Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, Berliner Zeitung, Mitteldeutsche Zeitung, EXPRESS or Hamburger Morgenpost are newspaper titles with a long tradition and a firm place in the German media landscape. They belong to the DuMont Media Group, which, in addition to the regional media business, also relies on the two pillars of business information and digital business. The group also includes advertising journals, the DuMont Book Publishing House and local radio and TV stations. Since the beginning of the year, DuMont has held a 75 per cent share in Facelift, the leading European social media marketing cloud service. Through the venture fund Capnamic, the group also has stakes in young, fast-growing companies.
Tradition and modernity: ‘Perspective Growth’ masters digitalisation
The roots of the Cologne media company go back to the 17th century. Its success over such a long period is due not least to its constant adaptation to the changing business environment. The group is tackling the current challenges of the digitalised media world with the strategic programme ‘Perspective Growth’, which was launched at the end of 2014. The core business remains unaffected: quality journalism in all media channels for a diverse readership and user base.
Synergies from 320 individual companies
The DuMont Media Group is one of the largest media companies in Germany. Around 3,500 employees generate a turnover of 592 million euros per year. The holding company, which operates under the legal name of DuMont Mediengruppe GmbH & Co. KG, is organised into around 280 individual companies. These include radio and TV stations, printing plants, editorial offices, as well as service companies such as MZ Logistik in Halle. The group structure is therefore complex, which is justified for business reasons, but has also sometimes grown historically.
Information needed, ‘and in the shortest possible time’
‘The complexity of the DuMont Group and its investments was not an issue for a long time,’ says Stephan Jordans, Head of Taxes at DuMont. ‘But with the strategic programme “Perspective Growth”, the situation has changed fundamentally.’ The reorientation involved many organisational changes, and implementation required extensive detailed knowledge of the investments. ‘We needed more and more in-depth information about the individual investments than before: articles of association, annual financial statements, commercial register extracts, sales figures and the context. And all in the shortest possible time,’ recalls Jordans.
Complexity requires investment management software
All the necessary information was available, but not at the push of a button. One challenge is that DuMont is active at different locations. In addition, the relevant documents and data are distributed across three divisions: Legal, Finance and Accounting, and Taxes.
In addition, the individual divisions usually only have the relevant information – the legal department, for example, has the articles of association, but the tax returns from previous years are held by the Taxes division. Is all the data complete? Which data is up to date? ‘In 2014, the management board and staff departments realised that they needed a tool that could provide all the basic information on DuMont’s investments at the push of a button. This is the only way to get a complete picture of the group and implement our strategy,’ says Stephan Jordans, describing the initial situation for the project launched in 2016 with the aim of introducing a professional solution for investment management to centrally manage data and documents from all departments and for all legal entities.
Bridge to three islands found
A suitable technical solution had to be found that would ‘bundle the information from the three departments of Legal, Finance and Accounting, and Taxes in order to merge the three islands onto a central platform,’ adds Antonius Solbach, from the Board Projects Division of the DuMont Media Group. In mid-2015, the heads of the specialist departments and the IT department met. Together, the team added the central requirement and also specified that the solution should automatically display the group structure as an organisational graph, manage mandate holders and be easy to customise. After intensive vendor monitoring, the project team, together with the managing director of Media and Management Services, Dietmar Wallner, decided on the otris corporate product. The solution from the Dortmund software company perfectly met the formulated requirements. Further advantages were the flexibility of the investment management suite and the very good price-performance ratio. At the same time, the cooperation with otris software AG is appreciated in Cologne. DuMont has been using the contract management solution otris contract for quite some time and is very satisfied.
Minimal need for customisation thanks to a practical product standard
After the goals, requirements and technical basis have been clarified, it is time for implementation. A multitude of questions need to be answered. To do this, DuMont is setting up a weekly workshop with a team from otris, which will later be extended to a monthly workshop. This is where technical requirements and implementation come together. In principle, DuMont deliberately looked for a solution that offered extensive standard functions. Apart from a few minor details, otris corporate also covers all the requirements, with only three extensions added by the team with little effort: a special configuration of the Excel export, a weekly change report and extended financial key figures. The option to export investment data and information via Excel is an important function for DuMont because it makes data quality management much easier and increases user flexibility. Master data for each investment can be conveniently checked for completeness in Excel and then used for further evaluations. The second adjustment provides for a change report that supplies selected recipients with news about the investments on a weekly basis. This ensures that all decision-makers are informed without being flooded with details. Finally, the implementation team expanded the master data management to include financial key figures. The advantage: otris corporate users can see the financial dimension of the investments without additional research.
Fine-tuning in the workshops
At the same time, the workshops are clarifying further technical and organisational questions – e.g. the content and formats of the so-called import folders that the team fills with data and documents. These are then automatically read in via mass import. The project team took a pragmatic approach to the scope of the import: ‘From a due date in 2014, our data and document facsimiles are complete. For the time before that, we only imported data and documents that were directly relevant to the present. An extract from the commercial register from 1975 is not usually one of them,’ explains Stephan Jordans. After the initial import, otris corporate went live. The investment management solution had thus become the central point for the further maintenance and storage of master data. Whether articles of association, loan and credit agreements, or annual financial statements – all documents relating to the groups’ investments can now be found in otris corporate in an audit-proof manner. Since the three divisions of Legal, Finance and Accounting, and Taxes are primarily responsible for dealing with changes in investments, all three divisions maintain the information platform. Changes are entered where they arise or become known. Each division has at least one responsible and specially trained employee for this purpose. In addition, more than 40 employees have been trained to work with otris corporate by the time it goes live in mid-2016. This also includes the secretariat of the board of directors, in order to answer any questions the management may have directly.
Central reference work
“Thanks to our new central reference work, colleagues no longer even have to go to the specialist departments, but have the information they need immediately at hand. With otris corporate, we are definitely saving time and gaining transparency,’ says Antonius Solbach, summarising the project. Authorisation concept has been designed as openly as possible to provide broad access. Around 40 users regularly use the tool. Core user groups are in the areas of finance, law, Taxes, and controlling. In addition, auditors also receive temporary access. ‘While our auditors used to have to go to a lot of trouble to gather information about investments, today they can simply enter a search query in our Investment management software,’ says Stephan Jordans, pleased. Investments can also be automatically visualised in an organisational graph. This graphical representation offers great advantages when there are 280 investments. However, Jordans still sees room for improvement here, because the overall presentation currently resembles an aircraft carrier.
‘Manage all important information in one system’
Nevertheless, DuMont is satisfied. Stephan Jordans takes stock: ‘With otris corporate, we have all the relevant information about our legal units and companies in one place, audit-proof and available at the push of a button – from the articles of association to the commercial register extract to the annual financial statements. This gain in information and transparency is a quantum leap compared to the past. At DuMont, we have succeeded in managing all important information in one system. We also save a lot of time, which makes our work easier, accelerates decision-making processes and makes the DuMont Media Group fit for the future and for growth prospects.’
