It did not start at a desk.

At 18, Olaf Remmele founded his first company — IT infrastructure for the Mittelstand, from cabling to the server, run on his own responsibility alongside his period of active service.

Years followed as a consultant and technical project manager for banking and energy companies. Within one company he built up his own consulting division, which was later sold successfully, and subsequently led one of the largest IT rollout projects in Germany.

As CIO he stood at points where processes decided whether a company would survive.

At a gravure printing company he industrialised the entire order process, including prepress — newly developed and implemented step by step. The first site was already running successfully with the new processes and the adapted software. The process knowledge that emerged from this later passed to a software service provider, who used it to win and industrialise further companies. The process itself thus carried on beyond the original project — an early proof that good process work has a value that exists independently of the individual company.

The last 13 years bring all of this together.

As managing director of a group of companies with very different lines of business — from customer care and document processing to billing in healthcare and electrical installation — Olaf Remmele has borne operational responsibility for 13 companies in the Mittelstand. These included four acquisitions, which he carried out and integrated. One of these units, a BPO provider for complex customer service, grew from 220 to 1,000 employees in a short time — not through the lowest price, but because it stood for a process quality that other providers did not offer. In addition, as the IT lead at holding-company level, he fundamentally overhauled the core applications and processes of further group companies with a large team over several years.