An outstanding User Experience (UX) is a critical competitive advantage in today's digital development. This requires a sustainable strategy, a strong design team, and the integration of user-centered approaches in processes and structures. Establishing UX as a strategic pillar and not just a design discipline was essential for SEEBURGER. With Ergosign as an expert in organizational design, SEEBURGER embarked on a transformative organizational change process.
Organizational design: Transformation to a human centered-organization
Increasing of the UX maturity as a strategic advantage
BriefWhere are we?
SEEBURGER’s journey toward becoming a human-centered organization began with these questions: What is our starting point? Where do we want to go? How can we ensure we don’t lose our way? We conducted a detailed assessment at SEEBURGER, focusing on the organization's key pillars: people and culture, organizational structures, and UX methods. This understanding was sharpened using our UX maturity model. Ergosign’s external perspective and extensive experience in organizational design provided an impartial view and helped create a clear vision. This vision became the "North Star" for the change roadmap and the entire transformation process.
ApproachAssessment: Where do we want to go?
Based on the assessment, we developed a change roadmap with prioritized measures to increase UX maturity. Working groups were formed to drive specific change initiatives. Over nearly two years, SEEBURGER successfully implemented several individual initiatives. These included launching a central UX hub, establishing a new UX team structure, defining standard processes and methods for conducting UX pilot projects, and much more.
ApproachPilot phase: What happened next?
A key success factor was integrating an operational UX pilot project into the organizational design initiative. This allowed for organizational changes to be tested sustainably at the product level adapted to SEEBURGER's specific needs and embedded into the product development process.
The pilot project team, consisting of SEEBURGER employees and UX designers from Ergosign, operated as an innovation hub within the existing organizational structures, demonstrating the value of user-centered methods. Using the collaborative UX framework, designers and developers gathered valuable feedback in short iterations, fostering a continuous improvement process. The team experienced the benefits of close interdisciplinary collaboration with various departments like management, product development, sales, marketing, and content strategy. Ergosign provided targeted agile coaching and comprehensive UX consulting, enabling continuous improvement. Key insights were regularly presented to stakeholders, and through the developed communication strategy, the core team raised awareness for UX and human-centeredness across the organization.
OutcomeChange management: What has changed?
The results of the organizational design initiative at SEEBURGER are impressive. Significant changes include introducing a UX leadership role to drive the discipline forward and develop a strong in-house UX team. A UX intranet hub was created to include reusable templates and methods, the establishment of systematic user research measures, a UX training program, and collaborative formats like UX hackathons to raise awareness for UX.
Another successful outcome was the decision to integrate the demo product, designed and implemented by the pilot team, into a broader software platform. A scaling model is being introduced to embed UX into multiple agile teams, requiring changes to the organizational structure and working methods, which SEEBURGER is currently addressing.
NextContinuing the path toward a human-centered organization
Establishing human-centeredness within a company is a continuous process that takes time and is unique to every organization. At SEEBURGER, creating new structures goes hand in hand with changing mindsets, workflows, and communication paths. Silos are being broken down, and specialists from different disciplines are bringing departments together. This requires perseverance, innovative thinking, and a far-reaching vision.
However, SEEBURGER believes the transformation process and its associated efforts and challenges are worth it. The company envisions a top-tier User Experience as a key pillar, along with technical excellence and innovation, which have characterized SEEBURGER for several years.
After nearly two years of intensive collaboration, we are proud of SEEBURGER's progress in developing its internal UX expertise. In the current scaling phase, Ergosign has handed over the leadership role to SEEBURGER's UX team. Our experts continue to support SEEBURGER both operationally in projects and through strategic UX consulting.
About the clientSEEBURGER AG
SEEBURGER AG is a leading provider of integration software and services, with over 1,200 employees worldwide serving more than 14,000 customers across the globe. Founded in 1986 as a family-owned business, SEEBURGER shapes business processes and IT landscapes with its BIS platform – a cloud-based, agile, secure, and scalable integration platform.
