1. METASONIC
NEXT GENERATION BUSINESS SOFTWARE
ENGAGE. LIBERATE. PERFORM.
Authors: Stephan Sneed / Alexandra Kulfanová
02.10.2013
POSITION PAPER
Metasonic GmbH · www.metasonic.de/en · info@metasonic.de
2. Metasonic - Positioning paper
Table of contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS
METASONIC. NEXT GENERATION BUSINESS SOFTWARE................................................................1
THE CHALLENGES OF TOMORROW ..............................................................................................1
BUSINESS. IN TUNE. ..................................................................................................................2
ENGAGE: EMPOWER YOUR PEOPLE..............................................................................................3
LIBERATE: ELIMINATE RESTRICTIONS............................................................................................4
PERFORM: EVOLVE YOUR BUSINESS.............................................................................................5
Metasonic, the next generation business software, gives you the ideal set of tools for dynamic business activities. Their
intuitive operation means that all users can design their workflows themselves and constantly adapt them. This results in
tremendous commitment and frees up IT resources. With flexible modules, you can quickly create standardized, persona-
lized solutions and even make repeated changes to them while they are running.
From the first live day, the solutions deliver the key performance indicators you need to help you grow your business on
a controlled and continuous basis. The benefit for you: your employees are more dedicated, your organization is released
from many restrictions and you can develop your business‘s potential faster and more effectively.
Prestigious companies such as Audi, NEC, Hitachi and Swisscom have already realized this and are successfully using
Metasonic. Our customers are provided with support through our strong international network of partners.
Business. In Tune.
www.metasonic.de
3. Metasonic. Next Generation Business Software.
We offer you next generation business software, which gives you the ability to conduct your highly agile
business activities in a new way. With Metasonic, you allow your employees to participate more, free yourself
from restrictions, and dynamically unleash your business potential. Metasonic: Engage. Liberate. Perform.
Metasonic - Positioning paper
Page 1
BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE
IT PERSPECTIVE CEO PERSPECTIVE
With Metasonic, your IT department is transformed
from a bottleneck into a catalyst for your business. You
integrate business users into the system design phase
more effectively than ever before and shift many of the
changes over to the business division. The existing IT
functionality is easy to manage and can be quickly recon-
figured. Metasonic also brings together the strengths of
standardization and customized development.
You can make existing standard software more flexible
and quickly develop new solutions. All models are exe-
cutable straight away and can be changed and extended
without limit. Many of these changes can be made by
the department itself without your input.
We supply you with the tool set you need to implement and
adapt your business models quickly. Highly dedicated em-
ployees and a freed-up IT department ensure the develop-
ment of your company’s full potential. Your departments
can create innovative IT solutions that allow you to quickly
occupy new positions on the market. You can experiment
with these solutions, revise and adapt them as often as you
like, and analyze their performance. This is what helps you
to stay the market leader.
With Metasonic, you can constantly optimize your opera-
ting performance and rely on actual practical experience.
You are also able to calculate future options and risks using
the parameters you gain right at the start.
With Metasonic, you can easily de-
scribe your processes yourself. This
enables you to immediately utilize the
resulting IT support and change it again
as needed. You can coordinate your
processes easily with your colleagues,
exchange information and create the
software solutions you need. Our me-
thods are child’s play and our concepts
are simple. This will encourage you to
give completely new possibilities a try
now and then.
In other words: We give you more
than enough space to develop ideas
for new, innovative solutions, which
you can implement immediately. You
quickly get a sense of achievement
and the opportunities to make adjust-
ments are endless. All this makes
Metasonic your tool of choice.
Metasonic: Engage. Liberate. Perform.
4. Metasonic - Positioning paper
Page 2
The challenges of tomorrow
Our world grows smaller every
day. Integration and connectivity
continue to steadily increase. This
results in an ever increasing num-
ber of options at your company as
well. However, the vast number
of possibilities also creates a vast
number of new dependencies
and risks. Natural phenomena or
social and political developments
in far-away places can be just as
critical as the competitor in your
own backyard. The size of the
company no longer plays much of
a role. The number of events and
changes that you and your com-
pany have to keep an eye on is
constantly increasing.
At the same time, as the rate of
change increases the time you have to react continues to decrease. Information is disseminated more and more quickly
due to increased connectivity. As a result, product and business model life cycles are growing shorter. So you not only need
to keep a close eye on more and more issues, but you also need to act ever more quickly.
This can make you feel like you are being torn in different directions. The increasing number of actions and reactions in an
increasingly shorter time frame can no longer be managed through the rigid means and methods of the past. You can only
ensure the company‘s sustainability by finding the right balance between control and flexibility.
Business. In Tune.
Flexibility without losing control – how does that work?
With a well-coordinated organization that has sufficient agility in the right places and yet still stays on beat. This means
that everyone has the chance to participate fully without endangering the harmony of the collaborative effort. This is the
only way you can present a unified front and work successfully with your customers and partners.
It is like in the music world, where the rhythm and harmony of different sounds from various instruments come together
to make music. We only perceive the sounds as music when the melodies come together and everything has the same
rhythm.
Are you capable of enthusing your customers with “diverse melodies“? Are your employees extremely dedicated and not
miss any of their cues? Is your company loose enough to improvise quickly yet harmoniously when it needs to? Are you
able to prepare the right melody or the next solo while keeping the company on beat? And can you achieve all of this with
the necessary ease?
With Metasonic, you can implement these requirements more effectively and therefore repeatedly inspire your audience.
5. Metasonic - Positioning paper
Page 3
Engage: Empower your people
The entire range of sounds only develops when everyone gives their all. You have
great potential in your company in the form of specialized knowledge and expertise.
But are all your employees participating fully? And if not, why not?
If you could listen to the after-work conversations of your staff, you‘d probably dis-
cover the following: Your people themselves think that they are unable to participate
fully and that many of their ideas and potentials are simply ignored or overlooked.
In all probability, your employees blame this on things such as an “inflexible” IT de-
partment or an “excessively rigid” organization. But what are the reasons behind this
perception and how can you engage your employees even more effectively?
Only a few employees in your company have a complete overview of all the interde-
pendencies and are able to understand the interdisciplinary relations. Everyone else
has only fragmented information or only speaks the language of their field. This can
lead to communication problems and misunderstandings.
This problem is worse if IT is involved, because very few people understand the con-
straints of information technology. Moreover, IT-supported solutions require a lot
of work and money. Once they have been developed, solutions are very difficult to
change and any kind of involvement in business processes therefore becomes a per-
sonal risk. This is just as off-putting as long and detailed planning phases with the goal
of minimizing these risks.
With Metasonic, you are able to take a different path. Each employee can shape their
own processes with imaginative methods. Applications that are developed this way
can be easily changed, expanded and readjusted at any time and as often as you like.
The complex relationships and constraints of IT can be easily and intuitively presen-
ted, allowing each of your employees to simply try something out and be happily
involved.
THE STAFF PERSPEC-
TIVE:
Do you have a new idea or
need new or different IT sup-
port because your market sit-
uation has changed?
Previously, you have always
passed on your requirements
to IT. The IT department cre-
ates concepts which you then
need to check. But you‘re not
a computer expert, and com-
plex notations and process
models mean little to you.
What‘s more, the everyday
running of the business leaves
you precious little time. As a
result, the specification of ex-
pensive solutions remains a
difficult and risky business for
you.
Since later changes by IT
are often only implemented
slowly, you may find the sup-
port you need being slightly
lacking, often holding your
ideas and suggested improve-
ments back.
”With the tool we have used so far,
we were able to seek out and check
measures, but it wasn‘t possible
to then implement them directly.
When our momentum faltered at
this stage, the people responsible
found their motivation started to
dwindle. With Metasonic, employees
in the various departments are now
able to understand the models and
implement them directly.
As a result, everyone can get in-
volved in making suggestions for im-
provements and implement them on
the spot.”
Shioi Emi,
Department of Production Planning,
Manager for Team Amalgamation,
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Co.
6. Metasonic - Positioning paper
Page 4
Liberate: Eliminate restrictions
The attraction of music lies in its combination of fixed components such as rhythm
and harmony on the one hand and sound and freedom of interpretation on the other.
Finding the right combination of freedom and obligation is a complex problem for
every company.
IT has a crucial role to play in this. Ideally, all commercial information should pass
through central IT. Only that way can they provide you with reliable KPIs as a sol-
id basis for decision-making. It is then also possible to implement compliance and
governance effectively and efficiently via IT. Added to these binding requirements is
now the demand for superlative flexibility.
The departments‘ many and constantly changing individual wishes present an IT depart-
mentwithitsbiggestchallengesintermsofstaffing.Customizeddevelopmentsarejustas
corrupted as a result of many changes as highly modified standard software. The amount
of work involved with maintenance and changes increases exponentially. The IT resour-
ces required for this are never available in sufficient number, whatever the company‘s
size. Standardization, i.e. one-size-fits-all software, appears to be the panacea.
However inadequately adapted standard software or rigid process templates restrict the de-
partment, and as a result the number of options available to your company. Ultimately, the
department often helps itself with its own “solutions“. However, this is done without gov-
ernance, compliance or KPI management, which only central IT can model efficiently and ef-
fectively.
WithMetasonic,youhaveintelligentlyconstructedstandardbuildingblockswithwhichyou
can develop customized applications. These solutions are very flexible and can be changed
and expanded as often as you like. With the help of compliance and governance, you can
provide key performance indicators from the very beginning for reliable planning. Even large
andnumerousapplicationsremaincontrollableviatheisolationprinciple,whichallowsyou
to modify subsections of the system that are separated from other areas through clearly
defined interfaces. Metasonic helps you make existing functionality within standard soft-
wareorlegacysystemsmoreflexibleandthususeitinamoretargetedmanner.Metasonic
frees you from unnecessary restrictions and turns your IT department from a bottleneck
into a catalyst for business.
THEITPERSPECTIVE:
With its restricted resources,
your IT department is already
at the limits of its capabilities.
It is becoming increasingly dif-
ficult to meet the constantly
growing demands of the de-
partments in real time.
This forces you to rely on re-
source-protecting standardi-
zation even though you know
that standard modules and
process templates restrict the
department.
But regardless of whether
you use limiting standardiza-
tion options or are unable to
handle the maintenance of
countless customized solu-
tions: You are never able to
satisfy every wish based on
your already stretched re-
sources. Even though you and
your colleagues are doing all
you can, your department is
being perceived increasingly
as a bottleneck.
“I didn’t think there was any tool such
simple and flexible either in Japan or
in the world. The Metasonic Suite is
very fast. If the modeling is done it is
already developed and you can execute
it directly. It is a user-friendly tool and
very simple but it still has flexibility. It
is a tool with depth. On top the burden
for operation is very minimal so that
you can use the time to think about new
things with the customer. In that sense it
is high quality infrastructure.“
Hiroyuki Okada,
Former President of NEC Informatec Systems
