location Dortmund, Date 2021.04.15

Having made a record turnover of EUR 355.1 million in 2020, the Materna group now presents its growth strategy for the next five years. The IT company management plans to double its revenue and workforce by 2025, both in its core market of Germany and globally with customers in Europe, the USA and Asia. Its growth driver will be the Journey2Cloud™, a new modular offering for clients.

“As a major pillar of our growth strategy “Mission 2025”, we will be investing a mid-range eight-figure sum over the next five years in the expansion of our portfolio, acquisitions, staff recruitment and training, and in ourselves as a modern employer. In addition to our already well-established position as market leaders in enterprise service management, with our solutions for digital administration and the passenger journey we have a significant focus on our new offering, Journey2Cloud™, as well as our global SAP solutions and cyber security,” explains Martin Wibbe, Chairman of the Board of Directors and CEO of Materna Information & Communications SE.

With our newly developed Journey2Cloud™ offering, Materna guides its customers on the path towards a future-oriented IT architecture with tailored, vendor-impartial advice based on industry standards. Our consulting services empower organisations to analyse, classify and prioritize their existing application landscapes and transform them step-by-step into a future-proof model. Modern cloud technologies provide the means with which to implement innovative digital business models, for example, or operate proprietary applications at optimal cost.

The nine focus areas of our growth strategy

Our Mission 2025 strategy encompasses nine topics closely aligned to the needs of our customers:

• Digital Administration: All-round partner for the journey towards a digital administration and modern e-government
• Enterprise Service Management: Germany’s market leader in enterprise service management – from consulting to operations
• Passenger Journey: International partner for the “passenger journey” in the aviation industry
• Journey2Cloud™: Independent partner for the Journey2Cloud™ towards transforming business-critical application landscapes
• SAP Transformation: Premium consulting for digital business processes and global SAP solutions
• Cyber Security: Security experts for all aspects of critical infrastructure and business models
• Digital Content Factory: Digital content factory for targeted, medial communication
• Durability and sustainability: Digitalization manufacturing to improve the durability and robustness of the business model
• Data Economy: Architect for smart services of the data economy

These nine focus areas will be supported by the brand new Materna innovation eco system.

Our "Mission 2025" growth strategy encompasses nine focus areas.

EBIT increase of more than 30 percent supports growth plans

The long-established company is meeting its growth targets both organically and through acquisitions, the latter of which will be aligned with our nine strategic focus areas. To this end, our mergers & acquisitions team is actively seeking suitable candidates. Just as in the preceding 40 years, our strategy will rest on a foundation of profitable growth with a stable EBIT. The starting point is ideal: In the financial year ending 2020, the Materna group, still family-owned, achieved its best ever result in terms of turnover and EBIT. Turnover rose by 9.6 percent year-on-year in 2020 (compared to EUR 323.8 million in 2019) to EUR 355.1 million and EBIT by more than 30 percent.

The Materna group currently employs more than 2,500 staff, 90 percent of them in Germany, at 18 sites. CEO Martin Wibbe quantifies the ambitious goal: “We intend to double our workforce by 2025”. This includes the creation of 400 new jobs in 2021 alone and, with a quarter of this number already hired so far this year, we are well on course to achieving it.

With its Mission 2025, Materna aims to catapult itself to the top-ranking position of medium-sized IT service providers in Germany. According to the Lünendonk list the company is currently in fourth place.

Modernize faster with Journey2Cloud™

Journey2Cloud™ addresses customers in every sector and is equally suitable for SMBs, global corporations and public administrations. “One of the biggest challenges our customers face these days is how to transform an existing landscape, that has taken years to evolve and may consist of hundreds or even thousands of different applications, quickly and securely using cloud technologies,” explains Marcus Neumann, who has taken over as head of Materna’s growth area, Cloud Innovation & Operation. This is precisely where Materna comes in, guiding organisations through their migration and modernization plans with the aid of common cloud technologies. A recent IDC study found that 46 percent of companies surveyed in Germany are already at an advanced phase of cloud implementation.

The modular approach of Journey2Cloud™ enables customers to modernize their application landscape and transfer it to the cloud step-by-step. This involves taking into account that each application tends to have its own lifecycle. “We pick up each customer at their respective maturity level. Over the next few weeks, we work together on an individually coordinated roadmap for the transformation, including a reference architecture based on the cloud technologies already preferred by the customer,” Marcus Neumann continues. Depending on the customer's situation, our services might begin with preliminary consulting and the development of an individual strategy. However, customers can also receive targeted support only with onboarding and the migration of existing applications or even just operation.

Materna's Journey2Cloud™ covers each phase of the journey to the cloud: Consulting & Innovations, Cloud Enablement & Migration, and Operation & Support.

Journey2Cloud™ first takes a close look at the applications and their interdependencies with one other and with the infrastructure. Only then are workloads considered. Marcus Neumann quotes an example: “For a large logistics company, we transferred their portal for business customers from a monolithic on-premise solution to a scalable solution which we now operate on their behalf in the Microsoft Azure cloud.“ To meet these and similar customer needs, Mission 2025 will see Materna’s cloud and application development experts increase from 700 at present to over 1,500. They will be sourced through a combination of onshoring, nearshoring and offshoring.

Strong partnerships

The Materna group is intensifying its close collaboration with its efficient partner ecosystem. These include Amazon Web Services, BMC, Google Cloud, Micro Focus, Microsoft, Red Hat, SAP, Salesforce, ServiceNow and VMware. Our customers benefit from the synergies gained from a broad spectrum of industry-specific and technologically innovative solutions. Sebastian Austen recently took on the position of Vice President Strategic Alliances with the clear goal of expanding the partner ecosystem.

Pictures

Martin Wibbe, Chairman of the Board of Directors and CEO of Materna

Marcus Neumann, Vice President Cloud Innovation & Operation, Materna

Sebastian Austen, Vice President Strategic Alliances, Materna

About Materna

The Materna group currently employs more than 2,600 people worldwide and achieved sales of 355.1 million euros in 2020. Materna covers the entire range of services of a full-service provider in the premium segment: from consulting to implementation to operation. The focus areas are digital management, enterprise service management, passenger journey, SAP transformation, Journey2Cloud™, cyber security, digital experience, sustainability & resilience and data economy. Customers are IT organizations as well as specialist departments in companies and public administration.