Deutsche Telekom aims rapid growth in business customer segment and launches SME campaign at CeBIT 2014

• Target by 2018: increasing revenues by 600 million euros in the SME segment
• Standardization now makes corporate customer solutions affordable for SMEs
• Telekom is teaming up with regional systems providers – 30 new cooperations planned by the end of 2014

Hannover, Germany, 10-3-2014 — /EuropaWire/ — Deutsche Telekom aims to grow rapidly in the business customer segment in coming years and is launching a new SME campaign at CeBIT 2014. SME customers can now purchase telecommunications and IT solutions previously only available to corporate customers – standardized, cost-effective and custom-tailored to the needs of small and medium-sized companies. In addition, Deutsche Telekom is targeting Germany’s SMEs directly with a new partner program: for the first time, a partner network of regional systems providers will advise SMEs on behalf of Deutsche Telekom, sell the Group’s IT solutions and perform the local installation. The network is slated to grow to some 30 partners by the end of 2014. The aim of this new growth campaign is to boost revenues in the SME segment by 600 million euros.

“We want to be the partner to Germany’s SMEs. This applies to our telecommunications solutions, but also to our IT and cloud services – made in Germany,” says Niek Jan van Damme, Management Board member responsible for Telekom Deutschland. “With our SME campaign, we intend to do everything we can to help small and medium-sized companies remain competitive; at the same time, we are contributing toward ensuring that Germany remains a good place to do business.”

According to forecasts by Bitkom, the industry association, SME investments in information and communication technology will increase by nearly three billion euros by 2018, to 28.3 billion. While the telecommunications portion is expected to stagnate, the IT segment of the market is forecast to grow by an average of 5.3 percent per year. Cloud services are expected to grow by a whopping 33 percent over the same period. “We want to capture this growth and generate additional revenues of 600 million euros with SME customers by 2018,” says van Damme. This means that IT revenues especially at Telekom Deutschland, which currently account for four percent of overall revenue, are targeted for growth. Expertise generated from the corporate customer segment, especially for IT solutions and cloud services, will provide the seeds for this growth.

Corporate customer solutions for Germany’s SMEs
“Every company, whether large or small, has to invest in the digitalization of its business models to keep up in the digital age. If you want to seize these opportunities, you have to master an ever-increasing spectrum of technologies, from cloud services to data security,” says Reinhard Clemens, Management Board member for T-Systems. “Our experiences in the corporate customer area can now benefit small and medium-sized companies as well – without forcing them to allocate large investment or staff budgets,” adds Clemens. Previously, many solutions were available exclusively to corporate customers, due to the technical effort and staff expense involved. Today, it is cloud services in particular that are opening major opportunities for the SME segment: such as standardized, always-updated IT at variable, affordable costs, without requiring huge up-front investments in dedicated hardware. As a result, even SMEs can now afford solutions from SAP and VMware. In the future, SMEs will manage their PC workplaces from the cloud, just like major corporations do. They will save license fees and maintenance costs, while at the same time enabling their employees to work flexibly on mobile devices. In these scenarios, Deutsche Telekom assumes end-to-end responsibility, guaranteeing data privacy and data security under German law, from German data centers.

Closer to the customer with a new partner program
While Deutsche Telekom focuses its portfolio on standardization, marketing, consulting and sales demand custom solutions: to be successful, SMEs, craft businesses and startups need services that are custom-tailored to their specific needs. In recognition of this fact, Deutsche Telekom is teaming up with competent regional systems providers. The SME Partner Program is a win-win scenario for everyone involved: the customers can purchase the latest products and solutions by Deutsche Telekom from their trusted systems providers. The partners can expand their product range without any business risk or up-front investments. And Deutsche Telekom gets closer to the SME segment, through the regional systems providers, where it can reach its customers more quickly and better launch new products on the market. Telekom aims to recruit some 30 systems providers to the new partner network by the end of 2018; the first new partners are Isec7, Spirit/21, Unilab, Synergy Systems and DMRZ (Deutsches Mittelstands Rechenzentrum).

Experience our products and services live at CeBIT from March 10 – 14 at the Deutsche Telekom stand in hall 4, stand C26. Deutsche Telekom’s entire presence at the trade fair is carbon-neutral: All CO2 emissions generated in setting up and operating the stand are offset fully by carbon-reduction projects abroad.

About Deutsche Telekom
Deutsche Telekom is one of the world’s leading integrated telecommunications companies with over 142 million mobile customers, 31 million fixed-network lines and more than 17 million broadband lines (as of December 31, 2013). The Group provides fixed network, mobile communications, Internet and IPTV products and services for consumers and ICT solutions for business customers and corporate customers. Deutsche Telekom is present in around 50 countries and has approximately 229,000 employees worldwide. The Group generated revenues of EUR 60,1 billion in the 2013 financial year – more than half of it outside Germany.

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