Make it or buy it? Co-create IT!

How you can unlock new potential in digital business

Make it or buy it? Co-create IT!

How you can unlock new potential in digital business

Do you know the digital potential of your business? You can discover and realize it through co-creation.

How does co-creation work for IT projects and digital business?

Co-creation is an alternative to the classic “make or buy” decision. Instead of choosing an off-the-shelf digital product or awarding contract work, a company brings an experienced partner on board. The partner assumes joint responsibility for the digital product and its success. It therefore has a high level of self-interest and contributes its own resources.

Co-creation with Netcetera means developing a digital product together with an experienced technology and digitalization partner – from the idea to the right solution. The fundamental entrepreneurial spirit for this is part of Netcetera’s DNA: Using our strong business acumen, we jointly develop new business ideas and appropriate digital solutions. In doing so, we open up new digital business opportunities based on partnership.

What are the advantages of co-creation?

Co-creation partners combine their expertise: Instead of customers and contractors, there are co-thinkers and implementation partners.

At the same time, co-creation distributes risk across several partners. The partner companies can thus think bigger and beyond their own company boundaries. Co-creation projects are therefore often groundbreaking.

Co-creation provides companies the opportunity to create financially feasible digital solutions with a strong message for the entire industry and to further develop them over the long term.

Explore, Create, Grow – the advantages of co-creation at a glance:

  • All co-creation partners have "skin in the game", which means they are keenly interested in a successful digital product.
  • This results in more than a typical customer-service provider relationship: The partnership-based, iterative approach leads to faster time to market and better solutions.
  • Compared to individual development, co-creation partners often conceptualize their digital solutions in broader terms: Why develop software just for your own company when you can use combined strengths to create a new industry standard and mutually benefit from it?

 

Division of tasks with co-creation: Who does what?

Co-creation relies on a holistic and partnership-based approach.

Companies know their target groups, their markets and their own processes. This is the foundation on which Netcetera can build upon as a digitalization and business partner: We have experts in digital business who design and develop promising business models. We also have implementation experience from hundreds of successful IT projects.

For which projects is co-creation particularly suitable?

Co-creation is a promising approach compared to individual development especially when fundamentally new solutions are conceived and implementation takes place on a larger scale.

Co-creation works particularly well for companies that:

  • Are on the move in a dynamic market
  • Want to optimize and learn iteratively and quickly
  • Are open to new processes and digital business models
  • Are able to rise above their own company level

Co-creation examples – successful projects at Netcetera

New gold standard for the healthcare industry: the “Clinic Cockpit” at Basel University Hospital

 

Starting point:
Reorganize information using a central digital platform

Basel University Hospital (USB) wanted to use its existing resources more effectively with digital solutions. USB sought out Netcetera as a business and technology partner. Together, both companies developed a holistic digital solution for everyday hospital routines.

What was the co-creation approach?

USB and Netcetera had the idea of the “Clinic Cockpit”: a uniform, central digital solution for access to all relevant information. This solution was not yet available on the market.

USB brought in a wealth of knowledge about processes in daily hospital routines. The hospital also tested prototypes with selected users.

How was co-creation implemented?

The USB and Netcetera jointly developed the Clinic Cockpit in stages. The project began with simple, easy access to information in daily hospital routines.

Netcetera developed an initial prototype for the Clinic Cockpit from a joint exploration phase, during which “out of the box” thinking for new technical approaches and more modern processes were paramount.

The USB and Netcetera tailored this prototype precisely to the needs of everyday hospital routines, for example, with a powerful search function, the merging of records and data files in one digital location and a central facility for data maintenance.

Then, both partners gradually implemented the software in the different hospital departments. In doing so, they collected feedback from hospital employees and used it to plan further development of the cockpit.

Netcetera continuously improved the software using the hospital’s feedback directly from everyday hospital routines.

The result: A new software standard for clinical work.

The Clinic Cockpit is highly popular with USB employees and has received excellent feedback in the industry.

The software has been in operation for around three years and is being continuously further developed in accordance with the co-creation philosophy.

Together, USB and Netcetera are offering the Clinic Cockpit to other hospitals. This strengthens the reputation of USB as a pioneer and makes the hospital even more attractive to professionals and patients.

Online tickets made easy – for BLT and all Swiss public transport

Starting point:
Two taps to get an online ticket

More than 70 percent of the Swiss population own a smartphone. Many of them want to purchase their public transport ticket quickly and easily online. Unfortunately, digital ticketing  did not meet their expectations until now.

That's why Baselland Transport AG (BLT) collaborated with its digitalization partner Netcetera. Their common goal: Using a new smartphone app, they wanted BLT passengers to be able to find the right ticket with just two interactions – even in the complex ticketing tariff network in north-western Switzerland.

What was the co-creation approach?

BLT is a specialist in public transport in Switzerland. The transport company knew the needs of its own passengers just as well as the complex fare system in the Swiss fare network.

As a pioneer in digital payment solutions and with a great deal of experience in app development, Netcetera contributed the necessary expert knowledge for BLT’s desired app.

This is how an optimal co-creation team converged: BLT and Netcetera combined their know-how to make an intuitive ticket app that aspired to be the new industry standard. Market and customer acceptance was the top development priority.

How was co-creation implemented?

Together, BLT and Netcetera sounded out the market, researched best practice solutions and agreed on an iterative project plan. Netcetera developed prototypes of the ticket app, which BLT systematically rolled out and evaluated.

BLT provided valuable customer feedback to Netcetera, which improved the ticket app in line with user requirements.

The "open book" principle was an important basis for the co-creation project. All partners were familiar with the resources required and knew to what extent and at what points the companies involved in the project participated in it.

This created transparency and a trusting atmosphere: The project teams worked closely together and saw themselves as a single unit. The focus was on mutual success.

This open and trusting interaction with each other enabled an excellent project result.

The result: a new industry standard for online ticketing – and future plans

“Tickets” – the app is just as simple as the name. The intuitive interface was well received by BLT passengers. The ticket app quickly became an important sales channel for the Swiss transport company: It generated sales of around two million Swiss francs per quarter.

The companies continued the co-creation principle even after the app was released. BLT and Netcetera have successfully marketed the ticket app to numerous other transport companies. The co-creation partners benefit from pre-agreed reimbursements with every app sale. This has reduced the individual development costs as well as the maintenance costs borne by all project participants.

The co-creation principle has proven itself in everyday life. BLT, Netcetera and other partners are already planning the next expansion stage of the ticket app.

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