The event “From Now to the Digital Future” on May 21 kicked off with the biggest scientific sensation of the year: Dr. Anton Zensus, the Event Horizon Telescope Chairman and opening keynote speaker, shared how he and his team managed to capture the first ever image of a black hole. Over 200 scientists from 20 countries put all their passion and collective knowledge into the project, which spanned over years and culminated in an image that reached millions of people. One of the major reasons for their success: communication in real time. With the right organization and technical support, they pulled off not just a collaboration feat, but also an amazing scientific innovation.

“We’ve always done it that way!” — an all too familiar sentence for many in daily work. Is it possible to be as innovative as the scientists of the EHT team with this attitude? No! “Today there is a great need for innovation. The culture of efficiency with hierarchical organizations and static structures worked well in the last 20 to 35 years. But it is now frustrating workers and holding them back from investing their energy into innovations,” said innovation expert Pia Struck in her talk. What’s needed now are open structures that provide space for creativity and group interaction. The audience’s reaction to this was very positive. Markus D. Hartbauer, Managing Director of SER and member of the SER Innovation Team, gave participants a look at the innovations they can expect from SER.

Avoiding traffic jams, making medical diagnoses — these are things that machines are already doing better than people. So why not apply AI to business as well? SER is doing exactly that. “The three pillars of AI at SER are cognitive, content and process services,” explained Hartbauer. “Doxis Cognitive Services in particular are pushing the intelligent management of information and processes to a completely new level.” Using these technologies, companies can, for example, recognize the emotions of a customer inquiry, tailor the service offering to those emotions, and thereby ensure a better customer experience. Among its cognitive capabilities, Doxis is able to recommend experts and processes to ensure the fastest and best processing of service cases.

The Zurich Group knows firsthand that offering superior service is one of the most important competitive advantages. “Digitalization is crucial on every level to respond quickly and flexibly to customer wishes. What customers know from Amazon and Alibaba they also expect from their insurance provider. We must respond immediately,” said Dr. Tobias Rump from the Zurich Group. Together with Marcus Gärtner of DXC Technology, they explained how the insurance provider is able to achieve all this with Doxis. The key to customer service? Process automation. The Zurich Group has been relying on Doxis since the 1990s to automate its processes. “In the beginning, we focused on digitizing paper and on steering documents to the right case worker. Today, Doxis is the foundation for process digitalization: Step by step, it has been digitally mapping more and more automated standard processes. It also easily adapts ad hoc and expands them,” stated Gärtner, commenting on the advantages of the Doxis platform.

The breakout sessions focusing on best practices, workflows, collaboration, DMS and eFiles particularly interested the participants. What is Doxis like to use? What is the look and feel? At the demo stations, everyone had a chance to try out Doxis, its solutions and interface — and they were excited about what they experienced. We, too, were excited to experience such a great day and to inspire our visitors! In fact, the day was such a resounding success that we will do it again on July 2nd in OKTOGON in Essen (event in German). Join us!