One of the very essential parts of our value proposition as a service provider is that we take full responsibility for building and maintaining professional teams. Therefore our customers does not need to care about how teams are built, managed and their knowledge is maintained.

For that reason, we developed robust processes which aim on ensuring fast learning curve of our expert teams, ensure fast and efficient training of new team members and ensure knowledge retention and sharing. These processes fully utilize experience we collected over 18 years of running our expert teams for various customers.  

In our philosophy, we recognize several pillars on which our processes are standing.  

1. First pillar is talent development of our experts. We have dedicated position of talent development manager within our HR department, who is preparing individual development plans for every expert in our company and coordinates their implementation with involved line, project and department managers. Those development plans aim not only on hard skills of our experts, but also their soft skills. 

2. Second pillar is represented by our domain experts and technical leaders. These are exceptionally talented individuals, proven on many projects, who guarantee within our company certain technical competence or domain knowledge. We share capacity of those leaders across projects to ensure high quality and efficiency of our work. Support and training provided by those leaders proves regularly to be the key factor of success of our expert teams. Besides having company-level technical leaders, every project has its own dedicated leaders, who guarantee technical quality and knowledge sharing within the expert team. Based on current project needs the expert team may be extended or reduced, however the dedicated leaders always stay stable in the project to ensure continuity and knowledge retention. 

3. Nobody can know everything and therefore intensive collaboration within our company group as well as partnership with external experts forms third pillar, which enable for our expert team know-how and support they need. 

4. We understand “team work” as sharing and helping. It is part of our company’s DNA which we reflect along the complete employee journey starting candidate pre-selection within our in hiring process. In case our managers or leaders would recognize that any team member is not sharing or helping, they address the issue immediately and ensure improvement. 

5. Last but not least, proper project documentation is important pillar of knowledge retention and efficient training. We maintain various documentation based on project needs and agreement with our customers. We use modern collaborative tools like Confluence which allow easy sharing of the documentation and enables efficient collaboration and feedback communication over the documentation. Due to integrated technology stack and CI/CD pipelines (like Attlasian tool suite), we maintain links between documentation, work tickets and delivered code changes. These tools are combined with modern agile development methodology, which supports intensive team cooperation though daily stand up and regular retrospective meetings. By all that together, we achieve high level of project transparency, which further ease the knowledge sharing and boosts on-boarding of new project members. 

Having an innovative idea is one thing, but bringing it to life is another. Although it may not seem like it, a lot of people have good ideas. But that is usually where it ends. The hard part starts when you decide to bring the idea to life.

And that’s what we are here for. We want to help you realize your idea. Do you have a project that could break down the walls that we face today? Apply to Falling Walls Lab.

Falling Walls Lab is a never-growing network of the most ambitious and forward-thinking minds that aims to deal with the biggest challenges on the planet. It stands for the freedom of thought and scientific research, and for making ground-breaking ideas accessible to society.

Falling Walls Lab is now running an international competition where you can present your project or solution to a problem in 3 minutes. By participating you can open the door to the world, win 1.000 euros and go to the global final in Berlin. Apply by 30 June here and attend the event on 13 September 2022 in Prague.

As sponsoring partner, we are looking forward to your ideas and will keep our fingers crossed.

We are very proud of our colleagues, who are constantly learning and working on themselves. It is thanks to them that we have had many successful projects. For this reason, we would like to present you a certificate that our colleagues have completed – Certified Professional for Requirements Engineering. Possessing an IREB-certification has a main impact for the German, Austrian and Swiss market – for xitee it is a big advantage to have Analysts with this certification!

About the certificate

The Certified Professional for Requirements Engineering (CPRE) is a personal certificate which is suitable for people working in Requirements Engineering, Business Analysis and Testing. This certificate will improve their professional knowledge. Only an independent training providers teach the contents. The certificate does not expire, it has lifetime validity.

Who issues the certification?

The scheme of the certificate is developed by the IREB. IREB, the International Requirements Engineering Board, a non-profit organization, is the provider of the CPRE certification scheme. The board consists of leading RE representatives, who come from science, research, industry and consulting. 

What does one of our team members say about the certification?

“In the field of business analysis this is not the only type of certification, there is also the BABOK (Business Analysis Body of Knowledge) certification which I also have got, but with an IREB certificate we are able to compete on the German market. With IREB I have improved my skill how to model processes using UML.”

And for the ones, who don’t know what an UML-diagram can look like, there is one for an ATM activity case:

We thank all our colleagues and congratulate them once again on possessing this type of a certificate!

UX stands for “user experience”. It focuses on the users and their interaction with the product. The goal of UX design at xitee is to give our clients and developers a realistic view of the solution before it is actually created. This gives them a better idea and understanding of the look and feel, interactions, features, accessibility on different devices and platforms, and functionality of the software. This can ultimately save significant financial resources.

UI design is more specifically concerned with the “user interface”, which is the graphical layout of the solution. This includes screen layouts, transitions, interface animations and every single micro-interaction. It also includes colours, buttons that users click on, texts, images, sliders, text entry fields and all other items that the user interacts with.

Our approach:

We follow a user-oriented approach to create highly functional and affordable products for our customers. In the first phase, we learn and get to know the customer’s business requirements. Specifically, this means understanding the context in which users may use the solution. In the second phase, we create the design. The outputs are then evaluated based on user requirements. We perform these phases in iterations until the evaluation results are satisfactory. The last phase is then the implementation of the final designs.

tuned on Macbook

The benefits of good UX/UI design lead to:

  • reduction of development costs
  • increase the quality of the solution (by creating user journeys and incorporating customer feedback)
  • a realistic idea of the final product
  • increase customer satisfaction, engagement and loyalty
  • building the customer’s brand (by incorporating the company’s design and logo)
  • higher Google search engine rankings (because customers have longer interaction with a UX-optimised website)

xitee offers:

  • User journeys: a user journey is a visualisation of the process a person goes through to accomplish an intended task. It is usually presented as a series of steps in which a person interacts with a product. Our goal is to study your users, understand their behavior, and design a user journey that allows users to achieve their desired tasks with minimal effort.
  • Wireframes: wireframes represent the path users take when interacting with a website or application, including user interface elements such as buttons or images.
  • Mockups: mockups are the last preview of the final version of the product, allowing clients or users to get to know the overall design of the product before its development.
  • Prototypes: prototypes are interactive mockups – final versions of the product that are clickable and allow you to test the main way the product interacts, also before its actual development.
  • Post-launch metrics analysis: metrics are signals that show whether our UX strategy is working. Using metrics is the key to tracking changes over time. We can help you set up and use analytics tools like Google analytics or Piwik.

Since the pandemic situation of Covid-19, digitalisation has become more important. Companies are now facing the questions such as how to provide personalised and confidential advice online? How to close a valid contract directly during an online meeting? What does the customer really expect during an online advice session?

Even before the pandemic, there was already a large number of online services, but only 34% of customers really preferred these services. Today, twice as many customers prefer them than before the pandemic. Digital interaction with customers has also increased dramatically. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the older or younger generation, ultimately everyone has been in a certain way forced into digital change. Companies are of course aware of this trend and know that they have to adapt to customer expectations.

two people shaking hands

However, it is important to mention that while on the one hand the use of online services is increasing, on the other hand consumers prefer human interaction more than before. Today, 83% of consumers prefer human contact, which is a higher percentage than before Covid-19. Moreover, customers prefer online services only in situations involving less important matters. If they need advice on complex decisions they seek face-to-face meetings.

For these reasons, there is a need to combine services offered online and face-to-face contact. Switch from purely online services to virtual face-to-face advice. This is what customers expect. According to Accenture, the linking of physical and digital experiences called “phygital” is becoming a standard. The competitive advantage in 2021 is end-to-end customer service platform that creates a secure and personalised dialogue between customer and advisor. This is why we are entering the Czech market with the LiveContract solution.  Advisors can share real-time documents, videos, configurators with customers in an easy and fast way without prior registration/authentication/downloading an app. This enables online consultation without loss of personal access. The platform allows the customer to make an instant purchase decision and sign the contract directly during the consultation without any interruption, in a legally binding manner according to the EU eIDAS regulation on any end device. What will not change in the future are the demands for simplicity, speed, accessibility and customer convenience.

If you too want to increase your close rate and offer your customers the best experience read more here or book a demo here.

The HBSN group of companies supports the AOK Saxony-Anhalt in the conception, technical development and implementation of a form center – “Formularcenter” within the digital customer portal ” Meine Gesundheitswelt” (My Health World).

“Meine Gesundheitswelt” has been available to AOK customers since February 2020. Within this portal, customers can get additional services which they used reimbursed by the AOK via their individual “Gesundeskonto” (health account) and submit their receipts and invoices for any advance services digitally for billing purposes.

The web-based application “Formularcenter” is another building block in AOK Saxony-Anhalt’s digital customer service offering. With the “Formularcenter”, the AOK offers its customers a large selection of ready-made forms for applying for health insurance benefits, such as the request for care or for the reimbursement of travel costs in medical treatment situations. The corresponding forms are now made available to the insured via the customer portal “Meine Gesundheitswelt”.

woman sitting and holding white Acer laptop near brown wooden wall

With this digital customer service, complicated bureaucratic hurdles are removed for the insured and the application process is made simple, fast and customer-oriented. At the same time, AOK Saxony-Anhalt is fulfilling its legislative obligation to provide administrative services digitally to the citizens in accordance with the German Onlinezugangsgesetz – Online Access Act (OZG).

Insured persons can access the form centre (Formularcenter) directly online via their individual customer account and apply for benefits for themselves or for their family members. The forms are largely pre-filled with the insured person’s already known data. Integrated help functions, explanations in the form of text and sample images for necessary attachments per application and a dynamic behavior of the forms avoid contradictions when filling out the forms and make it easier to apply and check the completeness of the documents. An integrated upload function for necessary attachments to the application is also provided.

These help functions support not only the insured but also the employees of the AOK Saxony-Anhalt in the further processing of the forms. After digital dispatch by the applicants, the forms are automatically forwarded to the oscare® inventory system. For each form, the distribution is individually defined by the AOK and thus the forms are automatically sent to team mailboxes, to the e-file or to the oscare® APD for a direct case creation, depending on the configuration.

The requirements for the application in terms of process flow, data flows and technical implementation were developed and refined by HBSN Consulting together with AOK Saxony-Anhalt. The individual programming and technical implementation was carried out by the xitee team. For the operational monitoring of the system and customer support, the third member of the HBSN group of companies, Health-IT Services, now takes over the maintenance and support of the web application “Formularcenter” together with xitee.

Technologies: Angular 11, RxJS, Jasmine, JIRA, Confluence, Bitbucket, Apache httpd, Selenium, SonarQube

MEDICPROOF is a subsidiary company of the PKV-Verband and provides the assessment of insurance cases for people insured under one of the private insurance companies. MEDICPROOF guarantees that all assessments are done according to the laws and regulations, and done while upholding the same standards for all cases.

To streamline their work, there are many systems used by the employees and assessment experts.

One of these systems is called ProofCenter, which is the system our team was helping to develop, and maintain. ProofCenter is a system that supports the insurance experts in the scheduling, correspondence and digital transmission of their expert reports to MEDICPROOF.

ProofCenter is directly or indirectly used by all other applications in the MEDICPROOF ecosystem. The application consists of Backend and Frontend (ProofCenter Client).

Technologies: Intellij IDEA; SQL Management Studio, JBoss / Java, EJB, Spring, JAVA EE, Hibernate, REST, Git

There are six foundation blocks (Version control, Continuous integration, Issue tracking, Unit tests, Reviews, Code analysis) that ensure the quality of the software and therefore of the product itself. Various synergies between the specific parts enable transparency and maintainability. At the same time these components work as a toolkit for every single software developer.

Through the usage of a version control, each modification of the code is comprehensibly documented, and each version can be restored at any time. This grants flexibility to the development and allows a precise analysis of all arising errors of the software.  

The use of a continuous integration (CI) system allows a controlled compiling of new software versions as well as continuous reporting for the developers regarding any arising errors during the compilation. Additionally, automatically elicited key figures, which display the state of the product, can be generated and reported. Features and bugs, as well as milestones and project tasks, are managed through the Issue tracking system (JIRA and / or Confluence). This creates traceable and transparent development from requirement analysis to delivery and allows the creation of relationships between individual tasks or features. 

The Interaction between these three systems (Version Control, CI, Issue Tracker) as well as the interaction of the developers with them provides additional benefits, which increase the quality of the products even more. Any changes only need to be documented once, since the version control, issue tracking and CI systems automatically transfer the modifications. Because of this automatic transfer to the Issue Tracking System, every change is assigned uniquely to one requirement, which provides complete traceability to each action. The developer gains quick feedback through the CI System, since each change in code automatically generates a new software-version.

The usage of Unit-Tests and the integration of these tests into the CI System allows a quick identification and debugging of errors, even while the software is still in development.  

Additional to this, reviews ensure that at least two people view and test the code before a component is cleared for further testing.

Internet of Things is more and more often being used in various fields and sectors and is becoming an essential part of our lives. It also brings numerous benefits such as costs saving, increasing effectivity or adding value to existing products and services. Thanks to the IoT, we can easily collect real-time data without having numerous people involved. IoT solutions save your time and money in a long term and help “normal” physical objects become digital devices.

The concept of IoT is very simple – it is basically taking physical objects and making them “smart” by connecting them to the internet by sensors. Once the device is connected to the internet, it can receive or send information (or do both). This can be done with different objects in various fields. We have experience with IoT projects in various sectors, such as the healthcare sector (e.g. to monitor and control medical devices and ensure its future service and maintenance) or in real estate (for example for room occupancy measurement).

The foundation of the IoT architecture consists of:

  • “Things”: objects which are connected to the Internet and monitor and gather information about their environment. They send the information to the IoT gateways.
  • IoT data acquisition systems and gateways: collect the unprocessed data, convert them into digital streams, filter and pre-process them so that they are ready for analysis.
  • Edge devices: in charge of further processing and enhanced analysis of data.
  • Data centers: data is transferred, stored, managed and further analyzed here. The centers can be either cloud-based or installed locally. This is where the data is stored, managed and analyzed in depth for actionable insights.

Our team has know-how and experience in developing and designing tailor-made IoT solutions perfectly fitting to your needs. Discover the world of IoT with us and transform your products and services to another level!

kv.digital GmbH is the innovative competence center for the digitalization of medical care in private practice. The company develops innovative platform, web and app solutions – for instance for the connection of doctors with each other, for the connection of doctors with their patients, for the provision and booking of medical appointments or for information about emergency practices.

There is a platform (Electronic Appointment Service ETS) for booking medical appointments for persons with statutory health insurance. This is a highly distributed system. Individual microservices handle various tasks. The services communicate via a message broker; the frontend is supplied via REST.

The goal of this project was to extend the system with functional requirements, to normalize it technically and to optimize the architecture in parts. The tasks included:

  • Implementation of individual features incl. unit and integration tests.
  • Planning and conceptualization of technical tasks
  • Checking and optimizing code quality

Scrum was used as the development methodology.

person in white long sleeve shirt holding gray pen

A sub-project of the ETS was Impfterminservice (ITS), where one can book the appointment for the coronavirus vaccination.

Technologies:

Backend: Java, Spring / SpringBoot, Hibernate, POI, SolR, Liquibase, Freemarker, Resteasy, TestNG/Hamcrest, Mysql, Couchbase, ActiveMQ, Docker, IDEA

Frontend: Angular (for patients), AngularJS (for doctors)