Mar 21, 2022

Who is ASAGO AG?

ASAGO AG was founded in 2013 and is active in management consulting. The focus is on strategy, risk management, trends, and megatrends, as well as optimal and effective sales.

What exactly does ASAGO AG offer?

At the beginning of every strategy consulting is the recognition and definition of the trends and megatrends that are important for the customer. These insights lead to the optimal organization of how a company must position itself. Successful distribution closes the circle. Superimposed we offer a pragmatic risk management, where the customer can recognize his chances and risks and define and implement suitable measures.

What distinguishes ASAGO AG from other management consultancies?

Due to the very large wealth of experience and practical relevance of the two business owners, every collaboration takes place at eye level with the customer. We always view the company as if we were taking on an important task there ourselves. 

Who are the customers of ASAGO AG?

The two business owners have partly different backgrounds and know-how, which also affects the structure of the target customers. Clients are primarily strategic and operational management bodies such as boards of directors, foundation boards, executive boards, local councils and management boards. ASAGO AG focuses on niche solutions for SMEs in all industries, foundations as well as municipalities and public sector organizations.

Why are trends & megatrends so important for a company?

We attach great importance to this important topic, as it is a crucial success factor for any company. Trends and megatrends offer both opportunities and threats. We notice that many companies do not deal with this topic systematically enough. 

What added value do the databases of ASAGO AG offer?

We believe that systematics and structure lead to success in the short, medium, and long term. With our databases, a customer can ensure this in a simple way. In addition, our databases not only contain logical processes and procedures, but also valuable knowledge in the form of many templates. The customer does not have to reinvent the wheel but can build on the experience of ASAGO AG and other customers.

Why does ASAGO AG work with BixBytes?

Data security and functioning databases with high accessibility are essential in our business model. With BixBytes we have found a partner who can satisfy our needs with a high level of reliability and passion.

How did the switch to Bix Bytes work?

Despite a high level of complexity and comprehensive service packages, the switch took place without any major problems.

How satisfied are you with the new solution?

The availability of the databases is very high, and the stability is very good. However, the most important thing is the good interpersonal cooperation, which is a big part of the success of a collaboration.

Thomas Hirsiger and Renato Sanvido, owners of ASAGO AG

Feb 4, 2022

What is the employer's responsibility?
Employers have a special responsibility to their employees in this regard. Workplace safety is more important than ever in this era of the Corona pandemic. Companies need to consider how social distan-cing works in offices, how to keep aerosols low in offices, meeting rooms and canteens, and thus how to guarantee good air quality. Returning to the workplace must not mean a relapse to skyrocketing infection rates.

How is the quality of indoor air measured?
It is no longer sufficient to intuitively regulate the air supply, temperature and humidity. First, the values for temperature, humidity, Co2 and TVOC (Total Volatile Organic Compounds) must be continuously recorded and stored as raw data. At the same time, the environmental variables such as fresh air supply, heat supply, number of people in the measurement area and outside temperature must be measured and stored.

How is the air quality calculated?
The Co2 load in ppm is evaluated according to the following table.

RATING INDEX CO2 PPM MEANING

The total of all mobile organic particles is indexed according to the TVOC rating.

The relative humidity at normal indoor temperatures of approx. 21 Grand is ideally at 50-70%.
Only when all limits are met can the workplace be classified as Safe. This forms the basis for bringing employees back into the office.

Which influencing factors have to be considered?
Co2 and TVOC levels increase rapidly when there are many people in a small room with little or no fresh air. This often happens in meeting rooms without outside windows.

What is the solution to improve this situation?
First, the data must be collected and made visible to the employees. In a second phase, the room air can be proactively regulated on the basis of the long-term data collected. In this way, the limit value exceedances can be minimized.

By using combined IoT sensors, the measured values can be collected cost-effectively:

• Air Quality Sensor for temperature, humidity, Co2, VOC and IAQ (Indoor Air Quality).
• People counting sensor
• Supply air sensor

Depending on the sensor, this data can be displayed directly or visualized in real time on a dashboard for the entire office area.
Due to the long-term storage of the data, calculation models can later be created using Big Data Analytics, which allow the air quality to be regulated at an early stage based on forecasts such as weather and occupancy.

Bruno Frommenwiler, Head of Business Development, Bix Bytes Solutions AG

Jan 17, 2022

Microsoft announced "new prices" for its subscriptions, which include various cloud services and, depending on the design, additionally the Office applications as well as Windows 10 Enterprise. The manufacturer cites the significantly increased number of features and applications as the reason.

The blog post in which Microsoft announces the higher costs for its services and apps also justifies the measures with the fact that there has not been a major price increase since the introduction of Office 365 ten years ago. During this period, however, the prices for subscriptions were raised in smaller steps.

Meanwhile, Microsoft's central argument is that the scope of the bundle of online services and local applications has been significantly expanded. Since the introduction of Microsoft 365 four years ago, 24 applications have been added.

As examples, Microsoft cites Teams, Power Apps, Power BI, Power Automate, Stream, Planner, Visio, OneDrive, Yammer and Whiteboard.

The following subscriptions will be affected by the price increase starting March 1, 2022:

• 20%    Microsoft 365 Business Basic
• 10%    Microsoft 365 Business Premium 
• 25%    Office 365 E1                             
• 15%    Office 365 E3                           
• 8.5%   Office 365 E5 
• 12.5% Microsoft 365 E3 

All prices are per user and month. Current prices for Switzerland have not yet been published. It is assumed that the prices in Switzerland will be increased to a similar extent.

Subscriptions for educational institutions and private users are not currently affected by the price increase.

Nov 25, 2021

How is the airline Thai Air positioned in Switzerland?

We have 3 employees stationed at Zurich Airport, 5 in Cargo and 12 in the Town Office. We had to close the latter this year due to the Corona crisis and the associated short-time work. Since then, the 12 employees affected have been working from their home offices.

Why did you switch to a new telephony solution?

The driver behind the replacement of our existing telephony system was the dissolution of the Town Office. This was because our old solution was tied to the workplace, and calls made while employees were away would have gone nowhere. This would have been unthinkable, especially for our team that takes care of reservations. Thanks to the new telephony solution, our employees can also be contacted remotely and can always be reached via the corresponding smartphone application, even when they are on the road.

Which solution did you choose and why this one in particular?

We have been using the Microsoft Teams solution since March 2021. This solution was recommended to us by our long-standing contact person for computer and telephony matters, Thomas Koch. We had also evaluated a solution from another provider. However, this was too expensive and too complex for us. This was also because we would have had to change installation partners. That was not an option for us.

Why did you decide to work with peoplefone and Bix Bytes?

We have been working with Mr. Koch for 20 years and are very satisfied. When he moved to Bix Bytes at the beginning of the year, it was clear to us that we would move with him. He was also the one who recommended peoplefone as the provider for our new telephony solution. And his recommendations have always paid off in the past years.

How did the change take place?

Mr. Koch explained to us in advance what possibilities Microsoft Teams would open up for us and ensured a smooth porting by testing the connections beforehand. In addition, our employees all received training and instructions on how to use Microsoft Teams before the switch. The switch subsequently went smoothly.

What were the challenges?

At the beginning, someone was occasionally thrown off the call because the wrong button was pressed. Other than that, however, the changeover didn't cause any difficulties. The solution is actually also relatively self-explanatory. How was the cooperation with peoplefone and Bix Bytes? We are very happy with the cooperation with Bix Bytes and peoplefone. Mr. Koch is our central contact person. If there are any disruptions, he deals with them directly with peoplefone. people-fone therefore stays in the background - which is good, because it means that the solution works.

How satisfied are you with the new solution?

We are very satisfied. So far we haven't had any problems with Microsoft Teams. We would therefore recommend the solution at any time - or have already done so. We have told our German colleagues about Microsoft Teams, as they also want to optimize their availability. Now we are curious whether they will also switch. peoplefone would also be active as a provider in Germany.

What is the biggest difference to the previous solution?

We can now all call each other, which was not so easy with the previous solution - you were always connected to the head office first. There was no way to directly short-circuit each other internally. In addition, we can now hold virtual meetings and chat with each other. And our reservations team is much more accessible thanks to the new ring connection, and we can see when our colleagues are busy. We also have robots that ensure that callers are always connected to the right contacts. Another argument in favor of the solution is the cost: We used to have a lot of numbers that we didn't need but paid for. Now we pay for exactly the licenses we need.

From an interview with Ms. Silvia Stoll, Sales & Marketing Manager at Thai Air

Oct 25, 2021

Organisations use Microsoft SharePoint to create websites. Together with Microsoft 365, it offers a holistic solution for collaboration in the company. Thus, SharePoint serves as a safe place to store, structure and share data, while it can be edited from almost any device using Microsoft Office.

To ensure that SharePoint is implemented correctly, Bix Bytes Solutions supports you with application specialists from planning to implementation and operation.

CUSTOMER

SharePoint project for a financial company with several locations in Switzerland and Europe.

TASK

As the exchange of information for the employees is an important part for the business activities of the company, the customer decided to realise a fully functional intranet with SharePoint. This allows information to be made available to all employees centrally, easily and quickly. It should also be possible to store and edit all company content centrally and with the specified authorisation requirements. Employees should be able to easily contact customers internally and externally via chat and video with the help of MS Teams in order to exchange information. To realise this idea, the client was looking for a professional SharePoint development team to implement and customise an intranet based on SharePoint Online. BBS took on this task.

SOLUTION

Our business analysts and SharePoint consultants started by defining the general structure of the future intranet in order to create a clear and flexible architecture that would allow the intranet to be managed, supported and extended effectively.

Once the general structure of the solution was designed, the project entered the development phase. BBS's SharePoint developers provided different components of the intranet to make it user-friendly and feature-rich.

News

The intranet allows users to post two types of messages:

Corporate news, created by the internal communications department and available throughout the company.

Departmental news, created by the head of department, who either publishes news on the departmental site or makes it publicly available.

Web pages for individual departments

Such web pages contain departmental news, useful links to key departmental and corporate resources, team member profiles, team documents, activities, and collaboration tools to support effective teamwork. Each webpage is managed by a department head and can be customised in accordance with departmental needs.

Access to documents

Company documents can be accessed from the office, home office or on the road via the online SharePoint. Office documents can be edited online or with the locally installed Microsoft O365. To provide the easiest possible access, employees can also synchronise documents locally using Microsoft OneDrive technology and open them directly from Windows Explorer. This can be done when connected online or offline while on the move. The data processed offline is automatically synchronised with SharePoint again the next time they connect to the Internet.

RESULTS

The new SharePoint intranet helped the client achieve several goals:

Unify corporate activities within a single secure platform;

• Make executive information directly and centrally available to all employees;
• Increase employee productivity through intranet tools and services available 24/7;
• Facilitate departmental work through personalised websites for each department;
• Improve employee involvement in corporate life thanks to the user-friendly solution.
• To enable internal, as well as external communication such as chat or video telephony with the help of teams.

#digitalworkplace #cloud #sharepoint #O365 #microsoft #bixbytessolutions #consulting #digitalisierung

Oct 25, 2021

The #UIUX (graphic designer) team of #bixbytessolutions develops visualisation concepts for web applications and websites in the context of further education. This project uses #OnlineLearning situations to show how to create individual digital images. The starting point is a hand drawing, which is digitally converted by a graphic designer. This is very interesting to get an individual design.

Need for a modern WEB application is implemented by our UI/UX team in two phases. First a clickable #Wireframe (greyscale design) and after approval a #VisualRollout (colour design) is worked out according to their #CICD specifications. This forms the basis for the programming of the #FrontEndApp, #OnlineShop and #MobileApp.