Aimondo Centralised in Switzerland

Zurich, July 2022

Since 2020, Aimondo has announced its intention to concentrate its internationalisation in Switzerland. After long organisational preparation, this process is now largely complete. From the end of July 2022, all of the group’s customers will have switched to contracting and invoicing from Switzerland. As a final building block, the German operational business will also be handled from Switzerland. Programming and German-speaking customer service will then remain in Germany. Another company has already been handling parts of the investor support, marketing and planning services for the founding shareholder and the Swiss Aimondo headquarters for more than two years. The transition should therefore be seamless.

René Grübel, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Aimondo AG explains: “The orientation of Aimondo was international and publicly announced from day one. Now the focus on these markets is beginning to bear fruit. In addition to opening up additional sales channels, this will also put stability on a broader basis, independent of local developments. In addition, Switzerland has a first-class reputation worldwide as a reliable, innovative and trustworthy digital partner.”

That the legal administration of the software will remain with the founding partner TTIP Ltd. in Nicosia is a tradition for Aimondo. Thus, in addition to further product development in Düsseldorf, the international part of the development team will find an attractive place to live and coordinate in the digital stronghold of Limassol. Heinrich Muller, founder and CEO, emphasises: “For the further expansion of the core of artificial intelligence that I have been programming for a good ten years, the best experts are in demand. And we attract them more easily to the Mediterranean region than to Germany. In addition, the regulatory environment is a particularly interesting destination, especially for the IP (note: intellectual property) sector and also for international investors. In any case, copyright management had already been in the founding company of Aimondo AG since 2016. Since 2018, we have also had the legal framework for technology development as a specially created company on site.”

So the basic structure is clear. Aimondo AG in Zurich forms the head and the distributors in the individual countries work to it. The same goes for the development teams. The business customers, some of whom are located all over the world, only have to deal with one central office from an administrative and legal point of view. Active practical support continues to take place in the local language or from dedicated country desks.

At a time when the question of a physical headquarters no longer arises anyway, this is a bridge structure towards the globally networked, virtually structured company. “The best place to work is the one I choose for myself,” says Harvard professor Raj Choudhury in an interview with the business magazine brandeins (issue 4/22). Whether this requires a physical headquarters is up for discussion. And whether it will be in Düsseldorf, Zurich, Limassol or completely virtual remains to be seen. Stephan A. Jansen, Professor for Management, Innovation and Financing at the Karlshochschule in Karlsruhe and Visiting Professor for Urban Innovation at the Berlin University of the Arts, adds in the same issue: “On the one hand, it will become more analogue, i.e. more co-present in the headquarters, which is simultaneously an event space, restaurant, bar, dance hall, sports club, university, design and media house. And companies, on the other hand, will get a clever digital twin, with which one can realise oneself undisturbed and self-determined in one’s homely office with pets, plants and more professional home video studios – just as if one were on site. Even if some have never heard of it and others already don’t take it seriously: Metaverses might actually have a future as a digital twin.”

Except for the core technical team in Düsseldorf, Müller says it’s like this:” “The people we want already have a job. That’s why we have to offer them something that no one else can.” And he also takes his cue from Elise Müller of Spryker, who is responsible for new working worlds there. Today, all of the almost 500 employees there can work from wherever and whenever they want. According to Müller, the order of priority is: “Remote first, all meetings take place digitally” Elise Müller herself is sitting in front of the computer in a T-shirt during the video interview with brandeins, with lush green vegetation in the background. She had connected from San José, Costa Rica.

A way of working that their namesake at Aimondo also practices. He has been in permanent conferences with the team for years. From Germany, Austria, the USA or Cyprus. In a classical structure, he would probably be the mayor of a global village in the model of MIT professor Marshall McLuhan, who coined the term 60 years ago in his book “The Gutenberg Galaxy”.

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