In an industrial environment that tends to change ever more quickly, and where innovation cycles are becoming increasingly shorter, ALM is taking on an ever greater role.

Be it keeping development costs low and timespans short, or making sure processes can run with a minimum of friction, ALM keeps it all running clean. But the associated costs to a business can be substantial, which is why it makes sense to buy these services from an external provider.

For blueworks, this has meant taking care of Ortlinghaus’ system maintenance as well as running the company’s ALM. The fact alone that Ortlinghaus have been able to leave the SAP Solution Manager to blueworks to be run, maintained, and kept up to date has been a “huge relief,” says Weitgruber.

“blueworks have been an enormous help in every area of our SAP systems. I’d say they take care of roughly 80 percent of all our SAP-related problems, and they do it quickly and immediately.”

And this has an effect on the company’s daily operations: “If you’re well taken care of, that’s half the work. You can sit back and be sure that everything is running as it should,” Weitgruber says.

When the price is up, quality needs to be up too

Meanwhile the cost both of these systems themselves as well as the associated services is substantial. According to Weitgruber, this is where blueworks really stands out.

In the area of enterprise resource planning (ERP), before a step is taken at all the consultants required alone are an investment. As Weitgruber puts it, this is where you hold on to what you know is good.

“It’s difficult to find the right consultants, and hard to find the right set-up as well,” he says. “These services are expensive throughout, so having someone reliable really matters.”

blueworks so far has been their best IT provider, and the price-quality ratio impressive, Weitgruber adds.

“Their quality has been very stable, and I can think only of positive examples concerning their work.”