BUSINESS LEADER INTERVIEW - Michael Kenfenheuer 

The European IT market is a fiercely competitive arena and, as with other geographies, has undergone considerable evolution over the past decade. To succeed in this environment, organisations need good solutions and strong leadership. One such IT organisation is Dortmund, Germany-based adesso, which is already regarded as a leading IT and software development company in the German speaking countries and has made good progress against its stated goal of becoming a leading IT consulting company for sector-specific business processes in central Europe.

Boss News recently met with Michael Kenfenheuer , Chairman of the Executive Board at adesso, to learn more about his organisation and its subsidiary, e-Spirit, and how they have gone about expanding their slice of the market. adesso is an IT services company, catering to a variety of industries, whilst e-Spirit is product development oriented.

Welcome to Boss News, Michael  

BN: Can we start with some background on yourself and a brief history of e-Spirit?

MK: I was appointed to the Executive Board of adesso AG in 2000. I served as co-chairman from mid-2011 to mid-2015, and have held the position of CEO since 1 July 2015. As a member of the Executive Board, I am responsible for the Banking, Health and Insurance departments. At the same time, as chairman of the Supervisory Board, I oversee many adesso shareholdings, including e-Spirit.

e-Spirit was founded in 1999 by adesso and former members of the renowned Fraunhofer Institute for Software and Systems Engineering. With our product, FirstSpirit, e-Spirit is a technology leader in content and customer experience management software. Since its inception, the company has continued to grow significantly, in terms of customer-base, revenue, employees and office locations. We have 150 e-Spirit employees at 16 locations in Europe and the USA, more than 1000 brands and have fulfilled approximately 10,000 projects with our software.

BN: What are the solutions and services provided by adesso; what do you consider are the unique selling points and how do you differentiate yourselves in the market? 

MK: Through consultation and customised software development, we optimise core business processes of companies so they can make the most of their business potential while remaining flexible in the future. We also act as a provider of off-the-shelf software products for more standardised tasks, in addition to developing our own, industry-specific products, such as inventory and claims systems for the insurance business. The combination of sound industry expertise and in-depth IT knowledge sets us apart from firms that focus strictly on consultancy, on the one hand, and firms that focus strictly on IT, on the other.

BN: What is the role of e-Spirit within adesso as it seems to be two different business models?

MK: e-Spirit is a product house, offering licenses and professional services around our core solution FirstSpirit, a business model that complements the group value chain by allowing us to offer our customers end-to-end solutions. The company is a key pillar of our IT Solutions segment. Among our own software products, FirstSpirit is one of the biggest contributors to sales, and its content experience hub solution addresses one of the most promising areas of digitalisation out there.

As you have been asking about the USP’s of adesso, I’d like to add a few of the USP’s of e-Spirit, too: We allow companies to build content-driven experiences for omnichannel customer engagement. Due to its unique integration capability and superior usability, FirstSpirit provides the environment to integrate all systems, apps, and the people working with content, to a central content hub, making it easy to create and manage personalised content and to deliver it anywhere. For all touchpoints of the customer journey, be it corporate websites, mobile apps, the company’s own online store, a third-party site, store, software or a display or device in the Internet of Things. With the unique approach of combining traditional content management and revolutionary Content-as-a-Service as both on-premise and cloud options, organisations have access to a very flexible solution that adapts easily to new digitalisation trends. This flexibility helps our customers transform their business models to deliver outstanding customer experiences that turn content into revenue.

BN: What are the primary geographies you cover with adesso and separately, with e-Spirit, and are your revenues generated direct or via sales channels?

MK: The most important markets for adesso as a whole are Germany, Austria and Switzerland. e-Spirit operates on the same markets, but also has a significant presence in the US, the UK and the Benelux countries. Their customer base is global, though, with international brands using our software for delivering content experiences to their worldwide target groups. We generate sales with FirstSpirit as part of direct distribution activities through e-Spirit and through the partner network. With e-Spirit, we have seen great success with our content experience hub offering in the US; when we compare the first 3 quarters of last year with this year, order intake grew more than 300%.

BN: What are the key challenges you experience in operating outside Germany?

MK: Without a doubt, some of the biggest challenges posed by internationalisation are the different legal and practical arrangements of doing business locally. In 2012, e-Spirit opened a business in the US with an office in Boston and has gradually expanded its sales activities since then. We first had to grapple with the other possibilities that exist in the US for taking legal action against product manufacturers. In addition, we had previously only had indirect experience with US customers through roll-out projects of our European customers who are active in the States.

BN: What are some of the specific end-user demands & requirements in the regions you service and in which sectors are you experiencing the greatest demand for your IT services and consultancy? 


MK: We are unable to discern any major differences in the individual regions in terms of end-users’ demands and expectations. One common factor, however, is the high demand for mobile solutions. As a result, one of the fastest growing areas in IT is mobilising web content and business processes. We anticipate that sales will continue to grow in this area with mobile strategy consulting services for companies, especially related to digital transformation.

BN: How does this compare with the business of e-Spirit?

MK: The huge digitalisation trend comes with a new “content everywhere requirement” and growing demands to handle this change in order to benefit from all the new possibilities: companies have more personalised content than ever, campaign cycles are running faster than ever, there’s the proliferation of channels and an ever-growing number of touchpoints, from mobile apps to smart devices in the Internet of things. In short, we are dealing with a content “big bang”. Companies need a strategy and solution for their content, to drive transformation, reach customers and monetize the content they are having – to create revenue. e-Spirit addresses these needs, providing the software that helps companies to resolve modern content and customer experience demands.

BN: What are the drivers you see stimulating growth in the markets you serve?

MK: The digital transformation is, without a doubt, the biggest driver of growth. In our core regions − especially in Germany and the US − many companies and public authorities are currently making targeted investments in the digitalisation of business processes and the modernisation of their IT systems. This is leading to an increase in sales in both the IT Services and IT Solutions segments.

BN: Over the past 16 years, you have added value to adesso and increased its staff from 100 to over 2,000. In growing the company to this size, what have been some of the biggest challenges you have experienced?

MK: One of the biggest challenges posed by our growth strategy has been − and still is − the search for suitable and experienced employees. The competition we face to recruit them has been very stiff from the beginning and this has increased further over time. We are rising to meet this challenge using strategies to achieve outstanding employee loyalty and distinct career opportunities. The “Great Place to Work Award” shows how attractive we are as an employer. The renowned institute named us Germany’s best employer among the large companies in the ICT industry.

BN: Since joining the Executive Board in 2000, you are credited with taking adesso a significant way towards its goal of becoming a leading IT consulting company in central Europe. As your tenure has now been prematurely extended to 2021, (indicating the trust of the Executive Board) what is your vision for adesso moving forward? And, how will you implement it?

MK: With “in|sure”, we have already created a key strategic pillar for adesso’s further successful development. Under this name, we are developing a complete software suite for the insurance business, thereby positioning ourselves as a product provider for this industry.

With e-Spirit, we plan to continue systemically developing content as a service, known as CaaS. There is tremendous market demand for CaaS and a very wide range of possible applications, such as through growing content requirements on the Internet of things, for smart devices or digital signage.

As a result, we are opening up exciting prospects for the company with regard to further forms of added value and contributions to value creation in the coming years.

Thank you for talking to Boss News, Michael. We wish you continued success in the future.