Turnover growth for Dortmund’s Software Company MATERNA
Growing Internationalisation
Dortmund, 13 March 2007
The information and technology specialist MATERNA Information & Communications increased its group turnover by four percent to 150 million euros in the 2006 business year (2005: 144 million euros). This shows that the company’s continued increase in international sales activities and the acquisitions of recent years are bearing fruit. MATERNA wants to continue its profitable growth and internationalisation and is therefore investing particularly in appointing and training staff, in sales and enhancing its portfolio. Public administration and telecommunications are important mainstays of sales.
Business development in the Business Unit Communications
The Business Unit Communications is very pleased with their business development in 2006. Growth – which was mainly organic – of six percent was achieved. It was particularly pleasing to see the development of turnover in Germany; here there was an increase of 13 percent. Last year important investments in projects and products were also made, the results of which should provide for turnover growth in the short and medium term. Abroad, there was a concentration on Europe and the Near East. Particularly in the Middle East region, MATERNA’s Anny Way products have consolidated and extended their position. It has also been increasingly possible to gain customers in emerging markets such as Vietnam or Ecuador. In the course of this internationalisation they have also driven ahead the setting up of a high performance partner network.
Some of the most important mainstays of turnover in 2006 were the technical platforms, content services and the CUSS application for airlines and airports: as far as network elements are concerned, the service delivery platform MACS was again able to convince the market. For example, a Belgian network operator and a regional telecommunication service provider were gained as customers.
Presented at the most important sector-event, the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona, the new Anny Way TRILINK Platform for cross-network and convergent messaging gained much praise and showed clear signs of future potential.
The field of content and mobile phone marketing experienced a strong upward trend in 2006. With new content formats, openings for new target groups such as media companies, cable providers etc, as well as complex mobile marketing campaigns it was possible to achieve markedly higher turnovers.
Once again the CUSS solutions for airports and airlines were extremely successful. This is software which enables check-in processes for various airlines to be carried out at just one automatic machine. More orders for equipping check-in automats came from German Wings and British Midland, to name just two.
In the year 2006 the set up work for the MVNE (Mobile Virtual Network Enabler) subsidiary vistream was finished and going live was officially announced in the autumn. So far twelve brand partners have successfully started marketing with the mobile services. The MVNE portfolio is also being marketed internationally since last year. “For virtual network operators in the whole of Europe, we are the best address because of our exclusive position on the German market!“ explains Helmut an de Meulen, managing partner at MATERNA. Numerous tenders are currently being processed. The Business Unit Communications’ comprehensive know-how in the MVNE environment covers technical, legal and administrative support for companies who want to set up their own mobile services. The consulting services in this segment in particular will be of considerable significance at MATERNA in future.
Since the liberalisation of the telecommunications sector in the nineties, the Business Unit Communications has set its main focus on mobile products and solutions for network operators, service providers and companies. The logical consequence of this was the increasing concentration of their resources on, among other things, the development of SMS and MMS data services as well as the implementation of network solutions. The future strategic alignment of this business unit will therefore see more focussing on the international mobile services environment as well as on the activities in the field of CUSS.
This orientation also includes adjusting the range of products. To this end, on 1st January 2007 the “unified messaging“ product division with the software solution “Office EDITION“ was transferred from MATERNA to the Niggemann Group GmbH & Co. KG, which has taken over the marketing and maintenance for this software solution.
Business Development in the Business Unit Information
The information business division contributes around 63 percent to the group turnover and has grown by six percent. As part of the growth strategy this unit has invested in the employment of new staff and in training, in expansion into Eastern Europe as well as in the further development of their IT solutions portfolio. The target group includes large companies and public administrations. Over a third of the turnover in the information business division is generated by projects in public authorities and agencies. Other important sectors are telecommunications, information technology and companies with discrete manufacturing.
Last year MATRNA was able to extend its cooperations with important public customers: MATERNA won two European-wide framework contracts for the further development of the content management solution at the German Federal Government (Government Site Builder) including the appropriate consulting services. Government Site Builder is a basis system with which public authorities and agencies can quickly and economically implement their web services. MATERNA has now implemented more than 50 internet sites for authorities and agencies on the basis of this software, for example for the Bundesrat (Federal Council - 
www.bundesrat.de), the Bundesamt für den Zivildienst (Federal Office for Alternative National Service www.zivildienst.de), the Robert-Koch-Institute (www.rki.de) and many more. IT and process consulting for public bodies developed positively and MATERNA was able to win various public authority and agency projects. “This means that this business continues to be a central topic for usm,” explains managing partner Dr Winfried Materna.
IT service management is a significant mainstay for turnover in the information business division. MATERNA solutions for IT service management support the professional operation of IT in companies and ensure that business processes based on IT solutions run smoothly. It was possible to gain important new customers in the financial services sector and additional projects with existing customers in the automotive and high-tech sectors were initiated. In the growing IT service management market, MATERNA offers consulting and implementation services. IT solutions which lead to a consolidated, process-oriented and thus to an IT landscape aligned to business processes are also in great demand. In this segment MATERNA is already well-positioned and first projects with renowned companies could be carried out. MATERNA is going to be presenting this still new topic at this year’s CeBIT in Hanover. Other specialist topics in demand from customers are, among other things, configuration management database (CMDB), service level management and the use of IT key data. There continues to be great demand for MATERNA’s services in the fields of ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library). In this context ISO 20000 becomes increasingly relevant.
The field of customer service management has also developed in a very satisfactory way. Such solutions integrate all service processes which are relevant for customer contacts such as enquiries, complaints and orders and even deployment of technical field staff. MATERNA takes care of large projects in the automotive industry for example, where customer service has been optimised for the dealers. New customers such as Haufe Service Center could also be won over.
Last year 13 percent of the turnover for this business unit was achieved by customers abroad and the business in Northern Europe has developed particularly well. In order to increase the foreign turnover for this business unit even more, MATERNA is investing particularly in extending its sales activities in Eastern Europe as part of its growth strategy. This meant that in 2006 a branch was opened in Bulgaria and in February 2007 the IT company Datanet which is active in Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia, was taken over. Further activities are in the pipeline. In the long term the sales activities in Austria and the Eastern Europe countries will be combined in the Business Center CEE (Central Eastern Europe).
The subsidiary cbs, offering corporate and SAP consulting for the international manufacturing industry, was able to win many interesting large SAP projects in recent months. Solutions for complete business models were designed and established company-wide for important customers such as Dürr, Pentair, Südzucker and Bosch Rexroth. As process consultants with a focus on the manufacturing industry, cbs has also developed a suite of SAP best practice processes for the discrete manufacturing industry. These consulting solutions, which are based on experience from market studies, twelve years of project work in the sector and their own reference solutions are offered under the brand name cbs4DI. For 2007 there are also very promising business expectations for cbs because of the high demand on the market.
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MATERNA GmbH
As a leading information and communications technology software company MATERNA employs around 1,200 staff worldwide and achieved a turnover of 150 million euros in 2006. In addition to its headquarters in Dortmund, the company has branches throughout Germany and in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Finland, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. In the Business Unit Information MATERNA implements comprehensive IT solutions for optimising processes in companies and public administration. This includes the fields of IT service management, customer service management, government services and SAP consulting services. Under the name of “Anny Way”, the Business Unit Communications markets service platforms, premium content services as well as speech and video applications. MATERNA is also successfully positioned as an MVNE and as an internationally renowned provider of fixed line services. The company also markets CUSS solutions for airlines and airports
Further information:
MATERNA Information & Communications
Vosskuhle 37, 44141 Dortmund, Germany
Business Unit Information
Christine Siepe
Phone +49 231/55 99-1 68
E-Mail: 
Christine.Siepe@Materna.dehttp://www.materna.com
Business Unit Communications
Antje Krämer
Phone +49 231/55 99-83 96
E-Mail: Antje.Kraemer@Materna.de
http://www.annyway.com
