Hello, my name is Katia Lischka and I’m Business Development Director for Stefanini EMEA. I work closely with our customers to help design bespoke solutions that help them overcome their technology, automation and AI challenges and achieve their business and growth goals.
Based in Germany, a country driven by small and mid-size businesses or “mittelstands”, I have the privilege of helping many family-owned businesses undergo transformations that enable them to not just survive another day but to thrive for the future. But what is the secret to success? Let’s take a look at the country’s most successful family-owned businesses.
Germany’s Top Ranking Family Businesses
Europe remains the biggest region for the share of family businesses in the world. Germany is second only to the US for the number of companies that feature in the top list, with 103 companies compared to 161 based in the States.
Perhaps part of the driver of success of these family-owned businesses is the desire to follow the path laid by previous generations. After all, no one wants their family business to collapse on their watch. Another feature of fruitful family-owned businesses in Germany is continuing to reinvest into the company and having a long-term strategy.
As a family-owned business, led by Marco Stefanini, wife Graca and sons Guilherme and Rodrigo, Stefanini understands the intricacies of fellow companies that have embarked on this path and is well-equipped to support them.
Global Expertise Delivered Locally
With 70 offices in 41 countries, we offer our clients a personalised, local service drawing on expertise from our colleagues around the world. Based in Cologne, our German team speaks your language and appreciates your culture, which makes it easier for us to partner with you and understand your needs.
Rostock-based digital insurance provider, hepster, is one example of a client who benefits from our flexible and personal approach, as hepster CTO Peter Schoning recognises:
“Stefanini is a business that knows how to scale, which is important for hepster because we’re also scaling – which means we constantly need to ramp up really fast with new teams based in new markets. The speed at which Stefanini has been able to adjust to our requirements has been crucial for us. Throughout our partnership, Stefanini has been fast, flexible and highly professional, supporting us at a genuinely excellent level.”
Stefanini’s growing team of six developers carries out maintenance and development on hepster’s existing web and microservice applications. The team codes, tests and debugs applications, solves customer problems, identifies how existing systems and applications can be improved, recruits and evaluates potential candidates for all hepster development teams.
We appreciate that every company and every situation is unique, which is why we adopt a flexible approach with each client. This flexibility allows us to readily adapt our best practice and best-in-class solutions, honed over our 35-year history of making the unthinkable possible.
We take the time to truly understand your requirements, assess the background and unique situations or circumstances, design the project and co-create a solution with you. We also recognise that the perfect solution today may not look the same in the future, so we remain agile to ensure we can adapt and evolve your solution along the way.
What makes Stefanini unique is that we think and act like entrepreneurs. We are 100% committed to building strong relationships that deliver long-term success and are proud to maintain a client retention rate of 97% over an average engagement tenure of 11.7 years.
Improving the Customer Experience
Our digital workplace and digital transformation services put users at the centre. They drive productivity and flexibility at scale, not only providing a better experience for your business but also for your customers. We can help take your business seamlessly from traditional to digital, enhancing operations and delivering value to your customers.
Here are just a few examples of how we can help your business:
- IT systems slowing you down? Adopt an agile approach to your IT infrastructure
- Started your digital transformation journey but unsure where you’re heading? Allow us to steer you in the right direction with our co-creation journey program
- Under pressure to deliver more value to customers? Integrate technology into all areas of your business today to transform it for the future
- Need to maintain the feeling of a family-owned business? We can support your teams, your culture with custom solutions designed to suit your unique needs.
If your family business has technology challenges to overcome or new opportunities on the horizon, please get in touch to see how we can act to impact. #WeAr35tefanini
