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The “Netzwerk.Mittelstand-Digital”
As part of the initiative of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi), SME 4.0 competence centers are being established in Germany. The collaboration and intranet solution Netzwerk.Mittelstand-Digital connects all project employees and teams with the project executing organization across all competence centers.
The “Netzwerk.Mittelstand-Digital” at a glance
The German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology supports projects nationwide as part of the Mittelstand-Digital program. In order to network the participating partners in the best possible way and to support collaboration, a collaboration and intranet platform was built by NEOCOSMO in cooperation with SAP and the SAP Jam platform.
Initial Situation
More than 2,000 people from research and companies are involved in the projects within the framework of Mittelstand-Digital. A collaboration and intranet platform should be established for the BMWi’s and DLR’s communication with these projects and to support collaboration within and between the projects. This platform should make it possible to access shared documents, manage subprojects, define general communication and standards, form a network of experts, maintain internal wikis and blogs, and much more.
The Solution
The platform was publicly tendered in 2016. Together with SAP SE as subcontractor, NEOCOSMO offered on the SAP platform SAP Jam and was awarded the contract. Within 3 months, the intranet “Netzwerk.Mittelstand-Digital” was designed and implemented in 2017. NEOCOSMO’s task was and is the strategy consulting, the introduction, conception and support in the ongoing operation. The platform itself is technically operated by SAP as a cloud service in Germany.
The platform offers a common intranet and collaboration area where general information from the BMWi and the subprojects as well as project sponsors is communicated to all project participants. There are working groups on the platform in which documents are prepared, shared and discussed. Events are prepared and followed up on the platform. Discussion groups develop joint concepts. Here, all projects have their working groups with contact persons and members. An expert database makes it possible to search for contacts in the network. Wikis and blogs are used to document and share project results. Surveys are conducted. Explainer videos are integrated. Documents can be collaboratively edited in the platform. There are now over 250 groups on the platform that regularly collaborate and share information.
NEOCOSMO’s services in this project were project planning, strategy consulting, conception, introduction, integration, rollout planning, communication support (with a mix of digital communication campaigns as well as workshops, online events, seminars). The Netzwerk.Mittelstand-Digital has become an essential pillar of collaboration in the projects.
The highest security standards for the cloud solution of the BMWi were important for the implementation, as project research and development takes place here. The platform is technically operated by SAP at the data center in Walldorf.