The ECC is a tool to holistically analyze a company’s competences. Thus, the single employee or manager or a single team are not in the primary focus, but rather the whole of the organizational capabilities of the company, with its different functional divisions and hierarchical levels. The origin of the concept is an organizational approach that is based on the belief that a company’s competences and organizational capabilities could be in sum more – but in bad cases even less – effective than the sum of its single competences.
The core of the analysis using the Steinbeis Enterprise Competence Check (ECC) is made of four competence levels on which each competence profile of a company is built up. Knowledge, Innovation, Implementation, Communication. These competence levels are each divided into two competence dimensions: resources and learning; processes and products; strategy and staff; networks and market. These eight dimensions are again assigned to three sub-dimensions each; thus a total of 24 that form the core of the holistic competence analysis in the company and map all the major aspects of the enterprise competence profiles.
These 24 sub-dimensions are operationalized through indicators that are suitable for capturing these sub-dimensions in an appropriate form. These indicators are located in the questions of the questionnaire that forms the actual Check. Through 72 questions in the Quick-Check and 120 questions in the Master-Check a total of 72 and/or 120 indicators are reviewed and evaluated qualitatively.
The analysis of the company’s capabilities and the organization of the projects take place in the web application, which has been especially developed for the purposes of the ECC. This ECC web application software was developed in close collaboration with the Steinbeis Beratungszentrum “Agile Entwicklung von Informationssystemen” under the leadership of Mr. PD Dr. Gast.