WE SUCCESS Consulting GmbH · Stuttgart

Digital transformation of public administration – strategically conceived, effectively delivered.

Consulting and sparring for ministries, local authorities and public-sector IT service providers: from strategy through governance and implementation to digital sovereignty and artificial intelligence. Backed by more than 25 years of leadership and transformation responsibility – as a board member, CIO and entrepreneur.

Shaping success. Together.

Personal track record of Andreas PelznerAchieved in his executive roles before founding WE SUCCESS – at regio iT, Datenzentrale Baden-Württemberg and Komm.ONE. View profile

25+years of leadership responsibility – as a board member, CIO and entrepreneur
11years on the executive boards of public-law IT service providers (DZBW, Komm.ONE)
€50 min annual synergies from the Komm.ONE merger – Germany's largest municipal IT integration
2,200employees and €370 million revenue under executive responsibility

Services

Six areas of expertise – one standard: impact

Our services are rooted in executive, operational and transformation responsibility at public-sector IT service providers and in consulting practice at state and local government level. Together with you, we develop solutions that are not only convincing on paper but work in everyday practice.

01

Strategy, target vision & organisational design

Strategies that turn into decisions – and organisations that can deliver them. For public administrations, ministries and IT service providers that want clarity on where they are heading and who is accountable for getting there.

  • Digital and IT strategies, corporate objectives, target visions and roadmaps
  • Organisational design: staff units, strategic management, role and job profiles, KPI dashboards
  • Decision papers for executive, administrative and supervisory boards
  • Workshop design and facilitation – from service mapping to management offsites
02

Mergers, partnerships & transformation

Mergers and federal cooperation models for public-sector IT service providers – we design them, build political backing for them and implement them without disrupting day-to-day operations. Experience from merging four organisations into Komm.ONE.

  • Merger and cooperation strategies, post-merger integration, realising synergies
  • Change and transformation strategies, transformation office, fields of action and risk prioritisation
  • Programme and project management with the 4-phase model, phase gates and a weekly cadence
  • Initiation and pre-projects, pilots, platform roll-outs such as openDesk
03

Leadership, governance & operating models

Financially sound operating models with clear accountability – drawing on eleven years on executive boards with full P&L responsibility. We act as sparring partners on equal terms, including in interim roles.

  • Governance and management models, service and product portfolio, P&L responsibility
  • IT service management based on ISO 20000 and ITIL, service level management, data centre modernisation
  • Stakeholder management with politicians, ministries, local-government associations and governing bodies
  • Sparring and coaching for executive boards, managing directors and CIOs (certified business coach)
04

Digital sovereignty, open source & platforms

We identify dependencies, assess alternatives and plan exit strategies. Open source and sovereign platforms as a strategic option – with honest numbers, not ideology.

  • Open-source portfolios and strategies: openDesk, the ZenDiS ecosystem, the Germany Stack (Deutschland-Stack), the digital sovereignty roadmap
  • Cloud and platform assessment: private/public cloud, sovereign cloud offerings, operating scenarios, feasibility studies
  • Supplier management and pilot governance, requirements for portability, security and procurement
  • Positioning in governing bodies and networks (govDigital, VITAKO, GovTech initiatives), position papers
05

Artificial intelligence & new lines of business

Adopting AI quickly without creating new dependencies: strategy, a sovereign AI concept and GDPR-compliant implementation – proven in our own practice and in the core applications of a large IT service provider.

  • AI strategy and sovereign AI concepts for public administrations and IT service providers
  • Sovereign AI stack: local language models, EU hosting, quality assurance of AI output
  • Business development: AI, smart city, environment, data hubs connected to Germany's Register Modernisation programme
  • AI in public procurement and bid concepts, with WE TRANSCRiBE as a working proof point
06

Security, resilience & regulation

Operations that keep running in a crisis – and positions that stand up to scrutiny from politicians and the Court of Audit. We translate laws and standards into what they mean for your organisation in practice.

  • Business continuity management based on ISO 22301 and BSI Standard 200-4
  • Information security and stable certifications throughout an ongoing transformation
  • Regulation: critical infrastructure (KRITIS)/NIS2, Online Access Act (OZG), e-government legislation, EU requirements – impact assessments, briefing and position papers
  • Data protection, procurement law and EVB-IT (German standard IT contract terms) built into the project from the start

Approach

The WE SUCCESS 4-phase model

Understand, Design, Implement, Embed – four phases, each with a guiding question and a phase gate. Three cross-cutting workstreams run throughout: governance & transparency, terminology & data, and people & mandate. The model has matured in large transformation programmes, most recently in our work with a state IT service provider.

Understand

“What is really there – and how much of it is actually lived?”

Current-state assessment, baseline measurement, facts kept separate from recommendations. Before anything new is built, we make visible what already works.

Design

“What has to work differently afterwards – and how will we know?”

Target vision, metrics and accountabilities. Impact is defined before any deliverables are produced.

Implement

“Does it work – or has it merely been introduced?”

Reference cases instead of a big-bang roll-out, weekly cadence, open-issues list. Delivery with the mandate resting with the accountable owner.

Embed

“Who will own it once we are gone?”

Ownership, data maintenance, feedback into the next cycle. Embedding starts as early as the Understand phase.

Impact over paperworkA concept is only finished when it works in everyday practice.
Use what is thereWe build on existing processes, roles and data before introducing anything new.
Facts first, then adviceWe first show how things are – and then, separately, what we recommend.
Make progress measurableWe record the starting point so that improvements become visible later.
Clear accountabilityEvery task belongs to a defined role – and whoever is accountable also gets to decide.
Portrait of Andreas Pelzner, Managing Director of WE SUCCESS Consulting GmbH
Andreas PelznerManaging Director, WE SUCCESS Consulting GmbH

About us

Transformation. Operational stability. Impact.

WE SUCCESS is the strategy and transformation consultancy for public administration founded by Andreas Pelzner and based in Stuttgart. We lead large, politically complex transformations – from mergers and new set-ups to scaling – and turn them into stable, financially viable operating models.

We work within an established network of experienced consulting partners: quick to act, scalable when needed and always with one accountable point of contact. Our experience does not come from slide decks but from executive responsibility – from the career of our founder and Managing Director, Andreas Pelzner.

For more than 25 years, Andreas Pelzner has led organisations with up to 2,200 employees and more than €370 million in revenue – eleven of those years as Chief Executive Officer and board member of large public-law IT service providers. As the architect of the merger of four organisations into Komm.ONE, he delivered lasting synergies of more than €50 million a year, measurably improved service quality and kept certifications stable throughout the transformation. He has put federal digitalisation strategies such as the Online Access Act (OZG), Register Modernisation and the Germany Stack into operation within Germany's federal IT structures.

His strength: consistently aligning people, structures and systems with a shared goal – while safeguarding governance, compliance and operational excellence. He combines decisive strategic judgement with delivery discipline and a strong ability to manage stakeholders in political and association settings.

Today we support decision-makers as advisers and sparring partners on equal terms – wherever clarity, structure and the ability to deliver are needed: in times of upheaval, in mergers and strategic realignments, and in mandates with a high public profile. What drives us: a public administration that acts with digital sovereignty instead of managing dependencies.

  • since 10/2025Managing Director, WE SUCCESS Consulting GmbH · Executive AdvisoryAdvising public-law IT service providers and their stakeholders on mergers, federal cooperation models and strategic questions of digital transformation.
  • 07/2018 – 10/2025Member of the Executive Board · Komm.ONE AöR, StuttgartOverall responsibility for the service and product portfolio with full P&L accountability (€370 million revenue) and around 1,100 direct reports. Post-merger integration delivering more than €50 million in annual synergies, contractual penalties cut by 70%, customer satisfaction up 35%, a state-wide data hub connected to Register Modernisation, and new lines of business in AI, environment and smart city. Also a member of the Supervisory Board of ProVitako eG and Managing Director of EVG GmbH.
  • 10/2014 – 06/2018Chief Executive Officer · Datenzentrale Baden-Württemberg AöRLed DZBW (240 employees, €37 million revenue) and was the architect of Germany's largest public-sector IT merger: KIVBF, KDRS, KIRU and DZBW combined to form Komm.ONE – with stable operations across all four organisations and political backing from ministries, associations and the Administrative Board.
  • 06/2008 – 09/2014CIO, Technical Director and authorised signatory (Prokurist) · regio iT GmbH, AachenHead of IT operations and service with 125 staff. Built an IT factory, introduced service level management and IT service management based on ITIL V3 and ISO 20000, and built a new data centre with 30% lower operating costs.
  • 1996 – 2008Managing Partner · AixVision GmbHFounded and ran an IT service provider focused on e-business: more than 250 e-commerce projects, an in-house data centre with 200 servers and 2,000 domains, operation of the platform of Germany's largest second-hand bookseller justbooks.de, and an Office roll-out at NATO in Brussels.
  • 1992 – 1996Graduate engineer (Dipl.-Ing.) · German Aerospace Center (DLR)Preliminary analysis of space launch systems; member of the ESA-funded TRANSYS project team, responsible for analysing the thermal protection systems.
  • EducationIndustrial mechanic (Bayer AG) · Dipl.-Ing. (FH) in Mechanical Engineering/Aerospace Engineering (FH Aachen University of Applied Sciences) · Business coachFurther training: Business Continuity Manager (2025), Business Administration for Managing Directors (2012), Certified Data Centre Manager (2007). Fluent in English for negotiations.
Illustration of Andreas Pelzner's career: aerospace engineering at FH Aachen and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), data centre modernisation and IT service management at regio iT, the merger of KIVBF, KDRS, KIRU and DZBW into Komm.ONE, business development at ProVitako, consulting and interim management
Andreas Pelzner's career in one picture: from aerospace engineering via data centres and a municipal IT merger to consulting.

AI & digital sovereignty

Sovereign AI – in practice, not on slides

“How do we get started with AI quickly without making ourselves dependent all over again?” We hear this question more and more often in the public sector. Our answer does not come from the whiteboard but from our own operations: AI-supported workflows that run at WE SUCCESS every day – locally, traceably and with a data protection concept.

From our own practice

WE TRANSCRiBE

Minutes from audio recordings – fully automated, entirely local and sovereign.

Meetings, workshops and committee sessions are recorded and transcribed, speakers are identified, and the result is delivered as verbatim or summary minutes in the client's own template. No cloud service outside Europe, no disclosure to third parties.

  • Runs on your own hardware or with German cloud providers
  • Local language models, speaker recognition, custom minutes templates (DOCX/ODT)
  • Strict data separation per client, data processing agreement under Art. 28 GDPR
  • Developed by us and in daily use – pilots for public-sector clients on request
More about the approach

Sovereign AI stack

Which building blocks does a public administration need to use AI productively without giving up control over data and models? From the use-case concept through local language models and EU hosting to quality assurance of AI output.

Composable administration

AI will fundamentally change specialist administrative applications. Our architectural proposal: a deterministic legal core around which AI components remain interchangeable – instead of new monoliths.

Discussion paper “An Airbus for Europe's digital economy”

Why Europe needs a digital consortium modelled on Airbus – an appeal to EU policymakers, version 1.3 (PDF, in German).

Download

Contact

Let's talk about your project

Strategy, merger, governance or getting started with AI: an initial conversation quickly clarifies whether and how we can support you – without obligation and on equal terms. We work in German and English.

Company
WE SUCCESS Consulting GmbH
Contact person
Andreas Pelzner, Managing Director
Address
Wachaustr. 11
70469 Stuttgart, Germany