Salesforce Experts in Germany

Agile Transformation: introducing agile principles and transforming traditional IT departments into Scrum and Kanban teams

IT Operating Model: redesigning the IT organization and introducing modern delivery structures and roles

Flight Levels: building up Flight Levels practices within IT to align strategy, coordination and operational execution

Leadership & Coaching: recruiting Agile Coaches and coaching Scrum Masters and IT leaders

ERP Operations: acting as Interim Product Owner for the existing ERP landscape and ensuring business continuity

ERP Transformation: reorganizing and supporting the ERP migration as a Project Manager; Phase 1 (financial accounting) live since October 2025

Operational Core (ERP): establishing dedicated teams for ERP Support, Feature Development, and ERP Migration

Modern Workplace: initiating the transition towards a Microsoft 365-based cloud workplace environment

Integration: establishing a dedicated team to drive integration and connectivity initiatives

Warehouse Operations: building a cross-functional team to support logistics and warehouse-related capabilities

Maintenance & Operations (M&O): introducing a dedicated team for system engineering, security, stable operations and continuous improvement

AI Initiatives: identifying and promoting practical Artificial Intelligence use cases across the IT department

As Interim Head of IT for a German medium-sized industrial distributor, I am responsible for 31 IT employees and lead the digital and organizational transformation, reporting directly to executive leadership. I took over an IT department with almost no basic structures – no clear roles, processes, documentation or ticket system – and with significant technical debt that tied up most of its capacity. Introduced agile principles and ways of working in the IT organization and transformed the traditionally structured IT department into cross-functional Scrum and Kanban teams focused on transparency, collaboration, and customer value delivery.

Redesigned the entire IT organization by establishing a modern operating model, introducing new roles such as Product Owner, Scrum Master and Solution Architect and strengthening the organization through strategic hiring and targeted capability development. Recruited and onboarded Agile Coaches to accelerate the transformation and personally managed and coached Scrum Masters as well as IT department leaders to foster servant leadership, self-management and a culture of continuous improvement.

Aligned IT-internal planning across eight teams to three Flight Levels based on Klaus Leopold (strategy, coordination, team), laying the foundation for later company-wide portfolio management. Consolidated the backlog of more than 10 workstreams and prioritized it by business value and cost of delay. Introduced a ticketing system to increase transparency and enable data-driven decision-making, flow-based work management, and greater accountability at all levels.

Established and supported multiple cross-functional teams, including the Operational Core (ERP) domain with dedicated streams for Support, Feature Development and ERP Migration, as well as teams responsible for Warehouse Operations, Maintenance & Operations (M&O) including system engineering and security, Modern Workplace, Data Quality and integration initiatives. Worked closely with Agile Coaches to support team development, remove impediments, and continuously improve delivery effectiveness.

Acted as Interim Product Owner for the operation and enhancement of the existing ERP landscape while supporting the ERP migration as a Project Manager. Reorganized the project organization and had the already negotiated contract with the implementation partner realigned with a focus on approach and overall responsibility; Phase 1 (financial accounting) has been live since October 2025. Collaborated with the selected implementation partner to design and establish the project organization and target operating model for the ERP transformation, introducing agile delivery structures and ways of working. Facilitated the alignment between business, IT and the external vendor and played a key role in negotiating the contractual framework and delivery model to ensure a sustainable foundation for the transformation program.

Initiated the strategic modernization of the workplace environment through the adoption of Microsoft 365 cloud capabilities, establishing the foundation for enhanced collaboration, scalability and future digital services.

Launched AI initiatives to identify practical business use cases and promote the responsible adoption of Artificial Intelligence across the IT department. Encouraged self-management and empowered teams to take ownership of decisions, delivery and continuous improvement.

Project: Digital Sovereignty – Toll Collect

Workshop: Digital Sovereignty Recognize dependencies, reduce risks, remain capable of acting

Format

• One-day practical seminar

Target group

• Executive management
• IT managers
• Data protection officers
• Compliance functions

Content and objectives

• Systematic analysis of digital dependencies
• Assessment of legal and operational risks
• Development of a concrete plan to increase digital sovereignty
• Mapping of the entire IT infrastructure by participants
• Identification of critical dependencies on non-European providers
• Creation of a prioritized risk matrix based on:
• GDPR
• NIS2
• EU AI Act
• Joint development of options for action – from a hybrid model to complete migration to European solutions
• Development of an individual sovereignty roadmap with:
• Responsibilities
• Milestones
• Budget framework

Agenda

• Preliminary self-assessment (current infrastructure)
• Digital sovereignty? Nothing but an illusion
• Digital sovereignty 2026 – Germany’s dangerous dependency in focus
• Digital sovereignty & open source
• What is digital sovereignty?
• Three questions raised by digital sovereignty
• Reflection: Digital sovereignty in your own life
• Why is digital sovereignty existential now?
• Practical examples of digital sovereignty
• Schleswig-Holstein initiative
• Benefits of digital sovereignty for your company
• Assessing strategy options (cost-benefit matrix)
• Sovereign provider? 10 questions
• What does digital sovereignty specifically mean for your company?
• How do you shape digital sovereignty?
• Digital sovereignty and psychological safety
• Psychological safety: The key to high-performing teams
• Why psychological safety in your company?
• Benefits of psychological safety
• Invitation to group work: PsySafety Check (PS-C)
• The “Braintrust” experiment
• Creating a risk matrix
• Creating a roadmap & project plan
• European alternatives to US Big Tech
• 10-point plans:
• NIS2
• EU AI Act
• GDPR
• ISO 27001

Project content / Description of services:

• Management and coordination of all new-build areas in the assigned region to ensure completion on time

• Responsibility for network planning, budget calculation, and budget approval for optimal resource planning in the construction process

• Cross-project management of service providers for the efficient implementation of joint construction or connection of new-build areas

• Preparation, tendering, and awarding of contracts within budget limits

• Ensuring material supply for smooth joint construction

• Management of fiber-optic expansion and provision of data lines; densification

• Stakeholder management

• Introduction and setup of Kanban board, including maintenance

• End-to-end rollout management

• Escalation management

• Service provider management

• Construction monitoring and management of construction schedules

• Preparation and tracking of project plans and Gantt charts

• Risk management

• Claim management and project recalculations

• Problem and incident management

• Change management

• Capex and Opex control and monitoring

• Contract management and change order management

• Conclusion of lease, purchase, or rental agreements for the development of required properties or lines

• Technical collaboration with construction managers and service providers within the construction projects to ensure the timely completion of new-build areas

• Definition of requirements, categorization, and prioritization, including monitoring and follow-up in accordance with the project plan

• Preparation and delivery of presentations for various management levels

• Preparation and creation of decision papers

• Forecast

• Establishment of project “back to green” post-installation and densification

Environment: MS Office, MS Teams, SAP; SharePoint, Jira, Confluence, Bizagi. GBGS, PowerBI, TKI, Flash Kanban

• Expansion of the competence portfolio to include AI-driven marketing & chatbot integration
• Design and development of several intelligent chatbots (Steno, UChat, ManyChat, GHL) for MeditationSoul.org and Physio Point for automated promotion of workshops, retreats, and online courses
• Experience with social media automation tools and AI content tools (e.g., ChatGPT, Gamma, HeyGen)
• Creation of automations with n8n for marketing and CRM processes (lead nurturing, event promotion, funnel flows)
• Combining creative brand communication and AI-supported automation to increase efficiency and personalization in digital marketing campaigns

Led the end-to-end integration and migration architecture for decommissioning SAP IS-U market communication and transitioning to Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) with E.ON IT Services — covering regulated EDIFACT market messaging, a three-phase data migration (transfer of market message inventory after cutover), redesign of market communication processes, and full GDPR and German energy-market compliance.

• Designed the three-tier target architecture (SAP IS-U → NScale B2B gateway → SFMC) processing 50,000–100,000 EDIFACT messages daily within sub-5-minute SLAs.
• Architected the three-phase data migration: 36 months of historical data, zero-loss cutover of in-flight market messages, and near-real-time CDC synchronization.
• Delivered secure, BDEW/GDPR-compliant integration (AS2/OFTP2, RFC/IDoc, REST APIs, OAuth 2.0, Azure AD, AWS S3) achieving >99.5% uptime, <0.1% migration discrepancy, and RTO <4 hours.
• Applied BPMN to model and optimize the market communication processes.

Technologies: SAP IS-U, NScale, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, EDIFACT, OAuth 2.0, Azure AD, AWS S3, BPMN, Jira, Confluence, Draw.io

• Create and lead roadmap forecasting of support opportunities, including colleague training, process design and improvement, and new hire onboarding.
• Collaborate seamlessly with cross-functional teams including Professional Services, Support, Product, Sales, and Solution Engineering.
• Manage business and financial KPIs in alignment with overall business objectives.
• Industrial IT & Data Integration: Implement, configure, and integrate OT/IT systems and data flows, connecting control-layer sources (DCS, PLC, SCADA) to historians, data platforms, and enterprise systems through APIs and standard interfaces.
• AVEVA PI & Historian: Configure, maintain, and extend AVEVA PI (PI Data Archive, Asset Framework, interfaces/connectors) to capture, contextualize, and serve real-time and historical operational data.
• Alarm Management: Support and optimize alarm management systems – e.g. Honeywell Alarm Management – including alarm rationalization, classification, and the analysis of alarm performance, critical alarms, and alarm floods.
• Connectivity & Protocols: Set up and troubleshoot industrial connectivity using OPC UA and OPC A&E, including the configuration of tunnelers / wrappers to bridge OT data sources securely and reliably.
• Production Data Flow: Ensure seamless, secure, and well-structured data flow across the industrial IT landscape, transforming raw operational data into meaningful information for operations and decision-making.
• System Support & Troubleshooting: Provide ongoing support for OT/IT applications, troubleshooting issues across networks, software, and data integrations to keep systems running efficiently.
• Knowledge Management & Best Practices: Contribute to internal documentation, best practices, and troubleshooting guides, and help continuously improve how we deliver industrial IT and data solutions.

Tools & Software: Aveva PI, Salesforce, Active Directory, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Jira, Microsoft, Scrum, DevOps, Docker, CI/CD, Jenkins, GitHub.

Management of data protection & IT security-related projects. Adjustments to knowledge management and consulting processes.

Activities:

• Data protection consulting
• Process optimization in in-house consulting
• Interface to specialist departments, IT security, development and management

• Introduction of service management
• Optimization of processes
• Introduction of an agile way of working
• Introduction and configuration of Atlassian Jira Service Management
• Prioritization of features
• Coordination with stakeholders and the business department
• Management of the backlog and creation of user stories
• Budget management
• Coordination of a Scrum team
• Use of Atlassian Jira and Confluence
• Use of Microsoft Teams
• Working according to Scrum and Kanban

Advising various companies in the areas of controlling, finance and planning, transformation, business partnering, management reporting and AI-driven forecasting systems

• Advising on and selecting voice systems based on requirements, integration, data protection and cost
• Designing call guides, knowledge bases and handover to employees
• Test planning, call analysis and optimization of existing solutions

• Optimized the data architecture (Medallion) to better decouple processing steps and improve transparency and reproducibility

• Ensured the technical quality of data processing in Databricks by introducing schema enforcement, data quality checks, and a structured data architecture

• Pipeline orchestration with Azure Data Factory

• Improved and automated the development and deployment process by integrating Git and GitHub Actions

• Technical leadership of the Data Engineering team (3 employees)

• Led workshops to optimize and stabilize the data platform and development process

• Collected and prioritized new requests and maintained the product backlog

• Technologies: Microsoft Azure (Data Lake, Data Factory), Databricks, Apache Spark (PySpark), Python, SQL, Git, Confluence, Power BI, Power Apps, Dataverse, MS Sharepoint, Mural

Independent advisory practice for strategy, organisational transformation, M&A / investor work and AI/data-enabled change.

• Short-term diagnostic and problem-solving mandates: rapid strategic and organisational assessments for leadership teams and Boards, translated into recommendations and transformation roadmaps.
• Organisational redesign and AI governance for an international group of approximately 1,500 employees: structure, mandates, decision rights and interfaces; AI-readiness and data-maturity assessment; vendor evaluation and selection; capability building.
• Design of a centralised Strategy Execution / Results Delivery Office for an industrial client: mandate, governance, portfolio steering, KPI logic, decision forums and implementation roadmap.
• Selected part-time mandate with SPARS GmbH (as a Business Development and Investments Director): developed M&A pipelines, assessed targets for strategic fit and synergy potential, led commercial due-diligence workstreams and investor / partner engagement.

Overall business responsibility for a program-wide initiative to create a central, authoritative data foundation for business customer master data (contacts and locations) within an IT service management transformation program.

• Managed the Epic portfolio from exploration through launch; prioritization and quarterly planning in a SAFe environment
• Aligned business units, architecture, and IT delivery around a shared vision and clear rules for data ownership (Data Governance)
• Prepared and secured scope and key decisions with program leadership, including deliberate descoping
• Managed risks, dependencies, and escalations; reported to program leadership and the PMO
• Developed the 2027 roadmap as a basis for budget and portfolio planning

Result: a clear MVP scope, key decisions made, and a 2027 roadmap. The program continued after handover without any loss of knowledge.

• Supported monthly and annual closing activities
• Checked incoming invoices for formal and factual accuracy
• Posted incoming invoices
• Contact person for internal departments on accounting matters
• Created and maintained vendor master data
• Processed open items
• Took on additional accounting-related special tasks
• Managed the functional mailbox
• Performed payment runs

Training and knowledge transfer – Accounts Payable:

In addition to the tasks above, I was responsible for training and transferring knowledge to 8 employees of an external service provider in India who took over the accounts payable activities:

• Conducted structured training and practical guidance throughout the accounts payable process
• Trained employees in checking and posting incoming invoices, including formal and factual checks
• Taught vendor master data maintenance, open-item processing and payment runs
• Trained employees in using the functional mailbox and communicating effectively with internal departments
• Explained accounting procedures, controls and company-specific accounts payable requirements
• Conducted “Training on the Job” using practical posting cases and real business transactions
• Supported the team in independently carrying out accounts payable processes and resolving accounting questions
• Checked the quality and accuracy of work results and provided continuous feedback and coaching
• Supported the transfer of accounts payable processes to the external service provider and ensured structured knowledge transfer and an orderly handover
• Supported a smooth transition by documenting processes, clarifying responsibilities and ensuring consistent application of accounting requirements

Software: JDE, ELO, SAP Concur