“In order not to be left behind by the competition, businesses can and must do much more to help their own employees make greater use of new digital technologies.”
IT DIRECTOR: What then is the motivation for businesses to become more mobile themselves?
O. Schorer: In order not to be left behind by the competition, businesses can and must do much more to help their own employees make greater use of new digital technologies. Three out of four Germans are still teaching themselves digital skills outside of work. This is why we got involved in the German government’s D21 initiative through our Employer Benefit Solutions (EBS). These are helping businesses to prepare their employees for digitalization by enabling them to use the latest technologies at a low cost both inside and outside of work. Employee satisfaction is just one of the areas where companies stand to gain.
IT DIRECTOR: How has CHG-MERIDIAN itself changed as a result of digitalization?
O. Schorer: We have expanded our focus beyond the traditional financing business and toward efficient technology management and the intelligent provision of services that results from this. [...]
Digitalization is now opening up whole new perspectives and we are taking full advantage of these. For us, it’s becoming less about the IT assets themselves and much more about having an efficient, flexible, and low-cost landscape of digital processes and services in which IT assets are just one of many components.
IT DIRECTOR: What does that mean in practice?
O. Schorer: […] In practice, that means that we, as a service provider, are increasingly delivering customized business concepts that are helping customers to digitalize their own processes in a simple and hassle-free way. A customized business concept can be thought of as a subscription, in which integrated technologies and services are used for defined periods of time along the customer’s digital process chain. In other words, we take care of the digitalization of our customers’ processes.
IT DIRECTOR: What is the most important consideration in the management of mobile devices?
O. Schorer: Flexibility is the keyword here too. At home, employees are used to being able to choose products and order them online simply by pressing a button. And this is now also possible in the workplace thanks to our Enterprise Mobility Solution. Under this scheme, when employees need a new device, they can quickly and easily request it from a self-service portal. The in-house IT team doesn’t even need to get involved. We can easily offer this as a managed service within the company’s existing systems landscape and include any required approval processes and user admin features. Interfaces can also be added that enable the model to be easily integrated into pre-existing customer solutions such as help desks or intranets. […]
“Thanks to our fully digitalized processes for procurement, operations, and end-of-life, we can help any business to make savings in the double-digit percentage range.”
IT DIRECTOR: How much could customers save using automated mobile services?
O. Schorer: Thanks to our fully digitalized processes for procurement, operations, and end-of-life, we can help any business to make savings in the double-digit percentage range. It is not uncommon for companies to lack an overview of contracts, a functioning support system, and a system for managing telecoms expenses before they introduce our mobile services. We often find that these processes were still being managed on a department-by-department basis using Excel or paper forms.
Age: 46
Marital status: Married, two children
Biography:
Responsible for IT at CHG-MERIDIAN since 1999
Chief Information Officer (CIO) since 2009
In 2013, Schorer became a member of the expanded Board of Management, and he has since driven forward the addition of new services to the CHG-MERIDIAN portfolio
Since 2017, Oliver Schorer has been the member of the CHG-MERIDIAN Board of Management responsible for IT and Services and the Company’s CIO.
Hobbies: Music, ice hockey
