Grow economically with decídalo

Independent IT service provider can meet growing number of CVs with decídalo

BROCKHAUS AG develops individual and powerful software and advises its customers on the digitalization of business processes – as an independent IT service provider, with headquarters in Lünen and branches in Dortmund and Hamburg for over 30 years. With an industry specialization in insurance operations, BROCKHAUS AG develops software solutions and accompanies the entire application lifestyle. The company also brings its many years of experience and technical expertise to bear in other sectors.

As a medium for the sales presentation of the competences, meaningful expert profiles are used. In the context of the dynamic growth of BROCKHAUS AG, the maintenance of CVs with Word files was only possible with a great expenditure of time. The requirements for quality and uniformity could also not be adequately met with the existing resources. Accordingly, the company decided to introduce the decídalo software for Skills and CV management.

Special challenges in the IT project business

“We are positioned in the market in the classic IT project business. With a deep understanding of the specialist requirements, we focus on projects in leading insurance groups”, is how Rolf Kundi, resource manager and technical decídalo administrator at BROCKHAUS AG, describes the company’s main target group. The challenge, according to Kundi, is to optimally represent the technical competence and sound industry knowledge as a solution partner. In this context, the skills listed in customer questions and the required experience in comparable projects must be placed in the profile focus.

Make or buy – the decision for decídalo

BROCKHAUS AG has grown strongly in recent years: the company expanded from 35 employees in 2016 to over 140 in 2022 – and the trend is rising. In order to cope with the growing number of CVs, BROCKHAUS AG initially relied on an in-house development. Existing Word CVs were imported into the company’s own software and processed there. These had to be kept up to date at great expense in order to ensure quality. In particular, the extensive reformatting of the individual CVs took up a lot of time. An efficient role- and customer-specific export of the CVs was not possible. BROCKHAUS AG quickly reached its limits, even with its own solution. With the help of an internal effort estimate, it was evaluated whether further investment in in-house development would make economic sense. In 2017, it became clear: The answer to the question “Make or buy?” was “Buy!” – After a bid analysis, BROCKHAUS AG decided in favor of decídalo. The solution from Data Assessment Solutions met all requirements and, compared to the in-house development, not only offered numerous, additional features, but also lower overall costs.

“We found our business model in decídalo.”

Data Assessment Solutions’ focus on IT and consulting companies was particularly praised by Solmund Rita Schnell, Insides Sales Manager and ERP Project Manager at BROCKHAUS AG. This also contributed significantly to the decision in favor of the decídalo software. The default settings in the skills management area could be transferred directly to the company. The skills catalog included in decídalo is designed with IT and consulting companies in mind.

This simplifies and accelerates the maintenance of meaningful profiles of employees. Available templates can be used directly for situation-specific CV generation.

From decision to GoLive in 6 month

Half a year passed between the decision and the productive use of the software. The replacement of the in-house solution went quickly. Existing consultant profiles were easily transferred to decídalo. After quality assurance of the transferred data, the tool was ready for use in day-to-day business. The key users at BROCKHAUS AG were trained by Data Assessment Solutions. They then supported the roll-out of decídalo internally. Within the company, there is the role of the “People Manager”, an authority between the management and the employees. The People Managers were introduced to the system by the key users in order to ensure a transfer of know-how for rapid and routine decídalo use within the individual teams.

As BROCKHAUS AG is continuously expanding, the onboarding of new colleagues is an important process. This, too, is effortless with decídalo. The people managers provide support in creating initial profiles. All decídalo functions are explained to new employees in coaching sessions. In the meantime, the company has also produced its own guide to decídalo.

The feedback from the team is clear: the users are enthusiastic about how intuitively decídalo can be used:

“Thanks to the simple and self-explanatory interface, the consultants were able to work independently with decídalo very quickly”

explains Kundi. decídalo is proving to be a reliable software solution for BROCKHAUS AG that is fully accepted by the team. The profile maintenance process is now well established. The consultants receive a notification after each project and add the relevant details to the project history in their profile. decídalo automatically updates all CV versions generated from the profile. The consultants have much less work with profile maintenance. Sales staff and people managers no longer have to worry about which of the CV versions created for different offers contains the latest changes. Time-consuming updates in the quotation process are eliminated and customer inquiries can be answered more quickly.

Effortlessly to a convincing profile

The possibility to adapt CVs to specific offers and to export them in different templates was particularly convincing. Depending on the customer, short or long profiles can be created and the points that are particularly relevant for the offer can be highlighted. Where previously various Word files had to be laboriously created and modified, a few clicks are now all that is needed. In addition, experts can take on different roles in different projects. With the appropriate expertise, business analysts, for example, can also perform tasks as testers. With decídalo, role-specific CVs can be created very quickly. Skills, projects and certificates are automatically matched to the corresponding role.

This means that CVs can be optimally adapted quickly, even under time pressure. This shortens the sales process without compromising on quality. Meanwhile, BROCKHAUS AG has independently created role-specific sample profiles.

The decídalo search function has also made it much easier to find suitable employees for a project. Kundi emphasizes that decídalo gives the company another competitive advantage in the market and adds that he “would definitely recommend decídalo to others.” Kundi sees an additional benefit in the anonymization function. Consultant profiles can be exported as an anonymous CV if required. For example, the company recently needed more than 40 anonymous CVs for a call for tenders. decídalo enabled significant time savings here.

Continuing on a growth course

With decídalo, BROCKHAUS AG has significantly reduced the effort required to update and adapt CVs and significantly increased their quality. At the beginning of 2022, over 140 employees will be using the SaaS solution. The well-developed workflow for onboarding new colleagues ensures that decídalo is used to its full extent and the number of users is constantly increasing. BROCKHAUS AG is also well positioned for further growth with the software solution from Data Assessment Solutions. The company actively contributes to the further development of decídalo through feedback and suggestions.

About BROCKHAUS AG

With over 140 employees, the company combines many years of practical knowledge with Microsoft, Java and other web technologies such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript. As an expert in the digitization of sales processes and in optimizing user guidance, BROCKHAUS AG has process expertise in business analysis and draws on ten years of extensive industry expertise in insurance sales. However, the company also brings its technological, methodological and professional expertise and experience to other industries and not only helps to create reliable software solutions, but also accompanies the entire application lifestyle from requirements analysis, implementation and integration to IT quality management and IT project management.