The IoT company convinced the jury with a productive innovation environment, a scalable online shop, forward-looking projects and an agile management approach
Schimberg and Berlin, 1 February 2023: Alpha-Omega Technology GmbH & Co. KG once again receives the TOP 100 seal 2023 . Managing director Jan Bose founded the company for projects, products and consulting around the Internet of Things (IoT) seven years ago in Schimberg in the Eichsfeld region of Thuringia. Every year the seal is awarded to particularly innovative medium-sized companies. The innovative strength of the applicants is assessed by innovation researcher Nikolaus Franke on behalf of the media company compamedia. Alpha-Omega Technology has made a name for itself beyond Germany with its two online shops iot-shop.de andhelium-shop.eu, its own product developments and the innovative model village SMARTinfeld. After the first award in 2021, the jury has now once again recognised the innovative strength of the medium-sized company. In the 30th anniversary year of TOP 100, interest was particularly high: 550 companies applied.
The competition is based on a scientific selection process. On behalf of compamedia, the organiser of the competition, innovation researcher Nikolaus Franke of the Vienna University of Economics and Business and his team examined Alpha-Omega Technology GmbH & Co. KG on the basis of more than 100 criteria from five categories: innovation-promoting top management, innovation climate, innovative processes and organisation, external orientation/open innovation, and innovation success. Particularly important: innovations should not be a product of chance but systematically planned and therefore repeatable in the future.
Productive innovation environment
Alpha-Omega Technology sells hardware for building IoT environments through its own online shops iot-shop.de and, opened a year ago, helium-shop.eu, takes part in product developments such as the optical reader KLAX, supports innovative projects, establishes IoT networks for municipalities and companies together with partners, and advises on implementation. Managing director Jan Bose explains: "Innovation management is an integral part of our company. It gives our employees room for their ideas while we constantly optimise processes and focus on scalable processes. The result is a productive innovation environment from which my company and my team benefit equally."
In 2023, the IoT company Alpha-Omega Technology from Thuringia receives the TOP 100 seal for innovative SMEs for the second time.
Scaling potential
The online shop iot-shop.de was technically designed to allow further scaling. With the introduction of a fully integrated ERP system in 2020, the team was able to realise customer-specific shops on the same technical basis within short implementation times. "As a result, several closed shops have now been established under the main brand, accessible only to the selected key accounts. We were also able, for example, to extend our German-language B2B shop into a B2C shop as soon as the demand was there. Our shop for Helium hardware, helium-shop.eu , was implemented within a few weeks," reports Jan Bose. This was only possible because the IT infrastructure was designed for scaling from the very beginning. At Alpha-Omega Technology, all processes are built with scaling in mind. No process is set in stone, and each can adapt to new circumstances in the future. The skills of the team members are also continuously built up and expanded.
Lighthouse project "SMARTinfeld"
With the know-how of his team, his own many years of experience in deploying IoT hardware and his network in the business world, Jan Bose supports forward-looking initiatives such as the smart village model location SMARTinfeld. "In this project we implement use cases for smart city, smart village, smart building and smart environment under realistic conditions. This strengthens the region as a business location and at the same time helps to recruit regional employees," explains Jan Bose, who was entrusted with project management by the municipality. As a first step towards becoming a smart city, the municipality converted its entire street lighting to intelligent LED lights in 2017 and 2018. Since then, further applications have been added, such as an IoT weather station and the monitoring of road surface temperature and water quality.
The team: decentralised, digitally connected and agile
His employees are spread across several locations in Germany. "We are a virtual team. Our IT and our company organisation were designed from the start so that it does not matter where our employees work. With digital tools for location-independent collaboration, we can react quickly and flexibly to new requirements," explains Jan Bose. "We are not short of innovation either, rather of the time to implement all the ideas and improvements. As managing director, I have deliberately promoted this kind of corporate culture from the very beginning." The team continuously implements ideas and innovations within the Scrum project management methodology.
TOP 100: the importance of the innovation goal is decisive
So that all applicants have the same chances, the TOP 100 seal is awarded in three size categories: up to 50, 51 to 200 and more than 200 employees. In the 30th anniversary year of TOP 100, interest was particularly high: 550 medium-sized companies applied. "TOP 100 is about the question of how important the innovation goal is within the company," says Nikolaus Franke, scientific director of the competition. "Do routines and habits dominate, or is the company able to question the existing, think creatively and anew, and succeed in the market? We analyse this ability on the basis of more than 100 assessment criteria.“
On 23 June 2023, all top innovators of the 2023 class will gather in Augsburg for the award ceremony at the German SME Summit (Deutscher Mittelstands-Summit). There, the science journalist and mentor of the competition, Ranga Yogeshwar, will personally congratulate them on their TOP 100 success.