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Smart Information for the Financial Industry

Methods from technical documentation can also be applied in the service sector.

CONSULT
Smart Information for the Financial Industry

Tuesday morning, first team meeting of the day. I report on my consulting appointment from yesterday at a medium-sized machine building company: Together, we worked out which requirements a Content Management System must meet if it's to be used optimally at the company. A good day of consulting.

When I finished, an employee from sales who attended the morning stand-up meeting took the floor:

Sales: "You have to go to the bank and talk to them!"
Consultant [swallows]: "It's that bad? Is it close to the end?"
Sales [confused]: "It's not us who needs help, it's the bank!"
Consultant [now confused as well]: "I had no idea that we're now selling rescue parachutes!"

The consultant's reaction may have been exaggerated, but it illustrates that what follows is not immediately apparent: Although the activities of traditional engineering companies and banks could not appear to be more different, both industries are very close in sharing the goal of smart information management.

This, in turn, was the conclusion of our first meeting at the financial services company's headquarters: After a pleasant meeting, we realised that as consultants from outside the industry, we can provide non-traditional input for information creation and generate added value for the people involved and, last but not least, the company itself.

To answer the question "It's all very well and good, but exactly how did the cooperation work?", here's a brief excerpt from the project report on our activities:

Together with the various specialist departments, we have

  • Created document analyses
  • Calculated and presented optimisation potential for documents
  • Carried out target audience analyses
  • Conducted field tests (i.e. interviews) with various target audiences from within the bank
  • Carried out process analyses
  • Supported processes with software adaptations
  • Revised or adapted regulatory-required documents in accordance with the target audiences

If a Lessons Learned were to be held at kothes now, what would the conclusion be? Wherever information is created, managed and delivered, we can provide advice and implement it, in order to offer our clients what characterises good advice:

  • Openness
  • Honesty
  • Expertise
  • Focus on the problem

And we also see this confirmed by the conclusion of our counterpart: By initially engaging in a non-industry-specific consulting session and following an unorthodox approach, project results were achieved that generated a high degree of added value for the employees and departments involved with internal information management.

Alexander Lange
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Blog post Alexander Lange