Targeted digitalization - TMG Consultants

Digital change is advancing continuously and is currently presenting many sectors, especially the manufacturing industry, with new challenges. However, digitalization of small and medium-sized enterprises should not be an end in itself, but, if used sensibly, offer added value for the company. This will only succeed if all digitalization measures are carried out in a structured and targeted manner.

Digital operating model

To successfully lead your company and your employees into the digital age, you need a clear vision and a distinct digitalization strategy. On the one hand, this strategy must be tailored precisely to your business needs, and on the other hand, it must clearly identify the areas where digitalization is relevant for your company. As your consultant, we support you in bringing together the analogue and digital world as well as technological know-how and digital scope of action in order to identify your digital opportunities and to implement them sustainably and successfully in the next step.

Maturity degree of digitalization

To make a targeted move towards a digitalized corporate world, it is important to determine your current digital maturity. This forms the basis for all further efforts to become a digital and disruptive organization. Applying our proven digitalization maturity assessment, we enable you to objectively determine your status and benchmark yourself against numerous comparable businesses as a starting point for your digital transformation.

Your data will of course be treated confidentially. Below you will find a current overview and the benchmark of the companies that have participated so far and whom we have supported as consultants. Only anonymized results are included in the benchmark overview.

Vision, digitalization strategy and roadmap

Based on your individual assessment, we support you on your "journey" through all phases of digital transformation using our digitalization maturity model. This includes:

Formulating a customized vision for your company
Developing your specific digitalization strategy
Designing your customized digitalization initiatives and anchoring them in the organization

It is important that your digitalization strategy is aligned with your corporate strategy. This is the only way to develop and implement targeted initiatives that add value.

Business process digitalization

Nowadays, processes tend to be supported by IT systems. This already raises numerous issues and presents a variety of challenges. However, in the course of further digitalization of business processes, companies can create real transparency and automation of their processes and thus further increase the efficiency of their own process structure and strengthen the implementation of the digitalization strategy.

Firstly, use optimal IT support as the basis for a successful and efficient process landscape in your company. As a second step, work with our experts to identify relevant approaches to the use of RPAs (Robotic Process Automation) or CBRs (Cognitive Business Robotics, for example also for data harmonization). Our consultants and process experts use our proven methods and experience to support you not only in identifying the relevant processes and solutions, but also in establishing efficiency improvements through the implementation of appropriate digitalization solutions.

Data value chain

Every company today generates and uses data. But how data is used is often very different, usually "random" and opportunistic. In the context of digitalization, look at your data value chain and consider how you can use the data you already use to generate real value and use it to create disruptive solutions.

We support you in structuring and establishing your data value chain and answer questions like

What data do we already have and what is its quality?
How can we use our data to improve our results?
What additional, unused potential is hidden in our data?
How do we have to structure the way we generate and process data in the future?
How can data help us develop innovative and disruptive business models?

Our experts, Data Scientist and consultants help you to generate real added value from your hidden data treasure and its potential.

No matter which course of action you choose, we are prepared! We provide you with competent consulting and successfully tested methods in all aspects of digital transformation, from strategy to implementation, so that your company is prepared for a digital future.

In our Competence Center, we combine multidisciplinary expertise in digital technologies with the experience of more than 30 years of management consulting for manufacturing companies. We take a holistic approach to digitalization both in SMEs and at Group level. This must be based on your existing structures and realistically implementable in your organization: from strategy and new business models, through planning to implementation and the successful completion of the digital transformation.

IT Management

IT systems are the backbone of manufacturing companies' daily activities and market operations. Without their own IT systems and organization, no company can successfully compete in the marketplace. In addition, IT plays an important role in that it acts as a facilitator for digitalization. It serves both as an enabler and innovator. Our consultants will use their expertise to help you set up your IT accordingly, to become aware of the critical success factors and to design your IT systems in the best possible way. After all, these are mandatory prerequisites for today's industrial companies and thus overarching objectives of goal-oriented IT management.

IT & Data Check

As a corporate leader, it is virtually impossible to have transparency about one's own IT support and data quality which are the prerequisites for digitalization and thus for corporate success. What about IT business alignment, i.e. how well are your corporate processes supported? How agile can new requirements from your business and operational processes be successfully integrated? How good is the data quality in your company? Our IT & Data Check helps you to establish transparency and awareness of these issues within a short period of time. In doing so, we do not just focus on the status quo, but develop necessary measures and objectives together with you and integrate them into your digitalization strategy and IT strategy.

S/4HANA Setup

Pressure to act arises: In 2027, maintenance of the SAP R/3 system officially ends – SAP S/4HANA is coming! For medium-sized companies this means that they have to deal intensively with a project in the top league of complexity and the risks associated with this. Fear of failure in German medium-sized businesses is great and justified. Regularly, even large and experienced companies overestimate their own capabilities when implementing such projects.

Many questions have to be answered before the actual project starts: What benefit will the changeover offer me? What does it cost? What are the biggest risks and opportunities? How do I set up my project organization appropriately? Finding the right answers is crucial for the project and poses the first challenges for companies, and especially for medium-sized businesses, right from the start. The trick here is to minimize risks and make the best possible use of the opportunities at hand. We would be happy to support you in this with the help of our proven S/4HANA Setup method.

Find out more about our additional competencies in the context of an S/4HANA conversion: To the S/4HANA Competence Page and to the Optimal Business Processes page.

IT Strategy

To ensure smooth processes in your company, it is imperative that your IT system performs well and ensures efficiency. These are only some of the IT goals that typically need to be derived from the corporate strategy. To enable digitalization, an adequate IT strategy must be defined and pursued. The following questions, among others, must be answered:

To what extent does IT contribute to the achievement of your corporate goals?
Which IT systems are in use?
What is the future IT landscape?
What is the current state of the IT organization and how must it be structured in the future?

To add real value to digitalization and thus to the competitiveness of the company, your IT department must transform itself into a true business partner. But how do you achieve this and what are the steps involved in this transformation? Our IT strategy experts support you in the design and operationalization of your individual IT strategy and thus ensure the future viability of your IT support.

System selection and introduction

After extensive definition or optimization of processes, companies usually ask themselves which IT systems best support their processes and whether existing systems need to be replaced. Decades of experience in software selection and implementation make us the right partner to answer these questions together with you.

Our support and consulting services extend from the initial cost-benefit analysis, system and vendor selection through to the successful implementation of the systems being considered. As an interface between business, IT, system providers and management, we ensure the achievement of all objectives in terms of quality, costs and time.

Digitale services

Using digitalization to make not only processes and but your whole organization more efficient and to increase customer benefit and loyalty is already a key factor in making the manufacturing industry competitive today. This is why we have developed selected digital services to provide effective support for targeted digitalization.

AI Prototyping Lab

In the course of digitalization initiatives or the implementation of initial ideas in the form of digital prototypes, companies usually fail to have the right skills to take the first steps themselves. Thus, even the development of an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) becomes a mammoth task and can throw the digitalization strategy into disarray. To remedy this, we are happy to offer you the services of our development experts in TMG's AI Prototyping Lab. For a limited period of time, you can access our development team and work with us to realize initial prototypes and AI approaches within the framework of defined sprints.

After successful initial steps, our digitalization experts will support you in setting up your own or cooperating with external labs or development teams. Let's start today and contact us about the AI Prototyping Lab.

Smart supplier search

Do you know the potential that lies hidden in your purchasing process? Imagine that digital technologies could help you not only reduce your purchase prices significantly and sustainably, but also optimize the processes in your procurement department making them more efficient and effective. Thanks to intelligent solutions, the digital transformation will also find its way into the purchasing organization of your company.

Big Data and artificial intelligence already make this possible today. Our innovative approach is unparalleled in the marketplace and is particularly helpful to the manufacturing industry in achieving its procurement goals. Now the question arises: How can we support you by digitalizing your purchasing?

You want to screen the market worldwide without language barriers and achieve the best possible prices in purchasing?
You are strategically looking for suppliers or want to review your supplier portfolio?
You are threatened by a drastic change in your supplier portfolio due to the loss of an established supplier and you need a replacement or a second source as soon as possible?

Then we look forward to hearing from you. We would be happy to work with you to develop a meaningful design for digital purchasing in your company as well as the necessary organizational and procedural measures for digital transformation in this area.

AI-supported data harmonization

All over the world, companies are digitalizing their working methods in the interaction of traditional systems with RPA, AI, IoT, block chain, platforms etc. However, ERP migration alone poses major challenges for companies today, e.g. in process integration, harmonization of different master data, preservation of existing know-how and the use of affordable technology concepts.

"Data is the gold of the 21st century" – this is how highly experts rate the importance of data today. However, the data quality in existing systems is usually anything but pure gold. Complex data harmonization, which up to now has mostly been done manually, is necessary to derive real benefits for your company from the systems. Our experience has shown that ensuring data quality is THE cost driver in the project, especially in the upcoming changeover from SAP R/3 to S/4HANA.

To reduce this effort and to enable efficient data cleansing, we use the Cognitive Business Robotics (CBR) approach to support you in cooperation with AI4BD. CBR enables AI-supported data analysis, harmonization and subsequent migration. Thereby we automate activities such as:

Identification of redundancies
Cleansing of data silos
Consolidation of separate master data
Verification and standardization of data
Semantic structure check
Comparison of company-specific terms and descriptions with documents (certificates, archives, etc.)

Please contact us and ask for our CBR experts. We will be pleased to support you in automating data quality assurance in your company.

Integrated Analytics

Using consistent data to ensure transparency of internal processes and market activities is increasingly becoming a critical success factor. The greatest challenge for manufacturing companies is to keep data up-to-date and combine it in an appropriate way. But how can such transparency be achieved as quickly as possible? We use our Integrated Analytics approach to implement integrated management dashboards for the relevant key figures at short notice using a standardized procedure.

Our analytics experts rely on established solutions like Tableau or MS PowerBI as well as other solutions. Please feel free to contact us for an expert discussion on Integrated Analytics to jointly explore initial ideas and concepts.