The Technology Park waves goodbye to analog
How Adlershof-based entrepreneurs adapt to the digital age
Naturally, the digital transformation is also changing companies in Adlershof. However, changes vary across business sectors and do not always make things easier.
“Our company has more computers than it has employees,” says Alexander Schmidt, CEO of Chromicent GmbH, with a smile. His company and its 15 employees develop analytical methods for the pharma industry, which puts it under pharmaceutical legislation. This involves adhering to strict conditions, which cannot be managed anymore without using computers. “The effort is so high that small companies struggle to keep up, which is why we outsourced our entire IT to a service provider,” says Schmidt. “We document everything we do and data must be stored for 30 years.”
Unfortunately, the assumption that digitisation prevents paperwork from flooding offices has turned out to be an illusion: “We print out more than ever because all kinds of things must be documented on paper,” says Schmidt. The same goes for proving that the 17th decimal of a measured value is irrelevant for Chromicent’s business – Excel is known to be inaccurate in those areas. The company may only use Excel spreadsheets when this has been proven beyond all reasonable doubt.
“The aim of digitisation and software should be to assist users, not impede their work,” says Björn-Frederic Limmer, managing director of Limmer Laser GmbH. Internally, digitisation affects the part-automated order management and, externally, working with customers, partners and suppliers: “To give an example, our customers demand close cooperation. Ideally, this results in common (digital) interfaces for quick and error-free data exchange.” Moreover, digitisation makes information readily available. Limmer: “Companies should work together more closely to make the implementation of joint projects more efficient.” Small and medium-sized companies are well-equipped for this due to their flexibility. Limmer Laser recently developed a special software that maps the entire merchandise management, which works much more efficiently in development, manufacturing and sales than off-the-shelf solutions. Generally speaking, says Limmer, “no one should be afraid” of the digital transformation, but everybody should aim at “navigating its implementation with due diligence.”
Holger Wenschuh fully supports this statement. He is the CEO of the biotech company JPT Peptide Technologies GmbH, which specialises on peptide-based services and products in biomedical research, especially immunotherapy and proteomics. “We process around 3,500 orders from biotech and pharmaceutical companies every year. No order is the same,” says Wenschuh. Digital processes are very helpful: In individualised cancer therapy, for example, customers in biotech and pharma electronically transmit the exact requirements for every order.
Quality assurance is essential: “For this purpose, we use sophisticated digital quality and lab management systems, which allow us to keep track of orders in great detail,” says Wenschuh. They enable the company to, say, document which substance was used for what and where it came from. This quickly produces enormous amounts of data – impossible to process without IT solutions. Nothing goes without fast data transmission and secure cloud solutions. “The customer has to be able to upload relevant data at any time,” says Wenschuh. Also: what used to be printed out on paper or burnt on DVDs, including raw data, quality and analysis certificates, is now largely, and sooner or later exclusively, made available for download on servers.
The Adlershof-based company is planning to give customers direct access to the lab management system, which enables them to check the status of their analyses online anywhere and anytime. Opening up one’s systems can be risky, as Wenschuh knows full well: “Although people don’t like to talk about it, the risk of attacks on one’s systems and of industrial espionage are high. This is why IT security has become an important issue for us,” says the CEO, who has commissioned an external service provider for secure networks and cyber attack defense. All in all, the advantages of digitisation outweigh the disadvantages, says Wenschuh, because it increases customer satisfaction. Incidentally, the entire communication with customers and partners has changed: “Hardly anybody uses phones anymore.”
by Chris Löwer
Links:
www.chromicent.de/en/
www.limmerlaser.de/en/
www.jpt.com/