Tackling the main problems of digital transformation: the mashfrog approach

On February 25, the webinar "Agile approaches to face major issues in a digital transformation roadmap" was held. This was an event organised by the mashfrog Group to discuss issues related to digital transition and present to company managers with the solutions proposed by our group to meet this challenge. This was an opportunity to tell some of our success stories that demonstrate how we were able to respond to the demands of digital transformation better than other companies, and solve the principal problems related to it in a concrete and effective way.

The main problems associated with digital transformation 

Gianluca D'Angeli, Global Sales Director, opened the panel discussion by explaining the four main difficulties that companies encounter during the digital transformation process: 

•    long-term projects, the duration of which could lead to obsolescence, especially in today's rapidly changing environment;
•    complications in the organisation of work, especially in the last year, during which most of the people involved in the project have been working remotely;
•    difficulty measuring the results;
•    the real risk of wasting time and resources.

To address these difficulties, the mashfrog approach is based on three fundamental elements:

•    a step-by-step approach with rapid and measurable responses, which allow for the constant re-alignment of the economy of production processes and investment with the rapidly evolving market;
•    the use of smart and remote solutions, an inevitable trend that was only accelerated by the pandemic; 
•    innovation and sustainability, with the aim of matching the development of innovation with the sustainability of investment.

After giving us this brief overview of the problems and possible solutions, Gianluca opened the floor to four other mashfrog Group managers, who told us about other companies that successfully managed the digital transformation process using just such an agile and decisive approach. 

1 - MASH4HANA. How to implement SAP solutions remotely, reducing costs and saving time

Andrea Albanese, the CEO of mashfrog DOO, presented the case study of a manufacturing company that produces tools and materials for the moulding of plastics, that chose mashfrog to help them make the transition to the SAP S/4 HANA system using the Mash4hana kernel, a 100% mashfrog native product. There had been problems with this project from the beginning, which were exacerbated by the pandemic: the transformation had to be completed in three months, managed totally remotely, and with a reduced budget. 

Mashfrog applied the following strategy:

•    a rapidly scalable model;
•    a team of highly qualified professionals from Italy and the Serbia Competence Centre;
•    leveraging SAP Best Practices for S/4 HANA to accelerate the delivery of services.

Using this approach, the customer's objective was achieved with excellent results: the team worked remotely 99% of the time, reducing costs and achieving better results. We reduced the time required by 75%, completing the transition to S/4 HANA in just three months, thanks to our many years of experience with SAP. Finally, we reduced maintenance costs by making the most of the new standard features introduced by SAP in S/4 and by minimising the use of custom code. 

2 - Salesforce. A method for facilitating the introduction of the agile methodology 

The second mashfrog Group success story was presented by Francesco Boccassi, the Salesforce Operation Manager, who told us about the project to implement blockchain technology  for a leading company in the electricity and gas sectors, to speed up their interactions and improve security and transparency in sharing documents with their external stakeholders.

To address the difficulties posed by the introduction of such a disruptive technology, the mashfrog approach was based on three fundamentals: 

•    rapid integration using Salesforce;
•    incremental releases for two to three months, starting with the MVP, to improve the product;
•    agile methodology with daily stand-ups, weekly milestones, and the use of project management tools to track the project's progress.

This case history represents the first integration of a Salesforce Enterprise project with Ethereum Blockchain in Italy and was completed in just three months, demonstrating that the agile methodology, with the creation of an MVP product, allows evaluations and corrections to be carried out in the fastest possible time.

3 - Infor. HCM for an international tier 1 client in the aerospace and defence sector

Enrico Capogrosso, Infor Practice Global Director, then told us about the project developed for a leading company in the design of aerostructures, which urgently needed to implement a modern Human Capital Management system following the acquisition of a new production plant. The difficulties lay in the short time available, the limited budget, and the need to do the entire job working remotely. 

The mashfrog approach to solving client problems was developed in three macro sprints:

•    Boot Camp: demonstration of the solution to the customer, leveraging the Implementation Accelerator, which is a set of pre-configured processes based on best practices and, following the Infor 60-30-10 approach that makes it possible to introduce the solution to the customer's team very quickly, a series of specific level 1 and level 2 user stories;
•    Prototype 1: the consulting team presents the customer with a system configured on the basis of the specifications that emerged from the first level of user stories;
•    Prototype pre-go-live: the customer's team, supported by the consulting team, presents users with a demo of the system configured based on the specifications that emerged from the second level of user stories, and all the procedures for go-live are activated (UAT, Cutover plan, etc.).

This case demonstrated how an approach based on a prototype methodology, such as the mashfrog Leap Methodology that is used in mashfrog's Infor, highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the projects, as well as leveraging processes that have been pre-configured based on best practices, resulting in a rapid and effective implementation and making it possible to make changes in a timely and effective manner as necessary.

4 - PressPal. Artificial intelligence for the press office of the future

Fabio Dellutri, the Sales & Account Digital Area Director, closed the webinar by presenting the fourth mashfrog Group success story: PressPal, the Cloud SaaS platform that automates the work of the press office using artificial intelligence, machine learning, and sentiment analysis. Using this platform, one of our leading customers in the insurance and banking sector was able to speed up the analysis of keywords, improve their work in the Cloud, and optimise their approval workflow. 

PressPal is an intelligent editor with features that provide the press office with rapid and optimised solutions:

•    context: real-time extraction from certified sources based on the text being written;
•    keyword: suggestion of keywords based on the topic and SEO optimisation;
•    perception: suggestion of the best words to use based on an emotional analysis of the content;
•    metric: metric evaluation to help with the comprehensibility and readability of the text.

PressPal also helped the client's press office to collaborate remotely using dedicated GroupWare and workflow management functions, quickly resolving problems caused by the pandemic. The artificial intelligence of the tool allows you to improve your content, thanks to the sentiment analysis carried out in real time that gives the text the polarity you want. Finally, it provides keywords recommendations based on SEO parameters so that the text achieves the best results in terms of visibility. 

The event was just the first in a series of virtual meetings in which various issues related to the theme of digital transformation and technological innovation will be addressed, areas in which the mashfrog Group is one of the leading companies. As confirmation of this, several Human Digital Masters from companies and universities participating in the “Mindset Revolution”, a training program from the Elis Consortium dedicated to Italian companies taking part in the fourth industrial revolution, were also at the webinar on 25 February.