It’s about the people

The modern world is full of brilliant, convenient digital tools; however, tools are not the primary driver of digital transformation. This observation inspired Reto Meneghini to set up MondayCoffee, a certified Microsoft partner simplifying collaboration and assisting with digital transformations across the German-speaking world.

He uses the analogy of a kitchen to illustrate his point. If you don’t know how to cook, no amount of kitchen equipment or high-end ingredients will enable you to prepare something nice to eat.

“Microsoft provides a kitchen full of perfect ingredients, but most end users are helplessly overwhelmed,” Meneghini tells The CEO Magazine. “MondayCoffee provides the ready-meal.”

Since its founding 25 years ago, MondayCoffee has been listening to clients describe the processes they use, the tools they need and what digital transformation means for their business. The company then translates these needs into best-practice collaboration and communication workflows, such as in teams, departments, projects and client interactions, all based on Microsoft 365.

“We give them CoffeeNet 365, which can be used instantly,” Meneghini says, comparing it to microwave pizza. “You can just take it out of the fridge, put it in the microwave and that’s it.”

Helping clients help themselves

Meneghini’s journey to leading a digital transformation company started with his university degree in electrical engineering. That landed him a job in the 1990s at Alcatel, a major telecommunications company.

“I noticed quite quickly that this is not my world – the world of the huge corporations,” he says.

After a few years, he moved to a Swiss-American software startup headquartered in Silicon Valley.

“I absolutely loved it. That was when I decided that at some point I would found my own company because I just loved the world of startups and entrepreneurship,” he recalls.

MondayCoffee launched in 2000 with a goal of developing a product similar to SharePoint, Microsoft’s popular content management tool. But the implosion of the dot-com bubble made it impossible to raise capital for another tech product.

“So we transformed into a services company,” Meneghini says. “It was a mix of wanting to be an entrepreneur and at the same time seeing this opportunity in the market for a solution that enables collaboration.”

Demand for a service that demystifies technology and makes it accessible to the end user has steadily grown in the decades since, with companies increasingly promoting collaboration across departments and time zones and since the COVID-19 pandemic, remote work as well.

Microsoft has developed powerful tools, yet their holistic use is limited to a small group of individuals with a certain level of technological affinity and a willingness to experiment with new ones. As a result, companies often feel they are not fully leveraging the potential of Microsoft 365 – hence the licenses they are paying for.

“We do the opposite of what the IT industry usually does. We do not provide or implement yet another tool, but rather we help people use the great tools they already have available,” Meneghini says.

In the case of one client, the Swiss accounting firm BDO, MondayCoffee has created a central, cloud-based platform that simplifies and streamlines collaboration and communication with customers and teams.

“For each and every client order, a predefined workspace is opened with one click, using the same configuration of Microsoft 365 tools and the same security settings,” he says.

“Secure standardization at scale, without requiring users to think about the tools, but rather focus on the client relationship, allows BDO to be more efficient and, of course, compliant.”

Striking the right leadership balance

One piece of advice MondayCoffee gives to all of its clients is that digital transformation must involve every potential user and decision-maker, up to the highest levels of the organization. Too often, digital transformations get stuck because they are delegated to whoever has ‘IT’ in their job title.

“That is totally wrong because the IT guys have a completely different view on things than any business user,” Meneghini says.

“The techie guy wants to talk about how these things work, how the features are configured. He’s interested in the technology itself, while the business user is interested in what to do with it.

“If you really want to do digital transformation, then some of your processes will fundamentally change. If you do that kind of initiative on too low of a level in the organization, then it will be very difficult for people to make decisions because that is not their responsibility.

“The top leadership level of the company has to be actively involved in every initiative, in every project.”