Schober Information Group Deutschland GmbH makes it into Germany’s innovation elite / Honored by TOP 100 mentor Ranga Yogeshwar

Ditzingen, June 27, 2016 – For the 23rd time, the TOP 100, the most innovative companies in the German SME sector, will be honored.

This year, Schober Information Group Deutschland GmbH belongs to this innovation elite. The company previously participated in a demanding, scientific selection process. Innovation management and innovation success were examined. The mentor of the innovation competition, Ranga Yogeshwar, will honor the top innovator at the German SME Summit on June 24 in Essen.

Innovative ideas, coupled with staying power and a constant willingness to change, have helped Schober Information Group Deutschland GmbH to achieve market leadership in Germany and a position among the international leaders in the industry. Since its founding in 1947, the company, which has been awarded the TOP 100 seal, has developed from an address provider into an international player for personalized multi-channel marketing solutions. 74 of the total of 150 employees work at the headquarters in Ditzingen near Stuttgart; other locations include Berlin, Warsaw and Zurich.

The top innovator operates on a terrain that is essentially determined by the stormy development of the IT and marketing industry. “Success can only be achieved here if we succeed in awakening a love of innovation among our employees and making them fit for the new challenges in online marketing,” says Managing Director Ulrich Schober. This is just one of the reasons why the company focuses on the training and development of its employees and is driving digital transformation in many areas. “We leave time and space for trying out ideas,” adds Schober. For him, this is one of the keys to the company’s success. This pays off, as a large number of the company’s own innovations originate in-house: for example, the restructuring and redevelopment of the internal data selection software, which has increased the efficiency of the sales team. But Schober’s customers also benefit from the innovative strength of the family business. In the new Data Management Platform (DMP), advertisers can link online and offline data anonymously and plan, manage and control downstream display, mobile and social media campaigns even more efficiently.

More than 4,000 companies were interested in participating in TOP 100 this year. 366 of them applied for the qualifying round. Of these, 284 made it to the final round. 238 finally made it into the TOP 100 (maximum 100 in each of the three size categories). The companies were again evaluated by Prof. Dr. Nikolaus Franke and his team from the Chair of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Vienna University of Economics and Business. They asked about more than 100 parameters in five assessment categories: “Innovation-promoting top management,” “Innovation climate,” “Innovative processes and organization,” “Innovation marketing/external orientation” and “Innovation success.

The TOP 100 are among the pacesetters in their industries. This is confirmed by the figures of the evaluation: Among the companies are 97 national market leaders and 32 world market leaders. On average, they recently generated 40 percent of their sales with market innovations and product improvements that they brought to market before the competition. Their sales growth was 28 percentage points above the respective industry average. Together, the SMEs applied for 2,292 national and international patents in the past three years. This innovative strength also pays off in jobs: The TOP 100 plan to hire around 9,500 new employees over the next three years.

The mentor of TOP 100, science journalist and TV presenter Ranga Yogeshwar, is impressed by the quality of the companies and hopes for a signal effect: “The way the TOP 100 generate new ideas and develop groundbreaking products and services from them is remarkable in the truest sense of the word. I am therefore pleased that the award makes these qualities visible. Hopefully, their success will encourage other companies to do the same. Because this culture of innovation will become increasingly important for all companies in the future.”