This is a key point: I need a defined, proven methodology to identify and realize potential. Then you must ask yourself: What keeps me from implementing this? Is a lack of understanding of the technology the problem? I don’t believe that. I believe that a major requirement is ­really a methodologically clean procedure so that the involved ­employees or customers are convinced of the quality of the solution and are committed to it. This is decisive for success, not so much the state-of-the-art technology which you perhaps believe you have not mastered. 

DMR: In closing, we would like to hear your long-term vision with regard to process management and its interaction with IT. What can we expect in the long run? 

L. Brecht: I see two trends. Trend one goes back to a book from the year 2007: “Competing on Analytics”. Thomas Davenport, the author, is one of the process gurus of the last 25 years. I share his opinion when he declares that we have now done ­process management, we know how it works, what we can achieve with it. But that is only one viewpoint. The other viewpoint is to combine processes much more tightly with analytics. One ­example could be that I move along customer value ­calculations, the right algorithms on customer segmentation, to process improvements.  

In other words, I use quantitative decision models which help me to redefine or improve processes on the basis of available data. The trend in the direction of “analytical functionality”, the analytical capabilities in the company to redefine and ­realize processes is a very important point. In his publications, Davenport describes a large number of examples, but he does not show how to implement it, i.e., how, for example, to calculate ­concretely a conjoint measurement, a quality function deployment, a customer value. These quantitative analysis techniques are often not new, they have been around, but now they are being applied in a different context. But Davenport does not explain how the transition to the new application occurs. This is a trend which will be discussed and also solved in the next few years. Telecommunications companies have already advanced relatively far in this area because they are characterized by closer ­customer interaction, they have enormous quantities of ­customer data, and their customer-centric sales and marketing processes are oriented precisely on the basis of these data.