Interview with Brösicke and Beyer – The new members of the PROMOS management board talk about their goals and visions for the future

IT&I: Mr Brösicke, you are still relatively new to PROMOS. Could you tell our readers how your career progressed before you came to PROMOS and what your role here involves?

Thomas Brösicke: As part of my dual study programme in the field of housing and real estate, I began working for a city housing company. I progressed through various positions there, learning all about housing administration from the bottom up. In recent years, my roles involved managing controlling and IT departments. I first had contact with PROMOS about two years ago, as part of an ERP transition project. I really enjoyed this project, and all the subsequent ones were also a pleasure to work on in terms of both the content and the people involved. I have now been responsible for the Consulting area at PROMOS since autumn 2019. I was already familiar with the company from the customer side, and thus already knew many colleagues and products as well as the strengths of PROMOS. It goes without saying that this has been a great advantage.

IT&I: Have you also encountered any surprises, or has your experience of working here simply confirmed your previous impression of PROMOS?

Brösicke: On the whole, my previous impressions have been confirmed. Above all, the people who I had come to know before are still exactly the same. None of them pretended to be different when dealing with a customer. What is new to me is the complexity of the systems.

IT&I: From your present perspective, which three words would you use to sum up PROMOS?

Brösicke: Flexibility, innovation and partnership – those are the company’s three greatest strengths as I see it.

IT&I: Mr Beyer, as an old hand at PROMOS, do you agree, or do you have different associations?

Thoralf Beyer: Three words? (considers) I’d go for Berlin, ingenuity and “knorke”.

Brösicke: Berlin? The world! (laughs)

Beyer: Yes, those would be my three words. Although we are no longer a new company, we have never lost the spirit of a Berlin start-up. As for “knorke”, it is a Berlin expression meaning “great”, and I simply want to express that we are a great company. It’s fun working at PROMOS, working for PROMOS and bending over backwards for PROMOS!

IT&I: Apart from a short interruption, you have been part of the PROMOS team for quite some time. Since when exactly have you been on board?

Beyer: Since 2006. I knew the PROMOS protagonists even before the company was established. So why did I then join PROMOS? It was really for the same reasons as those that Thomas listed. My career path was characterised by numerous challenges in a wide range of areas: maintenance and construction, commercial real estate management, process management and, before I moved to my new post, mobility applications. In this way, I have been able to gain knowledge and experience in all areas, a little like a decathlete. I have been a senior manager, responsible for sales, for four years and now also have the role of a management board member.

IT&I: What changes have you initiated in sales since becoming Chief Sales Officer?

Beyer: One thing that I am really proud of is the great sales team, which does a brilliant job in serving our three sales regions. Sales representatives always have a strong and individual personality too, and our talents complement one another very well. To begin with, we have set up a new sales office to reduce the workload of our consultants in preparing quotations. It goes without saying that the consultants continue to provide support here. This has greatly increased the quality.

IT&I: Mr Brösicke and Mr Beyer, how do you work together in practice as a management duo?

Beyer: We do it entirely using memorandums.

Brösicke: All the time. And e-mails. Sometimes. (they laugh)

Beyer: Joking aside, we have regular, weekly meetings with the management board and also get together to discuss numerous aspects between ourselves. Being responsible for consulting, Thomas is in charge of a huge core area of the company. You could say he operates the engine that moves us forward. And I work with my team to provide the fuel.

Brösicke: I find that comparison very fitting. Without fuel, in other words without what the sales team bring in, we are unable to work. However, the fuel is no use if it is pumped in at high pressure. That is a very good description of how we work. It’s all about giving and taking.

IT&I: What developments are you currently seeing on the market? Where is the journey headed and where do you anticipate PROMOS being in five years' time? I bet S/4HANA^® is a keyword there, isn’t it?

Brösicke: Precisely. We are in the process of talking to numerous customers about changing over to S/4HANA^®. We have already succeeded in migrating several of them. This will of course be one of the topics that we will be focussing on in the coming years. Our products already run on S/4HANA^® today, and the new SAP interface Fiori^® is also in great demand.

Beyer: In five years, moreover, we intend to implement even more processes using our easysquare cloud service. In the future, we will be able to map certain processes better in the cloud than in our core system because they are preconfigured, can be implemented rapidly and are specialised. I am thinking here about rental, the tenant app, the craftsmen portal and now also the manager app. We are set to see a disproportionate increase in the number of users in this area, partly because we will be entering new markets here. Our easysquare cloud service is also aimed at smaller property managers and private landlords.

IT&I: Are there any other markets that PROMOS intends to penetrate further?

Beyer: Yes. Our main focus is of course on the real estate sector. In recent years, however, our customers have also come to include an increasing number of companies that focus primarily on the use of a property. For example, our construction solutions are used in all types of companies. We have also gained commercial customers and corporate real estate management clients. That has often been driven by IFRS16, but also partly by the fact that there is simply a greater focus now on the issue of contract and real estate management. We are one of only few suppliers who have excellent expertise in this area. We are set to continue expanding here in the coming years.

IT&I: In your view, what other properties make PROMOS unique?

Brösicke: In my experience, one thing that is particularly good is the company’s great flexibility. There is basically nothing that we can’t help the real estate sector with.

Beyer: Another strength of our company has always been the motivation of employees to drive projects forward, learn new things and question routes taken.

IT&I: Can you name a current example there?

Beyer: Examples include the issues relating to S/4HANA^® and other SAP innovations such as the Analytics Cloud or the use of artificial intelligence. We are currently working on this and giving thought to what might constitute a good application case in the real estate sector. Our employees are inquisitive and highly motivated. At the moment, we are not simply taking steps to migrate our customers to S/4HANA^®. Instead, we are also working on enabling our customers to make use of the huge potential and great advantages that the system offers.

Brösicke: That is our aspiration, and something that clearly sets us apart on the market. We don’t want to simply push a new database onto our customers and wait until later to optimise it. The best example here is Fiori^®. Our first customers have begun to use the new interface. For this purpose, we optimised our process cockpit for use in Fiori^® beforehand and adapted our OpenPromos^® Corporate Correspondence interface.

IT&I: I have one more question to end with. Have you settled into your new positions or does everything still seem a little new?

Beyer: Although I never would have expected it in the past, I am enjoying working in sales. I feel very much at home in my position as Chief Sales Officer and member of the management board.

Brösicke: Likewise, I feel very much at home in the area of consulting. The next few years are sure to bring fantastic challenges, both for us as a company and for me personally, with plenty of new aspects for us to work on. So I hope we will always have a sense of things being “new” to a certain extent.

redaktion@openpromos.de