Virtual spring fair with innovative software solutions

The vir­tu­al Con­Sense EXPO around qual­i­ty man­age­ment and inte­grat­ed man­age­ment sys­tems was orga­nized for the first time in 2020. Since then, it has become firm­ly estab­lished in the trade fair cal­en­dar of experts and deci­sion-mak­ers involved in these areas. The pop­u­lar event con­ve­nient­ly pro­vides com­pre­hen­sive infor­ma­tion on inno­v­a­tive solu­tions around QM soft­ware and IMS, includ­ing key top­ics such as data pro­tec­tion, occu­pa­tion­al health and safe­ty, envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion man­age­ment and oth­er man­age­ment areas through to GxP-com­pli­ant soft­ware solu­tions. Web-based solu­tions, host­ing options, offers from man­age­ment con­sult­ing and much more were also pre­sent­ed. For ori­en­ta­tion and prepa­ra­tion, the par­tic­i­pants received their con­fer­ence doc­u­ments in advance by mail. They vis­it­ed the var­i­ous booths on the attrac­tive­ly designed dig­i­tal exhi­bi­tion grounds.

There, experts were avail­able for infor­ma­tion and per­son­al dis­cus­sions on var­i­ous key top­ics. The dig­i­tal cof­fee lounge invit­ed them to net­work and exchange expe­ri­ences. Vis­i­tors also enjoyed the oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­duct live chats with the experts. Those who want­ed to deep­en their knowl­edge took advan­tage of the oppor­tu­ni­ty to par­tic­i­pate in var­i­ous on-demand webi­na­rs. There was a spe­cial ser­vice for exist­ing cus­tomers: They were giv­en exclu­sive access to the keynote address by Dr. Alexan­der Künz­er from the Exec­u­tive Board and were able to get brand-new infor­ma­tion and news in advance. They were also able to take advan­tage of extra slots for per­son­al consultation.

Large crowds at the live events

Once again, the live con­fer­ences and events were among the pro­gram high­lights: In infor­ma­tive pre­sen­ta­tions, experts from well-known com­pa­nies and Con­Sense GmbH pre­sent­ed cur­rent top­ics from the world of QM and invit­ed par­tic­i­pants to sub­se­quent dis­cus­sion rounds. The keynote speech as well as the pre­sen­ta­tions on FORMS, the elec­tron­ic form and work­flow man­age­ment, and on the top­ic of QM mar­ket­ing, which offered valu­able tips on how to increase the inter­nal accep­tance of a man­age­ment sys­tem, were of par­tic­u­lar inter­est to the EXPO guests. All in all, the GmbH was pleased with the strong increase in atten­dance to around 900 vis­its to the almost 30 live conferences.

Award for a young QM talent

One of the high­lights of the live pro­gram was the pre­sen­ta­tion of the 4th Con­Sense Sci­en­tifi­cAward. The inter­dis­ci­pli­nary sci­en­tif­ic award of the soft­ware house, which is endowed with 1,000 euros, pro­motes inno­v­a­tive ideas for lived and accept­ed man­age­ment sys­tems, which were devel­oped in the con­text of sci­en­tif­ic the­ses. This year, it went to Vivien Sohn for her out­stand­ing mas­ter’s the­sis “Intro­duc­tion of holis­tic process man­age­ment tak­ing into account future via­bil­i­ty and gain­ing com­pet­i­tive advan­tages using the exam­ple of HÜBSCHER Holzbau AG”, which she pre­sent­ed in a keynote speech. Prof. Dr.-Ing. Thomas Rosen­baum (Dres­den Uni­ver­si­ty of Applied Sci­ences, Fac­ul­ty of Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing) from the inde­pen­dent expert jury par­tic­u­lar­ly high­light­ed the struc­tured and sys­tem­at­ic approach to intro­duc­ing holis­tic man­age­ment sys­tems in small and medi­um-sized enter­pris­es (SMEs):

“Espe­cial­ly there, skep­ti­cism regard­ing new reg­u­la­tions is high, so moti­vat­ing the var­i­ous stake­hold­ers in the com­pa­ny for a ben­e­fi­cial imple­men­ta­tion is a major challenge.”

- Prof. Dr.-Ing. Thomas Rosenbaum

“Your work impres­sive­ly demon­strates how holis­tic process man­age­ment can con­tribute to gain­ing com­pet­i­tive advan­tages,” added­jury mem­ber Prof. Dr. Jan Mendling (Hum­boldt Uni­ver­si­ty of Berlin, Insti­tute of Com­put­er Sci­ence, and board mem­ber of the Aus­tri­an Soci­ety for Process Management).

Increased number of participants, positive response

The com­pa­ny is delight­ed with the renewed sig­nif­i­cant increase in inter­est in the online event, as Dr. Iris Bruns from the man­age­ment of the Aachen-based soft­ware house empha­sizes: “The increase in vis­i­tor num­bers in all areas proves that the trade fair has become a tru­ly accept­ed for­mat that will con­tin­ue to excel­lent­ly com­ple­ment the face-to-face trade fairs in the future. This is also con­firmed by the great pos­i­tive feed­back from the par­tic­i­pants, who praised, for exam­ple, the intu­itive oper­a­tion of the inter­face dur­ing the vir­tu­al trade fair tour, the pro­fes­sion­al prepa­ra­tion and imple­men­ta­tion of our dig­i­tal event, as well as the per­son­al dis­cus­sions with QM experts with good time management.”