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TWST: Could we start with a quick overview of IDS Scheer (Frankfurt:625700.F), bringing us up-to-date with where the company is today?

Mr. Kruppke: From the very beginning, IDS Scheer has stood for bringing better business processes to our customers. In the last year, we have grown the company internationally. So we are covering a much broader area than we covered, for example, five years ago. The second thing we have done is to grow our scope of offering. From the very beginning of IDS Scheer, we have talked about how business processes would look like in a company if you try to get those processes better. In the last year, we have not only given our customers a concept of how they could improve their business process, but now we implement that concept. We have also created measures and offerings that allow the continuous control of the quality of the business processes. So we have a continuous stream of competence in this process area. Since the e-business hype has turned down, we have been thinking about how we can improve our processes because our own customers demand lower prices but higher quality. So it is a question of how to manage that. You can only manage it by better processes and more and more of our customers are realizing that better processes doesn’t only mean for themselves; they also has to be better processes for a network of partnerships. In response to this, we have built software and services to really implement a better process and control the quality of the process and then feedback the result and reshape the processes. That’s a pretty unique story. In fact, the Gartner Group has declared that IDS Scheer’s approach, the ARIS approach, is the leading approach in the market for effectively covering all aspects of managing better business processes. One thing I want to add is that mainly large customers are interested in such features and in such a holistic approach because they tend to see that better processes will have a direct effect on their bottom line. IDS Scheer’s customers therefore are mainly large customers or very big medium sized customers. However our customers come from all kinds of industries and I think it is very important to see the strength of IDS Scheer lies in the fact that we are not focusing our offering on just banks or just chemical and pharmaceutical companies. We are pretty broad in our offerings and we have a unique offering in the whole market in terms of scope and completeness. This means we are very well positioned for times when one type of industry is performing lower whereas another industry is performing better. We can really react and get our business growing.

TWST: How do you position the company within the competitive environment and what do you put forward as your underlying strength and advantage?

Mr. Kruppke: If we look at IDS closely, we are a solution company that offers solutions for better business processes. Solutions normally consist of consulting and IT related services and software products. We offer both, providing a combination that brings better solutions for business processes. If we were to split the company into software and services then, our software solution would, for example, consist of the ARIS product family. The software products stand for business process management tools. And our service solutions consist of management consulting of process engineering of implementation consulting. For example, implementing an SAP system and also of IT related services like system integration and enterprise application integration services. So in the consulting and service parts, we compare to the big five in many cases. When we are in competition with other parties then the big five are involved. So that’s the typical competition that we have in the consulting area. We have also competitors who are niche players, for example, for certain types of industries or for certain topics like supply chain management or CRM. But overall looking from a global scope, I would say big five. I would also say sometimes competitors are from the peer group in the new markets. The difference between us and the big five, of course, is that although we do not have the size of the big five, in the areas where we are active we are comparable to the big five; we have a comparable strength in those areas. Take the example of supply chain consulting and the SAP offering where we have a very large group of people with very good skills. We have a large development team that is working directly with SAP on this. So we can compare with the big five not only by competence, but also by size. We position ourselves as the leading company in the field.