottlenecks.

Stating upfront what cannot be guaranteed—performance under heavy load, fixed deadlines without retrospection or exhaustive coverage without an appropriate budget—strengthens the relationship and avoids “broken promise” scenarios.

Technical Rigor and Critical Thinking

Being an agile provider doesn’t mean lacking rigor. Technology choices must be challenged based on context and risk. Adopting a methodology without critical thinking can lead to failure.

We believe a digital transformation project requires continuous dialogue, regular code reviews and honest progress checkpoints. Any deviation between requirement and implementation must be raised, documented and prioritized.

This demanding stance fosters a shared responsibility dynamic: each participant is encouraged to challenge decisions in the interest of quality, security and the solution’s longevity.

Example of an Abandoned Rigid Project

A cantonal administration had approved a monolithic architecture and an inflexible timeline. Despite technical warnings, the project began and accumulated delays.

Midway, the IT Director decided to halt the project due to lack of flexibility and identified security risks. Restarting required a full audit and technological reorientation toward a modular foundation.

This case shows that accepting a project without adaptability is more dangerous than suspending it right away. The timely halt avoided years of cost overruns and premature obsolescence.

Building Robust and Sustainable Software Projects

Turning down certain practices isn’t about rigidity, but about professional responsibility. By demanding an in-depth understanding of business challenges, ensuring technological independence, prioritizing value creation over cost alone, and maintaining transparent communication, we lay the foundation for enduring projects.

These requirements are the guarantee of adopted, scalable and secure software that supports the growth and agility of Swiss organizations. Our experts are at your disposal to assess your challenges, challenge your choices and guide you on the most suitable digital trajectory.

Discuss your challenges with an Edana expert

In an environment where every document becomes strategic, manual version control quickly reaches its limits. Historically applied to code, versioning logic is now essential for structuring and securing all types of content.

As a unified platform, GitLab enables marketing, HR, legal, and finance teams to adopt version control workflows, collaborate with greater confidence, and boost productivity. By professionalizing change tracking and ensuring flawless traceability, modern organizations reduce operational errors and bring business units closer to IT—the cornerstone of a successful digital transformation.

Structuring Document Work with Versioning

The creation of unified document repositories transforms the management of internal procedures. Teams gain clarity and avoid duplicates.

Basic Principles of Versioning Beyond Code

Versioning is based on preserving every state of a document along with a descriptive message. Thanks to commits, it’s possible to revert to a previous stage in just a few clicks, regardless of the content type.

This systematic approach eliminates uncertainty from concurrent edits and strengthens metadata management. With every change, the history is automatically enriched, guaranteeing a comprehensive view of all evolutions.

By contextualizing each update, teams quickly understand who made which change and why. This makes internal and external audits much simpler.

Creating Shared Repositories for Business Teams

GitLab lets you set up dedicated repositories for each department, governed by specific management rules. Branches correspond to work versions, for example “HR-payroll-v2” or “marketing-print-campaign”.

Each team member can create a personal branch to test changes without affecting the main content. Once approved, that branch is merged into the primary repository via a merge request.

These standardized workflows ensure document consistency and smooth coordination among contributors, regardless of their location or technical skill level.

Illustration: Centralizing Financial Processes

A financial institution migrated all its reports and procedures to GitLab. Each year, the department updates analysis reports, financial statements, and compliance reports.

Previously, documents circulated by email, creating multiple versions and confusion during financial audits. With a GitLab repository, every change is tracked, approved by compliance officers, and then published.

This example shows how versioning structures content, eliminates duplicates, and strengthens the reliability of financial archives.

Securing and Tracing Every Change

Traceability and security become core benefits from day one of using GitLab. Every action is timestamped and attributed.

Detailed Traceability for Audits and Compliance

In regulated industries, keeping a detailed history of document changes is indispensable. GitLab records the author, date, and reason for each commit.

During an inspection, you simply extract the repository’s history to demonstrate adherence to processes and the team’s responsiveness to regulatory requirements.

This transparency reduces error risks and potential disputes while providing a reliable foundation for any certification or external audit.

Granular Access and Permission Management

GitLab provides fine-grained control over roles and permissions: contributor, maintainer, reporter, or reader. Each profile has rights tailored to its document responsibilities through user identity management.

Protected branches ensure that no critical changes can be merged without prior approval. This restriction prevents unwanted alterations and preserves content integrity.

Centralized user management simplifies onboarding new team members and immediately revokes access for those leaving the organization.

{CTA_BANNER_BLOG_POST}

Collaborating Seamlessly between IT and Business Units

GitLab fosters dialogue between technical teams and business services. Shared workflows break down silos.

Project-Specific Branches for Cross-Functional Initiatives

For each project—whether a new marketing website or a quality manual—an isolated branch consolidates all changes. Contributions can originate from business users without direct IT involvement.

IT handles the initial repository setup and defines validation pipelines. From that point on, domain experts manage their own content and versioning via CI/CD pipelines.

This approach significantly shortens document production timelines, allowing IT to focus on automating and maintaining the GitLab platform.

Asynchronous Reviews and Approvals

Merge requests (MRs) have become a collaborative ritual: the contributor submits changes, business reviewers comment, and IT verifies pipeline compliance.

Each comment ties to a specific commit, enabling clear justification for every adjustment. All feedback loops are visible in the history, and no change gets lost in informal channels.

This asynchronous workflow reduces in-person meetings and lets teams approve content according to their own schedules.

Illustration: E-Commerce Content Management

An e-commerce platform empowered its marketing teams to manage product pages and visual assets. Through GitLab, every update to a page, image, or description is handled via a dedicated branch.

Internal reviewers add comments directly on the merge request, eliminating email exchanges and scattered versions. IT now focuses solely on running PDF conversion pipelines.

This example demonstrates how GitLab streamlines collaboration between business units and IT while maintaining rigorous tracking of each iteration.

Managing Versions at Scale Without Chaos

When dozens of collaborators edit simultaneously, GitLab structures and orchestrates each delivery. Conflicts become manageable.

Modeling Validation Workflows

GitLab allows you to define pipeline templates for different document types: guides, manuals, instructions. Each template includes verification steps, consistency checks, and final document generation.

Approvals can be sequenced: business reviewer, quality manager, then automated publication. Each stage validates compliance before proceeding.

This modeling standardizes document production regardless of project complexity, ensuring uniform and reliable outputs.

Automating Document Releases

On every merge to the main branch, GitLab triggers automated generation of final documents (PDF, HTML, internal formats) via CI/CD pipelines. The resulting assets are stored in the repository for instant access.

Publication notifications are sent automatically to stakeholders, eliminating manual tasks and shortening delivery times.

This ensures a continuous, reproducible publishing cycle even when multiple teams work in parallel.

Illustration: Industrial Documentation Management

A large Swiss industrial group maintains over 200 up-to-date safety procedures each year. Documents are organized into multiple repositories by site and equipment.

GitLab orchestrates validation workflows from the safety engineer to the plant director. Each version is tagged to guarantee compliance during inspections.

This example shows that at scale, versioning with GitLab eliminates chaos and enforces rigorous documentation control.

Versioning for Everyone: A Catalyst for Efficiency and Compliance

By adopting GitLab for document management, organizations gain structure, security, and agility. Systematic versioning reduces errors, simplifies traceability, and enhances collaboration between business units and IT. Modular workflows and automated pipelines enable large-scale version control without added complexity.

Whether you oversee HR, marketing, legal, or industrial documentation, mastering version control systems becomes a lever for internal performance and a competitive advantage. Our experts are ready to assess your maturity, define tailored workflows, and support your GitLab deployment.

Discuss your challenges with an Edana expert

In an environment where Swiss companies face increasing pressure to modernize their processes, urgency is often seen as a catalyst for efficiency. Yet many digital transformation projects fail due to a lack of time for teams to adopt new tools and evolve their practices.

Digital transformation is not just a matter of technology: it primarily relies on team buy-in and the gradual adjustment of working methods. To safeguard investments and ensure sustainable adoption, it’s essential to favor an incremental approach guided by observing usage and continuous refinement, rather than rushing into massive, hurried deployments.

A Forced Pace Erodes Trust and Engagement

Imposing a tight schedule undermines solution adoption and generates passive resistance. Employees need time to understand, test, and gradually embrace new tools.

Competitive Pressure vs. Operational Reality

The fear of falling behind often leads to launching ambitious projects without assessing teams’ actual capacity to keep up. Tight timelines neglect listening phases and requirements gathering, which are essential to calibrate the features to be deployed.

In several organizations, the IT department imposed drastic deadlines to migrate to cloud platforms or integrate modern CRMs. Technical issues and misunderstandings soon emerged because users hadn’t had time to familiarize themselves with the interfaces or receive appropriate support.

This gap fuels feelings of incompetence and distrust toward the project, as teams experience change as an added burden rather than an opportunity to enhance their daily work.

The Illusion of Immediate Productivity

The belief that adopting a new tool instantly generates productivity gains is misleading. The first weeks are usually marked by a performance dip as everyone finds their footing.

Organizations that anticipate this phase observe a realistic learning curve and implement usage metrics to fine-tune processes. Conversely, those that ignore this initial trough accumulate dissatisfaction and negative feedback.

Result: users revert to old habits or develop workarounds, compromising data coherence and the expected project efficiency.

The Example of a Regional Bank

A Swiss regional bank rolled out its new internal portal in two weeks to meet the executive committee’s demands. Business teams, lightly involved in the testing phases, had to manage a brutal transition without adequate training.

This hasty deployment led to a surge in support tickets and a drop in data quality. Employees gradually abandoned the platform in favor of old Excel files, illustrating how poorly calibrated urgency can discredit a project before it even takes root.

This experience shows that an imposed pace without preparation often has the opposite effect of what’s intended: slowing adoption and undermining stakeholders’ confidence.

The Social Process of Digital Transformation

Digital transformation is first and foremost a human journey that requires a deep understanding of collective dynamics. Success depends on identifying cultural levers and mutual support among employees.

Understanding Work Habits

Each organization develops routines embedded in its DNA, determining how information flows and decisions are made. A transformation project must map these practices before proposing changes.

Analyzing existing processes helps identify friction points and informal champions who can positively influence their peers. Neglecting this step risks sidelining those who hold the operational memory crucial to the project.

To obtain a comprehensive diagnosis, it’s recommended to conduct qualitative interviews, collaborative workshops, and observe pilot groups’ daily practices over several weeks.

The Role of Informal Networks

Within every company, unofficial networks facilitate information exchange and quick problem-solving. These communities of practice are invaluable allies when introducing innovations.

Involving them from the project’s outset ensures smoother dissemination of best practices and natural amplification of key messages. By contrast, ignoring them deprives the project of a critical influence channel.

In successful transformations, these informal networks co-create usage scripts, self-help guides, and immediately actionable feedback with the project team.

The Example of a Training Institute

A Swiss vocational training institute aimed to switch to a collaborative platform for its instructors and students. By involving a group of teachers known for their innovative spirit, the project tested prototypes under real-world conditions.

These initial feedbacks allowed adjustments to the interface and anticipation of support needs. The institute achieved an 85% adoption rate in the first month, demonstrating that integrating social dynamics is a key lever for ensuring success.

This example illustrates that for digital transformation to be sustainable, it must emerge from a compromise between strategic vision and established practices, relying on internal champions.

{CTA_BANNER_BLOG_POST}

The First Leaders: Change Catalysts

Early adopters within the organization embody new practices and inspire their peers. Their engagement is a powerful credibility signal that facilitates project diffusion.

Identifying and Training Ambassadors

Choosing the right initial leaders goes beyond selecting the most enthusiastic employees. It involves identifying those who combine relational influence with a passion for innovation.

These ambassadors require targeted support to become autonomous with the new tools and support their frontline colleagues. In-depth training ensures solid skill development and a consistent message across teams.

Their role also includes gathering regular feedback and reporting obstacles so the project team can adjust features and support methods.

Celebrating Early Wins

When early adopters succeed in their initial experiences, it’s crucial to celebrate these successes to fuel positive momentum. Concrete, anonymized testimonials demonstrate that change brings tangible benefits.

Organizing sharing sessions, publishing internal testimonials, and creating discussion spaces highlight best practices and encourage those still hesitant.

This recognition should be factual and focused on operational results achieved through the new methods, avoiding excessive internal marketing.

The Example of a Logistics Company

A Swiss logistics company selected a few team leaders to pilot a collaborative planning tool. They received advanced training and co-led workshops with frontline operators.

After a few weeks, route planning became more reliable and faster, reducing delivery delays by 20%. Presented at an executive meeting, these figures convinced stakeholders to roll out the system company-wide.

This approach demonstrates that well-supported initial leaders can turn a local pilot into a company-wide project.

Resisting Premature Acceleration to Secure Gains

The desire to scale up immediately after early successes is a dangerous temptation. Premature rollouts dilute learnings and expose the project to new risks.

Staying Focused on Mastered Processes

After a successful pilot, there’s a strong temptation to quickly expand features. However, each new scope introduces business-specific requirements that must be analyzed and integrated.

An overly rigid scaling framework can stifle the flexibility needed to adapt the project to each department’s realities. It’s better to plan intermediate stabilization phases where impact on key metrics is measured.

These phases also allow for strengthening the support chain and gradually training teams before the large-scale go-live.

Knowing When to Say No to Preserve Coherence

Steering a digital project sometimes requires refusing certain acceleration requests to avoid diluting best practices. This firm but reasoned “no” serves as a protective lever for consolidating gains until the support structure is robust enough.

Governance should be supported by a cross-functional steering committee, including IT leadership, business units, and service providers, to adjudicate requests and maintain an appropriate pace.

Without this discipline, the project risks running into conflicts of interest and losing the coherence of its initial roadmap.

The Example of a Cantonal Administration

A Swiss cantonal administration observed significant efficiency gains after a pilot to digitize approval workflows. When several departments requested immediate rollout, the project team chose to limit expansion to two additional units.

This semi-extended “package” allowed the team to stabilize the infrastructure, refine approval processes, and enrich user documentation before a full rollout.

This gradual approach demonstrated that resisting the pressure to move too quickly is an act of leadership, ensuring long-term success.

To Move Fast Tomorrow, Accept Moving Slowly Today

Imposing an excessive pace on digital transformation hinders adoption and generates resistance, whereas an incremental, social approach fosters genuine tool adoption. Well-trained and recognized early leaders play a decisive role in spreading new practices. Finally, knowing when to say no and maintaining consolidation phases preserves project coherence and reliability.

In the face of your digitization challenges, our experts are by your side to co-create a progressive approach aligned with your culture and business objectives, prioritizing open source, modularity, and security.

Discuss your challenges with an Edana expert

Most organizations have only a partial view of their processes: workarounds, unexpected variants, manual re-entries, redundant approvals and personal dependencies remain invisible. Process mining leverages the event logs from your ERP, CRM and line-of-business applications to reconstruct, objectively and exhaustively, the real path each transaction follows. This transparency uncovers bottlenecks, lengthy cycles and hidden costs.

By acting on these insights, you can prioritize optimization initiatives, standardize your flows and anticipate scalability. More than a mere audit, process mining provides the technical foundation essential for any successful digital transformation.

Visualize Your Operational Processes in Real Time

Process mining automatically reconstructs your flows from digital footprints. It delivers an accurate map of existing variants and deviations.

Rebuilding Flows from Event Logs

Process mining extracts and normalizes histories from your systems to create a detailed representation of each step, using data wrangling techniques. Unlike subjective workshops, this approach relies on tamper-proof records from your ERP, CRM or TMS.

Each timestamped event becomes a landmark in the transaction journey, enabling precise identification of the action sequence, the actors involved and the actual duration of each phase.

This automated reconstruction guarantees full fidelity to real operations and eliminates biases from interviews or individual recollections.

Identifying Variants and Deviations

Within a single process, it’s not uncommon to find dozens of different paths. Teams introduce workarounds to overcome obstacles, generating undocumented divergences.

Process mining groups and ranks these variants by frequency and impact, making it easy to detect critical deviations that lengthen cycles and raise error risk.

This granularity lets you prioritize corrective actions by targeting the variants that generate the most cost or delay first.

Transparency on Friction Points and Bottlenecks

By measuring waiting times between activities, process mining highlights organizational and technical blockers, whether it’s an overloaded approval service or an undersized software interface.

These friction points, often hidden in Excel sheets or internal procedures, translate into accumulated delays and non-quality costs.

Cluster visualizations of activities also streamline communication between IT, business units and executive management to define appropriate corrective actions.

Concrete Example

A mid-sized Swiss distributor implemented process mining on its procurement cycle. The analysis revealed that a duplicate manual approval delayed nearly 20% of orders by an average of 48 hours. This insight demonstrated the importance of relying on actual data to eliminate unnecessary steps and accelerate procure-to-pay.

Immediate Benefits and Typical Use Cases

Process mining quickly delivers cost and time savings through a factual view of critical processes. Its main applications cover order-to-cash, procure-to-pay, record-to-report and supply chain.

Optimizing the Order-to-Cash Cycle

In the sales flow, any billing delay or customer dispute directly impacts working capital and cash flow. Process mining pinpoints steps where invoice issuance, dunning or payment posting experience bottlenecks.

By mapping the exact paths of bounced or rejected invoices, you can more easily address root causes: data formatting, ERP integration or manual approval methods.

This data-driven approach reduces collection times and improves inventory turns, without a complete process overhaul.

Improving Procure-to-Pay

From purchase order to supplier payment, many steps remain governed by manual interventions and excessive security checks. Process mining uncovers the number of reminders, receipt anomalies and authorization blockages.

Financial managers can then streamline approval thresholds, automate reconciliations and drastically shorten payment cycles.

This responsiveness with suppliers leads to better purchasing terms and lower financing costs.

Strengthening Compliance and Quality

In regulated industries, detailed traceability of operations is essential. Process mining verifies the actual conformance of processes against target models and legal requirements.

Non-conformities are automatically reported, with transaction details, facilitating both internal and external audits.

Beyond compliance, this traceability helps standardize practices across sites and disseminate the identified best practices.

Concrete Example

A Swiss financial services provider discovered via process mining that 15% of bank reconciliations were manually re-entered three days after close, causing reporting discrepancies. This factual diagnosis cut manual interventions and accelerated monthly close.

{CTA_BANNER_BLOG_POST}

Integrating Process Mining into Your ERP Projects

Process mining is the indispensable preliminary step before any ERP migration or workflow redesign. It ensures a future design aligned with operational reality.

ERP Migration Readiness

Before transitioning to a new ERP (S/4HANA, D365, Oracle…), it’s essential to understand the actual structure of your processes. Workshops based on theoretical diagrams often omit post-deployment exceptions and adaptations.

Process mining captures these gaps and provides an objective basis to define a standardized future model, while identifying exceptions to retain or reclassify.

This preparation reduces configuration costs, limits surprises during testing and speeds user adoption.

Designing a Reality-Based Process Model

Rather than imposing an ideal flow, process mining informs modeling with historical data. Business constraints and frequent variants are thus considered from the outset of target-model design.

This contextual approach—favoring modular open-source building blocks and selective bespoke development—avoids vendor lock-in and ensures continuous scalability.

The result is an ERP tailored to your specific environment, minimizing post-implementation gaps and maximizing ROI.

Post-Deployment Monitoring and Continuous Improvement

After go-live, process mining remains a continuous monitoring tool. It measures compliance of new processes, quickly detects deviations and validates the projected gains.

By integrating automated alerts, it enables immediate response when a flow degrades or a new variant appears, ensuring proactive governance.

This iterative approach guarantees your ERP stays aligned with business reality and adapts to changes without a full overhaul.

Concrete Example

A mid-sized industrial SME used process mining post-migration to a modular ERP. The post-deployment analysis showed that 10% of orders were still processed manually in a deprecated module. These insights drove a targeted migration effort and accelerated system stabilization.

Complementing BI, BPM and Automation with Process Mining

Process mining differs from BI and BPM while complementing them, and serves as step zero before any RPA or AI initiative.

Process Mining vs. BI: Flows vs. Metrics

BI delivers KPIs and consolidated reports but doesn’t show the exact paths each transaction takes. It indicates an average delay without explaining how or where it actually occurs.

By reconstructing flows, process mining answers those questions precisely and guides BI toward contextualized metrics aligned with real processes.

Coupling BI and process mining enables a granular link between operational performance and financial results through a BI-ERP approach.

Process Mining vs. BPM: Reality vs. Ideal

BPM models a target process often based on business assumptions and an idealized version. It doesn’t reflect local adaptations or operational drifts.

Process mining brings field evidence, enriching BPM with proven variants and prioritizing improvements by frequency and impact.

This complementarity ensures a realistic, pragmatic BPM repository, fostering team buy-in and sustainable optimizations.

Step Zero before RPA and AI

Automating a process without mastering all its nuances often leads to fragile, costly-to-maintain bots. Process mining acts as a preliminary diagnosis, identifying the most repetitive, stable scenarios to automate first.

It maps out the most profitable RPA/AI use cases and defines clear workflows, avoiding unnecessary or incomplete scripts.

Thus, automation becomes a truly cost-effective and sustainable efficiency lever.

Moving to Process Mining: Toward Sustainable Operational Performance

Process mining offers an objective, exhaustive and measurable view of your processes, revealing bottlenecks, costly variants and scalability barriers. It serves as the foundation for continuous optimization, ERP migration readiness and controlled automation. This data-driven approach reduces hidden costs, improves timelines and strengthens compliance, regardless of organization size.

Our experts are available to analyze your event logs, define a contextualized roadmap and support your digital transformation on factual, secure grounds.

Discuss your challenges with an Edana expert

In an economic landscape marked by instability and rapid technological advancement, planning has evolved beyond its traditional role as a steering tool. Leaders face unpredictable cost dynamics, pressure from boards of directors for near-instant decisions, and the emergence of artificial intelligence without a clear governance framework. At the same time, skills gaps and the alignment between strategy and operations remain major challenges. Identifying the signals that disrupt conventional planning methods is essential to transforming this discipline into a strategic advantage.

Cost Volatility: A Major Operational Risk

Cost volatility is now the number one operational risk. Rapid fluctuations in raw material, logistics, and energy prices can derail a budget in a matter of days.

Impacts on Budget Forecasting

Historical forecasting models, based on stable trends, are no longer sufficient. Deviations from budget assumptions are multiplying, leading to continuous revisions and margin pressures.

In a context where each percentage point of cost overrun can significantly reduce net income, forecasting accuracy becomes critical. Yet static tools struggle to incorporate external shock scenarios.

Financial teams responsiveness is put to the test: they must recalculate projections, adjust financing plans, and communicate trade-offs without consolidated real-time data.

Adapting Planning Models

Faced with instability, organizations must rethink their models by integrating up-to-date macroeconomic and industry variables. Management relies on automated simulations fed by external data streams.

Cost-versus-volume scenario simulation algorithms allow for rapid assessment of the impact of an exceptional rise in steel prices or a spike in energy costs.

By combining these simulations with configurable alert thresholds, leaders gain a consolidated view of risks, reducing the time between identifying a shock and implementing corrective measures.

Integrating Stress Scenarios

To go beyond simple forecasting, some companies incorporate regular stress-testing exercises into their planning cycle. These tests simulate the effects of an energy crisis or a major supply chain disruption.

For example, a mid-sized manufacturer facing a sudden 30% increase in material costs implemented a quarterly stress scenario. This exercise demonstrated the resilience of its investment plan and helped identify buffer credit lines.

This approach provides top management with a more robust decision-making framework, limiting emotional judgments and shortening reaction times in the event of a new disruption.

Near Real-Time Cost Visibility

Boards now demand close-up visibility of costs and their fluctuations. Strategic decisions can no longer tolerate delays of several days.

Accelerating Decision Cycles

In many organizations, finance committees still meet on a monthly or quarterly basis. This cadence no longer matches the speed of market changes and production costs.

To stay competitive, companies must adopt budget reviews at the pace of operational flows, enhancing their ability to continuously adjust.

Collecting, consolidating, and analyzing volumes of financial and operational data within hours is essential to this acceleration.

Real-Time Management Tools

Advanced business intelligence platforms, coupled with continuously updated databases, have become indispensable.

Often built on modular, open-source components, these tools break down silos and ensure consistent information across the entire IT ecosystem.

The flexibility of hybrid architectures enables rapid addition of connectors to new data sources without disrupting existing processes.

Use Cases for Dynamic Dashboards

A mid-sized retail chain deployed a logistics cost dashboard updated on an hourly basis. The tool correlates maritime transit data, fuel price fluctuations, and port fees.

This system detected a container supplier failure six weeks before it had a major financial impact. The logistics team was able to negotiate alternative capacity at no significant extra cost.

Experience has shown that near real-time transparency is a powerful negotiation lever and reduces operational risks associated with unforeseen fluctuations.

{CTA_BANNER_BLOG_POST}

AI Governance: Balancing Opportunities and Risks

Artificial intelligence is transforming planning, but without a governance framework it creates new risks. Regulated organizations must oversee the use of algorithms.

Risks of Algorithmic Drift

Predictive models based on historical data can amplify existing biases and produce inaccurate forecasts during periods of disruption. Without oversight, automated recommendations lose reliability.

In sensitive sectors like finance or healthcare, a prediction error can expose the company to liability and regulatory penalties.

AI governance therefore requires human validation steps and regular audits of models to ensure compliance and relevance.

Compliance and Regulations

European and Swiss regulations increasingly govern AI usage, requiring transparency, traceability, and accountability. Companies must document data sets and algorithmic decision criteria.

Implementing a model registry allows tracking versions, use cases, and bias-check outcomes, strengthening stakeholder confidence.

This level of detail is essential for internal and external audits and demonstrates the robustness of your approach to authorities.

Structuring AI Governance

A mid-sized financial institution established an AI steering committee, bringing together the Chief Information Officer, legal counsel, and business experts. This committee approves each new model before production deployment.

This cross-functional governance identified non-compliance risks early and optimized the rollout of AI solutions in its services without regulatory delays.

The result: controlled AI usage in planning processes, with shared metrics and a quarterly model review cycle.

Structural Barriers: Skills and Strategy-to-Execution Alignment

Skills shortages and the gap between strategic ambitions and operational realities hinder performance. Objectives are often poorly translated into actionable metrics.

Profile Shortages and Training

Expertise in advanced financial management, data science, and agile project management is scarce. Companies struggle to hire professionals who can leverage modern planning tools effectively.

Continuous training and internal talent development become priorities to address these gaps. Mentoring programs and partnerships with specialized schools offer sustainable solutions.

Without these levers, project teams use complex tools without fully exploiting their features, reinforcing dependence on external providers.

Aligning Indicators and KPIs

Senior management often sets financial goals without translating expected impacts on business processes. Operational teams then work from outdated assumptions.

Establishing a shared indicator catalog, aligned with strategy and cascaded by function, ensures common understanding and avoids priority conflicts.

An integrated management framework links each KPI to a business owner, ensuring that every deviation is analyzed and addressed promptly.

Cross-Functional Governance and Accountability

This regular alignment cut forecast-to-actual variances in half and boosted the credibility of projections with boards of directors.

Clear accountability for each participant transformed planning into a collaborative process that supports swift, informed decisions.

Turn Your Planning into a Strategic Advantage

The challenges of modern planning—cost volatility, real-time management demands, AI governance, skills gaps, and strategic alignment—require a holistic approach. Treating planning as a core enterprise capability, integrated with key systems and equipped for rapid scenario analysis and decision-making, has become a leadership responsibility.

Our experts understand these issues and can support you in implementing a contextual, scalable, and secure approach, built on modular open-source solutions and agile governance.

Discuss your challenges with an Edana expert