A fresh breeze for Business Informatics at RWU

Weingarten - At the start of the 2022 summer semester, Professor Dr. Bernd Michelberger and Professor Dr. Christian Lazar have taken over as course directors for the Business Informatics and Business Informatics  PLUS Teaching Post programs at RWU's Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. With their many years of practical experience, they have a feel for current trends - these have now been anchored in the Business Informatics curriculum. At the interface between business and information technology (IT), the Business Informatics degree program provides in-depth expertise in the use of digital IT solutions in a business environment.

Digitization of the economy

Bernd Michelberger and Christian Lazar have initiated a reorientation of the degree programs: away from classic business informatics to modern ones. The focus is on digitization. New seminars, such as Fundamentals of Digital Business and Digital Finance, have been designed for this purpose. "If you look at Amazon, the importance of digitization becomes clear," explains Bernd Michelberger. Amazon originally started as a book mail order company that gradually digitized the "book" product. A short time later, the company expanded its business model and today offers numerous digital products such as music or movies. "This would not have been possible without consistent digitization," says Bernd Michelberger.

But products are not always the focus of digitization. "There is great potential in the automation of internal company processes, such as in the commercial areas," says Christian Lazar, who teaches the new subject Digital Finance. For many companies, this is still uncharted territory, he says, but the finance organization will also undergo a major transformation in the coming years.

Current trends

The transformation to modern business informatics also means modern subjects. "We have additionally anchored current trends such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things and Big Data in the curriculum," says Bernd Michelberger. The practical development and testing of innovative solutions is supported by LAB4DTE. In this lab, students can test and demonstrate innovative solutions and product ideas on the RWU campus. "In this way, we can ensure that RWU trains first-class business IT specialists who are familiar with the topics of the future and who have also been tested in practice," says Christian Lazar.

Text: Vivian Missel