Interview with Michael Lütjann, CIO of Nagel Group
Michael Lütjann has been working in the IT logistics business for 27 years and has held various positions along the way. These include Fiege, DB Schenker, Imperial and now Nagel Group. He is a passionate innovator and digitaliser within the company.
DextraData: Why did you decide to introduce COCKPIT?
Michael Lütjann: Our decision was influenced by several factors. First and foremost, we chose COCKPIT because COCKPIT enables professional IT financial management, as we wanted to improve our transparency in terms of IT services, resource utilisation and IT costs. We also wanted to ensure that our partner was able to support us in the implementation and integration of the product and provide excellent customer service.
DextraData: After two years with COCKPIT, would you say that the transparency of your IT environment has improved?
Michael Lütjann: Absolutely. Right after the implementation. We now have a clear view of the IT services and products, as well as the assets provided that we need, but also those that we don’t need. We know where we need to make changes and optimise. As a result, we have been able to map our IT service catalogue, which comprises over 70 services, and thus carry out quality assurance. This means that we can now see these services in organisational structures and clearly allocate consumption and costs and now have a digital twin of our IT with real structures.
DextraData: Where do you see the greatest relief through the use of COCKPIT?
Michael Lütjann: COCKPIT enables us to simplify our budget planning and make it more effective. This not only facilitates collaboration between different departments and teams, but also enables faster and more precise decision-making.
DextraData: What do you think of the usability of COCKPIT?
Michael Lütjann: COCKPIT is easy to use and very flexible. DextraData is very open when it comes to adaptations and optimisations. Our ideas are always more than welcome and are consistently taken into account when improving the product.
DextraData: How has communication changed at Nagel Group as a result of using COCKPIT?
Michael Lütjann: COCKPIT has proved to be extremely helpful in improving co-operation and communication between the IT and finance departments. We have now created a single point of truth for IT, purchasing and accounting, which has led to a better understanding and greater transparency between these departments.
Overall, the use of COCKPIT will help us to better manage the challenges of the rapidly changing business environment and achieve our goals more effectively.
DextraData: How often do you and your colleagues look at COCKPIT?
Michael Lütjann: COCKPIT offers us automated cost calculation based on the real-time consumption of our IT. It is therefore a daily work tool during budget planning. The fact that everyone involved can choose the granularity at the level of splitting or subdividing data, processes or other elements is particularly elegant.
DextraData: On-premise costs are one thing, but how has COCKPIT changed Nagel Group’s approach to cloud costs?
Michael Lütjann: Managing cloud costs can be a challenge for organisations of all sizes. With COCKPIT, we can easily integrate our costs automatically using an existing data collector. Connection and integration via Rest API to business intelligence and enterprise resource planning systems is also possible. This means we now always have an overview of your cloud costs and can manage them more effectively.
DextraData: Has the new virtualisation and centralisation had an impact on your approach to IT costs?
Michael Lütjann: Yes, even with virtual machines, the challenge lies in distributing costs in line with usage, as we have also virtualised and centralised large parts of our data centre as part of the project. Thanks to the on-premise collectors from COCKPIT, however, we can now ensure that our VMs are utilised efficiently and optimally. We are now able to monitor resources in real time and make adjustments as requirements change. And all this with full audit security.
DextraData: What are the other items on your agenda with regard to COCKPIT?
Michael Lütjann: We want to utilise the opportunity to use COCKPIT to make IT financial management so efficient that we can concentrate on the ‘road to value’. The long-term goal is to establish an iterative process for business value metrics and thus make the value contribution of IT more tangible. In this way, we want to prioritise projects and IT expenditure based on the relative value contribution and improve the ROI.
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