Within the SIC, it is particularly important to us to advance and promote the exchange of knowledge among our members in order to constantly develop the regional IT industry and pass on helpful knowledge. Therefore, we conducted insightful interviews with our members on how to deal with current challenges in the IT industry.
Interview with trinitec IT Solutions & Consulting
with Bernd Buchegger
DI Bernd Buchegger – Founder and Managing Director of trinitec IT Solutions & Consulting GmbH and head of the focus group Digital Sales in the Software Internet Cluster.
The certified digitization experts at trinitec IT Solutions & Consulting GmbH with managing directors Bernd Buchegger and Klaus Reimüller have been developing professional software solutions for the automation of digital sales and highly integrated business applications for over 20 years. The trini team supports the analysis, conception of digital strategies and implementation of digital solutions.
Customers rely on the high quality of the consulting service, which has been awarded with prizes such as the State Prize for Consulting, multiple times with the Constantinus Award and certifications such as Certified Digital and Certified Management Consultant.
How are you dealing with the current shortage of skilled workers?
We rely heavily on cooperations with our partner companies. We have learned that the availability that you don’t have in your own team is available in other companies and should be used. It is often important to only be able to cover short-term project peaks when the project plans are tight or there are failures. We usually do this reciprocally, i.e. our partner companies also ask us and we strengthen their teams and vice versa. We often make the contracts on a reciprocal basis with conditions that apply equally to both sides. In addition, we have been working with a freelancer network for a long time, which we are constantly expanding. Senior IT specialists in particular do often resign from the company due to self-employment in order to be able to work on their own visions.
We also see cooperations as an opportunity for companies to help each other instead of poaching each other’s skilled workers. Ultimately, this only leads to a “war for talents”, whereby there will certainly be more losers than winners. In cooperation, on the other hand, we can strengthen each other and even boost the IT economy in Carinthia.
Which home office policy do you follow in your company?
Ever since we were founded in 2004, we have increasingly focused on mobility and have always provided our employees with the necessary equipment. This enables our specialists to carry out their services remotely as well as directly on site at the customer. Basically, we were already perfectly equipped at the beginning of the COVID pandemic and hardly had to change anything in our infrastructure, as it was already in place. Of course, at the beginning there was a lack of daily and personal exchange with colleagues. We compensate this with appropriate video conferences, video chats and our weekly online team meeting.
We have given everyone the freedom to use home office throughout our company. Half of our team is currently in the permanent home office, after this type of cooperation has turned out to be very advantageous for some of the team members in their private situation. If necessary, meetings can of course also take place in the trinitec office – mostly when there is something to celebrate together, because working from home is clearly at a disadvantage here.
Where do you see the future of Austria’s IT industry?
Digitization definitely remains the megatrend and constantly offers new challenges and opportunities for Austria’s IT industry. Austria has a long tradition in green technologies – I think that, in view of the global environmental crisis, we should further expand this specific competence and intelligently link it with IT solutions.
Furthermore, I still see potential in the expansion of the IT infrastructure – and by that I don’t mean the long-trodden path of broadband expansion. The aim must be to create affordable and secure cloud infrastructures that solution providers, application developers and integrators can build on. A European solution is required here as a counter-model to the strong American providers.
We ourselves have shifted our focus to digital sales, as we see enormous potential here and a great deal of catching up to do among Austrian companies. As the “Digital Sales” focus group, we are currently bringing together the experts from Carinthia on this topic. Together with the eCommerce working group and sales consultants, we are planning joint activities to create awareness of the topic and to help regional expertise gain more visibility.
If you were minister responsible for digitization, what would you change?
All good things come in threes – so I put together the following package of measures for my ministerial election campaign:
(1) Promoting Digital Skills – Promoting young people’s digital skills early on and in a gender-neutral manner must be an integral part of the training system. It is important to first invest in the quality of the trainers. Teachers today are faced with the challenge of passing on these skills without having been adequately prepared themselves or without having the necessary tools and documents at their disposal.
(2) Simplifying Data Protection – is undoubtedly an important issue, but has presented us with the challenge of excessive bureaucracy. For small businesses, this means constant legal uncertainty and rising costs. The requirements and regulations must be defined more simply and clearly, and companies must be given better tools in order to be able to implement legal certainty with reasonable effort.
(3) Strengthening of Regional Providers – Austria is a country full of expertise and highly developed digital solutions. This concentrated know-how must be brought onto the stage and made visible. This innovative power must be promoted and expanded in a targeted manner and must go as far as promotion and support in marketing. It must be attractive for Austrian companies to work with Austrian providers and solutions.
We would like to thank DI Bernd Buchegger, Leader of our focus group for Digital Sales and Managing Director of trinitec IT Solutions & Consulting GmbH for the exciting insights!
You would like to share your experiences on current challenges with us?
