Dirk U. Proff

Dirk U. Proff
Founder & CEO


 blueforte GmbH

Visual business analytics – recognising trends and honing the portfolio

‘Top Company’, ‘Best of Consulting’, ‘Top Consultant’, ‘Top Innovator’ and ‘Leading Employer’ are just some of over 50 awards and various other innovation prizes which demonstrate that Dirk Proff and his partners have turned blueforte into a leading consultancy boutique for data and analytics. Dirk has headed this highly specialised company as a brilliant visionary and an unrelenting innovator since it was founded more than ten years ago. He has made blueforte a pioneer and a market leader in the German-speaking world in the area of visualisation for business analytics applications and has established an innovative and a team-oriented corporate culture. Now, he is currently focusing on the topic of new work. Together with his team, he is working towards becoming even more cutting-edge and even more innovative and readying blueforte for the challenges to come.

" Dirk has headed this highly specialised company as a brilliant visionary and an unrelenting innovator since it was founded more than ten years ago. "

Visual business analytics – recognising trends and honing the portfolio

Dirk was early to grasp the challenges that companies would face due to digital transformation. As data-driven organisations, they are needing to analyse more data than ever before. Dirk reacted quickly and built up specific expertise in the visualisation of business data at blueforte, alongside its business intelligence. ‘It takes good, consistent and carefully considered visualisations to analyse large volumes of data. It’s a question of making complex matters accessible to decision makers and operational staff quickly.’

It is in precisely this area that blueforte is considered a pioneer thanks to Dirk and his best-seller Visual Business Analytics, the German-speaking world’s first reference book on this topic. If information design rules are established across all reports, all the departments can engage in constructive dialogue on the current business situation and jointly make expedient decisions. A key norm in the market are the IBCS® Standards. Dirk, a founding member of the IBCS Association, firmly believes that this results in quantifiable advantages for companies.

In a study conducted in cooperation with the Technical University of Munich, blueforte demonstrated that reduced information design based on the IBCS® Standards resulted in around 45 per cent time savings during decision making.

Continuing professional development, work-life blending, leadership – strengthening the team with an innovative culture

‘Train people well enough so they can leave. Treat them well enough so they don’t want to.’ This Richard Branson quote succinctly encapsulates Dirk’s understanding of innovative leadership. Employees are nurtured from day one with coaching, training and globally recognised certificates. Dirk sees this as a win-win situation because an employee can boost their personal market value while blueforte’s sales are strengthened. But lifelong learning and individual development are a personal concern of Dirk’s too, so the development paths are agreed individually with every employee and are updated on a regular basis.

How Dirk deals with the topic of work-life blending likewise stands out. ‘These days, knowledge workers are presented with extremely diverse demands in terms of their working hours. We have therefore done away with rigid rules such as core working hours. At blueforte, we find an appropriate solution for everyone.’ In this way, Dirk has created a results-oriented work environment which is characterised by highly flexible working hours, additional leave and, for example, working from home – one step to create space for creativity and self-fulfilment.

Workplace democracy – shaping and advancing the company together

Dirk is already working on his next visionary project. He intends to rethink and update the company’s strategic focus together with his employees to establish an even stronger corporate branding in the data and analytics market. ‘blueforte is currently changing from within. Everyone can have their say regarding how we will work in the future and what we will do. The times in which the direction of travel was determined by the management alone belong to the past.’

In the long term, Dirk hopes to build up an agile platform for his employees in this way, for them to jointly advance innovation processes. Within so-called guilds, the employees can realise their own visions, devote themselves to promising topics and pitch for time and money in order to realise new products or services. This is entirely in keeping with what drives him on: ‘Creating a sustainable and strong platform for the team to do data and analytics properly by supporting their personal growth and career.’


Company

blueforte GmbH

Management

Dirk U. Proff
Founder & CEO

Description

We are a Data & Analytics consulting boutique - we visualize and organize your data to give you new insights and faster decisions.


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