According to a recent study by KfW Research, around 560,000 companies will be facing management and ownership succession by the end of 2026. However, a third of these companies are planning to leave the market without a successor. And this high figure is not surprising. Succession has become a major challenge in many medium-sized companies.
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It’s the combination that makes the difference! Different skills, practical experience and solid expertise are the basis for our business. As diverse as our team is, our common basis is our affinity for medium-sized businesses and for the people who shape them.
Eugen Feth – Senior Consultant Digitalization
Change not Keep – Digital Transformation is today
incontext.technology GmbH from Heidelberg and THE MAK’ED TEAM GmbH & Co. KG, with locations in Nuremberg and Karlsruhe, have agreed to cooperate. With this step, both companies are extending their value chain in all relevant questions of digitalisation and digital transformation in medium-sized companies. The synergy of management and process consulting on the side of THE MAK’ED TEAM and innovative technology on the side of INCTEC, as incontext.technology is called, leads to tailor-made concepts for the requirements of our two client companies. These can be realised with future-proof technology in almost all functional areas of medium-sized companies.
Change management means planning changes in an organisation and implementing them in a structured process. Selected measures are defined to transform departments or even the entire organisation from an initial state to a defined target state. And this is particularly important in the case of digitalisation. Many companies focus on digitisation projects. But they can introduce the best systems: If the employees are not involved in the change processes at an early stage and thus acceptance for the planned transformation is not promoted from the beginning, the system will not work in everyday life.
Public funding supports small and medium-sized enterprises in their development. But which funding programmes are suitable for your own company? And how can the right funding be identified, or several funding programmes be combined? Entrepreneurs who deal with this topic quickly realise that getting an overview and making the right choice for their own company is a task that cannot be accomplished in passing. Finding one’s way through the funding jungle is not always easy.
Many people first think of environmental protection, climate protection and decarbonisation when they hear the word “sustainability”. But sustainability is much more than that. The wide range is reflected in the ESG criteria. ESG stands for “Environment”, “Social” and “Governance”. It is not only about the “E”, but also about the “S” and “G”. It is only through the interaction of the three areas of environment, social affairs and corporate governance that a sustainable corporate orientation unfolds, which improves growth opportunities and financing advantages and makes the company more resilient. The individual weighting of the three areas differs depending on the sector and size of the company. For example, the area of “environment” can have a much higher relevance for an industrial company than for a service provider.
Handing over one’s own business is a challenging topic. Many entrepreneurs find succession difficult. Even if, like one of our clients, they deal with it at an early stage: Frank S., a medium-sized entrepreneur in his early sixties, had started to deal with the issue of succession in his mid-50s. So, he was well on time. It was clear early on that his only son would not take over the company. So how to proceed? Sell the company? In order to get this complex decision right, Frank S. called in an expert.
Finding staff, retaining staff: What used to be an everyday routine is now a supreme discipline in management and HR departments. More than ever, staff retention is an important key to corporate success. And in the highly competitive labour market, it is a real challenge, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises. Attractive and transparent development paths play a key role in employee retention.
Acting ethically and responsibly is a matter of course for most entrepreneurs. The concept of the “honourable merchant” goes back to the Middle Ages and still has an important meaning for German companies. However, Germany is very much involved in global divisions of labour and along the supply chains there are always grievances in the economic, ecological, and humanitarian spheres. This should change. With the Supply Chain Due Diligence Act, or Supply Chain Act for short, a law was passed that obliges companies based in Germany to implement defined due diligence obligations. It came into force on 1 January 2023 and aims to protect human rights along supply chains, improve working conditions and protect nature from harmful impacts. In concrete terms, companies should ensure that human rights and minimum standards such as the prohibition of child and forced labour are observed through responsible management of supply chains.
On 16 December 2022, the Whistleblower Protection Act (HinSchG) was passed in the Federal Parliament. Based on the Whistleblower Directive, it guarantees whistleblowers better protection in their professional environment against reprisals such as dismissal or defamation. The next plenary session of the Bundesrat is on 10 February 2023. If it approves the HinSchG, the law can be promulgated in February. Since a law comes into force three months after promulgation, in this case it would probably be the end of May. In the first stage, the law will apply to all companies with 250 or more employees and, from 17 December 2023 to all companies with at least 50 employees.
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