The first internal innovation week took place in March 2015 and bore a multitude of ideas, which were collected and bundled.
In a second stage, design thinking workshops were organized to process the best proposals and to develop them further. While the first creativity round in July 2015 focused on iBeacon, RFID and indoor navigation, the second design thinking workshop held in July 2016 dealt with the general ERP 4.0 topic and the three areas of FIS Smart UI, FIS Logistics and FIS Automate. Chief innovation specialist Sven Poguntke moderated the workshop. His workshop format and methods are based on structure and time pressure to get the most out of creativity and, consequently, excellent results were achieved.
Horst Müller, member of the FIS Innovation Board, explains: “It was an impressive workshop; within a short period of time, a great deal of work had been done. Heart and soul, meticulous elaboration – it was a bit of everything.” Horst Werner, one of his Innovation Board colleagues, confirms: “I would never have imagined that such a high output would come from this structured way of working and time pressure.”
The workshop participants had been selected by the Innovation Board consisting of the heads of business units and all heads of departments. The first workshop focused on one specific topic so that the actors’ scope for creativity was quite limited. Things were different when it came to ERP 4.0. The scope for processing and developing tasks became much wider: the function of a “freight exchange”, for instance, was discussed as constructive enhancement for the iRetPlat platform within FIS Logistics. Another specific idea was the development of a prototype for automation, which can be implemented using the SAP Central Process Scheduler tool (in the SAP Solution Manager). At the end of the event, the workshop participants were able to convince managing directors Ralf Bernhardt and Wolfgang Ebner of their ideas.
