| Type | Family Owned Company |
|---|---|
| Industry | Computer Services |
| Founded | 1995 |
| Headquarters | Weinheim, Germany |
| Key people | Olaf Heyden, CEO Dieter Kull, COO Dr. Sebastian Weiss, CFO Michael Heuberger, CEO and President America Markus Muessig, GM South East Asia Thomas Ahlers, GM China Stephan Gemm, GM Europe |
| Revenue | $ 100 million USD(2009) |
| Employees | 600 (as of 2010) |
| Website | www.freudenberg-it.com |
Freudenberg IT is a global IT Solutions Company specializing in SAP consulting, outsourcing, manufacturing execution system & managed hosting. It is part of the Freudenberg Group of companies which is a family owned enterprise. The group has a history starting in the year 1849. Freudenberg IT started as an IT spinoff in year 1995. An association with SAP started when Freudenberg became number seven customer of SAP and SAP R1 was installed on Freudenberg systems. Since then they have been able to establish a global presence. Today Freudenberg IT is operating out of 18 locations in Europe, North America, China and South East Asia with over 600 associates. They also collaborate with partners in other regions on a project-by-project basis.
Freudenberg IT is headquartered at Weinheim, Germany. In 2009, Freudenberg IT crossed USD 100 million in annual revenue. Freudenberg Group registered a turnover of about USD 7 Billion in 2008. [1]
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Freudenberg IT is part of Freudenberg Group of companies. The group can trace its history to the year 1849 when Carl Johann Freudenberg joined with Heinrich Christian Heintze to take over a tannery in Weinheim, Germany. Freudenberg gave the company his name and led the company in the development of a variety of leather products, especially patent and satin leathers. Since then the group has invested in diverse segments such as nonwovens, automobile parts, house hold products & IT. Freudenberg group has a number of firsts to its credit for example Freudenberg Nonwovens invented the first nonwovens more than 70 years ago.[2] The group today is still family owned by some 300 descendants of Carl Johann Freudenberg. At present, Freudenberg group has over 32,000 employees working in 55 countries.[3]
Around 1995 Freudenberg Group was faced with a question many companies encounter: that of whether to transfer its in-house IT services to a third party. Following comprehensive external benchmarking, the group made a decision to take an entirely different path by achieving legal independence and entering into business transactions with third parties i.e. becoming an IT Spinoff. An independent entity Freudenberg Informatik KG was created which was later renamed as Freudenberg IT. Today Freudenberg IT or FIT is Germany’s most successful IT spinoff, realizing more than three fourth of its revenue from external customers.
The first external customer for Freudenberg IT was Fuchs Petrolub who is today a strategic partner. Since then Freudenberg IT has established itself as a midsized IT company.
In Germany Freudenberg IT is located at Weinheim, Balingen, Düsseldorf, Munich & Hamburg. Their first office outside Germany was in Barcelona, Spain. Later they established offices at Budapest, Hungary and Kiev, Ukraine. In North America, Freudenberg IT is present in Philadelphia, Detroit, Atlanta, Raleigh – Durham & San Francisco. In China they are present in Beijing, Shanghai, Suzhou & Guangzhou. In 2009 Freudenberg IT established an office in Singapore to act as a hub for customers in South East Asia.
In November 2001 Freudenberg IT purchased 75% stake in adicom, the systems enterprise provider based in Balingen, Germany. [4]With this acquisition Freudenberg IT was able to complement its SAP service suite with a Manufacturing Execution System product. As a MES system, adicom is able to operate as a standalone system or in conjunction with any ERP system.
Freudenberg IT as a subsidiary company follows similar ideology as the group i.e. having a diversified portfolio. With their understanding of SAP processes Freudenberg IT invested in SAP Hosting as a service offering. Understanding the value of business critical SAP information & requirement for 24/7 availability, Freudenberg IT has set up dual data centers as a standard service offering. [5] In 2009 to address growing demand in IT outsourcing & application hosting services the company invested 38 million dollars to build up two new data centers in Germany & USA.[6] Today Freudenberg IT has 11 data centers worldwide. In June 2010 Freudenberg IT expanded their service offering by becoming a certified cloud computing operator for SAP systems [7] Recently Freudenberg IT engaged a customer in Asia with subscription based hosting services becoming the first partner to do so. [8]
On September 2010, Freudenberg IT became a Special Expertise Partner in the SAP BusinessObjects Intelligence Platform category. The special expertise program by SAP is used to showcase partners who are especially reliable and trustworthy service providers in their particular area of expertise.
Consulting
Freudenberg IT is certified by independent organizations such as EN ISO 9002 for quality management systems. adicom, the MES solution from Freudenberg IT is certified for integration with existing ERP applications. FIT observes compliance with ISO 9001, ITIL/ITSM and SAS 70 type II systems. [16]
Each regional office of Freudenberg IT serves industries whose existing process know how is available to their associates. In addition Freudenberg IT employs a strategic partnership with Crossgate AG (B2B transaction company) relating to the integration of core supply-chain processes
Outsourcing
With 11 Hosting centers Freudenberg IT is a certified SAP Global Hosting Partner. [17] Freudenberg IT is also Global SAP provider for cloud services enabling it to deliver SAP applications in a shared environment.[18] With this cloud services offering the company is able to offer a flexible solution at reduced cost. All SAP Hosting data centers undergo compliance for ISO 9001 & SAS 70 Type II systems.
Application Management Services
Freudenberg IT has a partnership with SAP to provide global AMS services. Owing to their presence in different time zones i.e. Europe, North America & Asia Freudenberg IT offers 24X7 multilingual help desk service.
B2B-Communications
Freudenberg IT employs a strategic partnership with Crossgate to complement their process and operations skills. Freudenberg IT customers are now leveraging Crossgate’s business ready network to save on time and costs. [19]