Knowledge can only be passed on by the person with actual expertise.
We are experts in consultancy and assuming implementation responsibility for
- Integral and comprehensive business-process and IT consulting
- Programme and project management and crisis intervention
- Interim and risk management
Because the variety of trade cooperations and business models should be carefully and systematically prepared and managed. Another key task is the organisation of the work and staff, which is in line with the current role of the manager/decision-maker. Cooperations, processes and services have to be selected for integration in the current business model to assure their competitiveness. We also assume programme or project responsibility and actively help you remedy current difficulties with crisis intervention and risk management.
Form your own opinion of us and reserve 60 minutes of your time for an initial meeting: kontakt@lefkes-gmbh.de
Business-process and IT-process consultancy
Our range of business-process and IT consulting includes all phases of conventional services, from technical strategy development and process survey and optimisation to IT solutions, their implementation and IT operations. An IT strategy that is derived from business strategy is a key part of business success. The increasingly strong IT penetration in all company processes essentially requires optimal coordination of business and IT.
This is where our comprehensive and in-depth understanding of business and IT processes comes in, so technical requirements can be defined comprehensibly and in their entirety as well as implemented to be reused. Our specialist structures/topologies and evolutionary models specifically developed for trading allow for a swifter traceability and common “language” between specialist areas, IT and service providers. They allow for a swifter and more comprehensible incorporation of all project parties involved with a similar level of knowledge to understand relationships, identify interfaces and dependencies and implement stakeholder and risk analyses accordingly.
In the end, you should always know and understand …
- Which service is required?
- Which processes and participating parties are involved?
- How business-critical are these processes and which fringe activities are involved?
- What measurable results should be achieved?
- Which solution is economically feasible, can be implemented and is more effective in the long term?
Programmes, project management, and crisis intervention
We provide long-time expertise from major national and international projects for programme and project management and crisis intervention. Projects begin even before their initiation phase with the articulation of plans. That is why our programme- and project-management services already start with the technical contract clarification and its qualification and evaluation.
Successful projects and programmes require qualified knowledge of the industry and company and its structures and subsequently allow for …
- Clear targets
- Finding appropriate project-team members
- Solid quality assurance
- Required technical knowhow
- Taking into account the initial situation including the environment
- Required user participation
After the contract clarification, we also comprehensively include all other project phases in specialist and technical management and responsibility: initiation, planning, implementation, testing, roll-out, start-up support, inspection and approval, project completion with retrospective, etc.
Our key functional competences are …
- Programme governance as actual management and assumption of responsibility and not as formalism
- Project-management office (PMO) as project controlling with respect to content (time/budgetary/progress control), resource management, risk management and escalation authority
- Requirements and portfolio management for strategic references and analysis of dependencies
- Integration management for specialist and technical migration
- Specialist and technical architecture management for the definition of systems landscapes and services, process management and end-to-end evaluations
- Change and knowledge management for qualification and independence of your employees
Our project-related and service-based crisis intervention aims to swiftly analyse the current situation and highlight and implement concrete solutions in addition to status evaluation. To start, we use tried and tested interview techniques and specialist checklists for up-to-date assessments. However, we always feel it is crucial to involve staff in the solution-finding. We take decisions based on results and in all our activities, we always keep an eye on the realistic feasibility, long-lasting effectiveness and healthy balance of cost and benefit, i.e. profitability.
Interim and risk management
Interim management requires dedicated employees who are able, in the short term, to fill vacant positions. That is why technical and organisational training is time-critical and facilitated by our available trade expertise, which covers the specialist and technical side of your tasks. Our expertise and networks of practitioners with a highly developed sense of responsibility, discretion, ability to work under pressure, trust and migration capability is the result of long-time management and country experience (West and East Europe, North and South America, and Asia).
We base risk management not only on methodological structures but also on specialist and technical skills of trading companies. We anticipate—based on more than 25 years’ experience in the build-up and development as well as restructuring of companies—probable risks and appropriate measures along the entire process chain, from planning to leftover liquidation or from contract clarification to retrospective.
We apply the classic tools of project risk management:
- Consideration of “soft” and cultural factors
- Modelling of cause/effect relationships
- Use of checklists, formalised risk assessments and indicators to identify project threats
- Examples of risks in terms of content: dependencies, conflicts of targets, business dynamics, conflicts of interests, etc.
- Technical risks: systems/process landscape
- Risks to project management: resource conflicts, cost overruns, delays, business priorities and staff culture
- Evaluation of project risks
- Subjective assessments vs. objective measurement of actual critical aspects
- Risk and risk-analysis techniques, project-portfolio analyses
- Measures against project risks
- Proactive vs. reactive measures, breakdowns and triggers for taking action
- Conventional project-management measures, escalation, moderation of decision-making processes, project stop and project reorganisation
- Risk-management techniques, decision-making analyses/simulations, risk communication and risk-adjusted project management
Moreover, we deal with relevant practical challenges:
- View of content-related, technical environment
- Activities, projects, project cluster/programmes and overall portfolio
- (Content-related) dependencies and individual project conflicts, networking, optimisation and prioritising of individual projects/activities
- Controlling duties:
- Project indicators, milestone results, and reports
- Practically speaking often formalistic orientation, not sufficiently technical, content-related
- Management duties:
- Structured implementation of business strategies and investments
- Cause-based cost transparency (internal/external, fixed/variable)
- Content coordination, prioritising, management, optimisation and early identification/management of conflict potentials
- Line/project coordination, resource reallocation according to current business priorities and project risks/successes