Wincasa, Zurich

Wincasa is the leading integrated real estate service provider in Switzerland. Around 1,000 specialists offer their customers a broad portfolio of services along the entire life cycle of real estate, from planning, construction and management to revitalization and repositioning of a property.

Industry:                                  Real Estate
Turn Over                               150 Mio. CHF
Employees:         1‘000
Geographic spread: Switzerland, 31 branch offices

Chief Information Officer

Member of Top Management

November 2019 - September 2022

Management of the ICT division with 30 employees (budget: CHF 15 million): Software Engineering, Data Engineering, ICT Operations, IT Support, Enterprise Architecture, CISO

  • Planning and organization of the ICT area (architecture and application management, systems, processes & policies, security and risk management)

  • Management and further development of the company's own software and platforms as well as support of the departments in the development and optimization of technical solutions for their business processes

  • Temporary, direct leadership of the SW engineering team (15 months) and rebuilding the team from 3 to up to 18 developers

  • Responsible for the implementation of the ICT strategy and the transformation and digitalization roadmap in close collaboration with the management, esp.

    • Implementation of cloud-first strategy (M365, MS-Azure, IaaS/PaaS/SaaS).

    • Rollout of new mobile devices for all 1,000 employees, introduction of MS Teams (incl. telephony)

    • Development of applicant/rental platform (e-Rent)

    • Development of owner portal

    • Integration of tenant app and portal

    • Integration of supplier/handicraft portal

    • Introduction of digital inbox (SaaS solution) and connection to external scan center; technical support for backscanning of several million documents

  • Supporting the expansion of the eco-system by integrating various external solutions and services into the business processes (e.g. listing, electronic signature, OCR recognition, credit rating, craftsman commissioning and billing, building zone changes)

  • Ensuring trouble-free, efficient and secure IT and communications operations

  • Continuous adaptation of information security to increasing risks, e.g. through connection to an external Cyber Defense Center and introduction of Identity & Access Management (IAM)

  • Outsourcing of infrastructure operations

  • Planning, monitoring and analysis of IT budgets and IT costs as well as initiation of measures for budget compliance, this in compliance with group and company-wide quality standards

  • Identification, description, optimization and monitoring of IT processes (ITIL, IKS)

  • Promotion of agile methods (Scrum, SAFe®)

  • Management of ICT service companies, partner management

  • Leadership of the ICT Board

  • Deputy of the Chief Transformation Officer

Special events & successes

  • Successful implementation of cloud-first strategy (M365, MS Azure, various SaaS solutions)

  • All employees were enabled to work location-independently in time for the pandemic-related lockdown at the beginning of 2020

  • Delivered the technical foundation for digital transformation; improving efficiency and user experience for diverse stakeholders (employees, applicants, tenants, owners, suppliers) through digitization and automation

  • Focused SW development on integrating standard solutions and services as a prerequisite for ecosystem expansion

  • The introduction of the fully digital application and rental process (e-Rent) led to the "Digital Top 10" award by pom+ and the trade magazine "Immbolia" in 2021

  • The increase in information security and the connection to an external Security Operations Center (SOC) led to a successful, timely defense against a cyber attack