With over 30,000 full-time employees and more than 46,000 volunteers, Johanniter-Unfall-Hilfe is one of the largest aid organizations in Europe. It is involved in areas such as ambulance services, care and support, work with children, and humanitarian aid abroad. After recognizing the significant importance of digitalization for its own future viability, the long-standing company commissioned Venture.idea to develop a nationwide digital strategy. Digitalization should not be an end in itself, but should contribute to the ambitious strategic goals and thereby help the organization to realize its mission of helping people in the best possible way, also in the future.

A strategy was to be developed for Johanniter-Unfall-Hilfe that would provide orientation for dealing with the comprehensive changes brought about by increasing digitalization. At the start of the project, an individual maturity model for the organization was developed together with an internal project team. Using this model, the status quo of digitalization across various areas was analyzed through intensive analyses, interviews, and workshops: offerings & channels, processes & organization, culture, and employees. In parallel, the digital target state was determined across the same categories from the perspective of management and employees. Based on the comparison of the current and target states, relevant fields of action for the overall organization as well as for the individual areas could be identified and concrete change measures for the (digital) future could be developed. In order to create broad acceptance, all relevant stakeholders were always involved in the process and the results were communicated by the internal project team.

The nationwide digital strategy with prioritized fields of action and concrete digitalization measures, developed jointly with the client, was adopted by the Federal Board for implementation. The continuous involvement of decision-makers and implementers ensured a high degree of alignment with the operative service areas and served as the basis for successful implementation. The methods and tools used in the project were transferred to the internal project team for further continuous use. This means that Johanniter-Unfall-Hilfe is ideally equipped to use the opportunities of digitalization to improve the organization - for example, in terms of improved cooperation, more efficient processes and innovative service offerings.