Becoming a Data-Driven Company : How medi Has Laid the Foundations: Prerequisites for Developing a Data Strategy

Title data

Buck, Christoph ; van Dun, Christopher ; Huber, Rocco ; Jöhnk, Jan ; Birkel, Markus:
Becoming a Data-Driven Company : How medi Has Laid the Foundations: Prerequisites for Developing a Data Strategy.
In: Urbach, Nils ; Röglinger, Maximilian ; Kautz, Karlheinz ; Alias, Rose Alinda ; Saunders, Carol ; Wiener, Martin (ed.): Digitalization Cases. Vol. 2. - Cham : Springer , 2021 . - pp. 381-399
ISBN 978-3-030-80003-1
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80003-1_20

Project information

Abstract in another language

Medi, a leading provider for medical aids, is a German-based manufacturer making it its mission to help people feel better. Medi’s product portfolio includes compression, orthoses, and other medical products as well as sports and fashion products. With its impressive success and rapid growth, medi struggled with transforming itself into a digital and data-driven company. Above all, the historically grown structures in its infrastructure, data management, and a missing strategy were major hurdles for its transformation. At the same time, evolving customer demands and new technological developments offered great opportunities to differentiate and optimize.
Seeking to develop a strategy to better utilize data toward evidence-based management decisions, medi, in close cooperation with the Project Group Business & Information Systems Engineering of the Fraunhofer FIT, has conducted a thorough analysis of the existing process and applications landscape as well as its data management. In-depth interviews with internal and external experts as well as a detailed analysis of existing systems revealed the status quo and provided the basis for analyzing future development paths. Medi used these findings to prioritize existing digital transformation projects, to identify new data-based services, and to improve internal processes and services.
The approach taken by medi lays the fundament for developing its data strategy and thus, delivered two major contributions: First, by unveiling the process and application landscapes and the currently existing data logic, medi identified starting points for future development such as current redundancies and weaknesses. This transparency forms a solid foundation for a sustainable data strategy. Second, through a series of in-depth interviews, medi collected and prioritized important ideas and expectations for numerous exploitation and exploration projects as input for its data-related understanding, as an organization and on the individual level, as well as for its data strategy conception.
In all involved divisions, medi’s project approach led to a better understanding of the need for a uniform data structure that, in turn, leads to a better match of management expectations and operational feasi-bility. Further, the documented processes, application landscapes, and data logic act as a common foundation for the development of project roadmaps enabling higher effectiveness and efficiency in business operations. As a result, medi has particularly benefited from a common understanding of what a data-driven company means, which prerequisites need to be fulfilled as well as which roles are involved in the management and usage of data.