“The number of users exploded overnight”
The coronavirus pandemic posed major organizational and structural challenges for GF, many of which had to be overcome by the Corporate IT Team. Uwe Kühne, Chief Information Officer at GF, reflects on the past few months and looks ahead to the future.
How did the coronavirus pandemic influence GF’s equipment with digital collaboration tools?
Within just a few days, most GF employees were able to work remotely – either from home or any location situated outside of GF premises. The most significant challenge was preparing our IT systems for the rapid increase in users. I am referring primarily to users accessing the GF network via the virtual private network (VPN) and working collaboratively using Microsoft Teams. The number of users working with MS Teams exploded overnight, so to speak, rocketing from a few hundred in early 2020 to more than 4'000 at the beginning of July. During this time, we’ve had nearly 40'000 virtual meetings, over 50'000 calls, and 600'000 chat messages. MS Teams is now a standard fixture in our daily work. Without the COVID-19 crisis, it is unlikely that this shift would have taken place so quickly.
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Uwe Kühne has worked at the Corporate level at GF in Schaffhausen (Switzerland) in the role of Chief Information Officer (CIO) since February 2020. His principal duties include optimizing the IT landscape at GF to pave the way for harmonized processes and platforms worldwide. Uwe Kühne has been employed in various IT roles at the corporate and divisional levels since 2002. For the last three years, he has been CIO of GF Casting Solutions.
How do you feel about this development?
I’m pleased to say that thanks to the quick introduction of MS Teams we’ve been able to continue our collaborative work at GF despite social distancing and working from home. However, since there was hardly any time to prepare the rollout, we could offer employees only a bare minimum of support for the launch of MS Teams. We could not provide the training courses, online tutorials, and communication materials we had originally planned, because it was simply more important to implement the solution as quickly as possible. As a consequence, we are now fielding more questions about the whys and hows of MS Teams during active operation. We are planning to provide employees with additional information soon. Thankfully, user feedback has been largely positive. I feel like everyone knew that our ability to collaborate over the past few months hinged upon the timely implementation of MS Teams.
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In your view, how digital is GF today?
At GF, we already work with a large range of digital solutions on a daily basis. In addition to traditional process support tools, such as SAP ERP and Microsoft CRM, we employ several solutions to handle individual processes at GF. Overall, I can say we are well-equipped with digital tools. However, there is limited value in implementing new tools designed to fulfill only one singular purpose or function. In the future, we must ensure that new digital tools, platforms, and applications are selected, introduced, and used with a broader focus.
Can you explain this in more detail?
New tools do not automatically make us better. Technology alone does not represent progress when our processes, workflows, and perspectives have not changed since the old paper era. Let’s look at the ERP systems we use at GF, for example. The software manufacturer SAP offers a new solution for handling these processes, which includes improved and additional features for process digitalization – something that would certainly benefit GF. However, simply making the technological switch to the new platform would not be enough. Instead of taking individual processes and structures which have developed organically over decades and transferring them one by one to a new system, we would do better to question the value of our existing processes and update them as needed. After all, we are more connected and more global than ever before, and we want to be agile in our response to changes.
virtual meetings were held at GF using Microsoft Teams by the beginning of July.
phone calls were conducted via Microsoft Teams by the beginning of July.
chat messages were sent using Microsoft Teams by the beginning of July.
What is the Corporate IT Team working on at the moment?
The new remote-working paradigm is presenting us with new challenges, particularly when it comes to data protection and data security. We are currently concentrating on closing potential security gaps and implementing additional protective measures. The first and most important step we took in this area was to activate multi-factor authentication (MFA) for cloud applications at the beginning of July. In the future, a newly hired Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) will serve as the point of contact between the areas of data security, risk management, and internal audits. He will ensure that GF’s in-house information systems are protected.
In addition to these highly technical activities, we are also intensifying our cross-divisional collaboration in many areas. We want to work together to get the most out of the IT systems and business applications that we use.
And what can employees expect in the future?
We are currently planning a new global network that would detect malicious attempts to gain access to our IT system landscape early on. This will allow us to prevent cyber attacks and minimize possible damage. At the same time, the new network will take into account and support the increased use of cloud services, i.e. Internet services.
In addition, we are redesigning our workspaces at GF. Our current equipment, the laptop computers in particular, have a fairly rigid configuration. We are focusing on integrating more Microsoft cloud solutions in order to offer users increased flexibility. We want to provide better support for mobile and digital working environments and make these solutions available to even more of our employees.