Many companies still lack digital know-how and new ideas. In order to remain competitive in the long term, they must become more innovative. They can do so by empowering their employees to act confidently in the digital world and help shape it successfully. But how? The Bonn-based start-up platform3l has come up with a solution.
As part of its business model, platform3l uses IT resources from Telekom's public cloud, the Open Telekom Cloud. This gives the start-up several advantages: “One of our customers' first questions is always: Where is our data stored?” says Gabriele Riedmann de Trinidad, founder and CEO of platform3l. “The Open Telekom Cloud is a real sales argument for us, because this technical basis has already created the foundation for trust for our customers.” And not without reason: The Trusted Cloud Data Protection Profile (TCDP) certifies that the Open Telekom Cloud is currently one of the few cloud offerings on the market to have a legally compliant privacy certification for defined cloud services. In addition, the data is stored in highly secure, multiple-certified Deutsche Telekom data centers in Germany.
Storage capacities can be booked quickly in the public cloud if required – this can also be done automatically – and released again. This means that the start-up always has costs under control. In addition, the Open Telekom Cloud is based on the open operating system OpenStack, so that platform3l can integrate innovative tools at any time.
The integration of AI applications is planned for the future: With this, founder Riedmann de Trinidad wants to automate the search for possible solution providers and experts for implementation in order to eventually make even more companies fit for the future.
We believe that digitalization should also become a matter of course for small and medium-sized enterprises, so that we have the chance to become the land of digital ideas.
Digitalization still poses major challenges for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). According to a recent survey by Bitkom-Research, every second medium-sized company describes itself as a “digital laggard.” There are many reasons for this: they lack time and money for this complex topic – and they are concerned about data protection. But the employees also play a decisive role: because they have usually been with the company for a long time, they have lost sight of the bigger picture. They often lack input from outside – and therefore simply lack ideas. Bitkom President Achim Berg also believes that this must change urgently: “These are precisely the companies we have to make pioneers of digitalization,” he says.
The Bonn-based start-up platform3l has developed a concept for lifelong learning. “We provide employees and managers with impetuses for ideas that they can implement in their companies,” explains founder and CEO Gabriele Riedmann de Trinidad. If a project is implemented, platform3l will also find a suitable partner from the TechBoost pool, Deutsche Telekom's start-up program, to which platform3l also belongs.
The start-up provides its customers with daily material for digital ideas by sending practical application examples to its customers' smartphones. These examples serve as impetuses that show how technologies such as Virtual Reality (VR) or Artificial Intelligence (AI) are being used successfully worldwide. The employees of companies can then use these impetuses to generate ideas, with which they can further develop their own business digitally.
“The future-oriented impetuses are filtered according to industries, technologies and social trends and can thus be tailored specifically to a company,” explains platform3l managing director Riedmann de Trinidad.
The experience of the employees becomes the company’s biggest asset. Because long-standing employees know the weaknesses of their processes and can develop relevant ideas by evaluating the future-oriented impetuses in order to guide their own company towards the future. In this way, the employees’ swarm intelligence functions as a digital strategy consultant for companies.
platform3l regularly sends digital future-oriented impetuses to employees along the value chain of companies. The employees evaluate the impetuses and generate ideas from them. In this way, platform3l transforms swarm intelligence into a digital strategy consultant. In addition, platform3l provides partners for the implementation of the ideas. The start-up uses the Open Telekom Cloud for its platform.
