Apenberg & Partner

Helping print companies face the future

Johannes Warther is Senior Consultant at Apenberg & Partner in Hamburg, Germany, specialising in consulting for the print industry.

“I never would’ve thought I’d end up in the print industry… everybody thinks print is dead and so did I. But they are wrong about the industry; it’s just massively, fundamentally changing and there are huge challenges involved,” said Johannes.

Johannes helps these businesses – some of which are 130 years old and have been run across multiple generations – to move forward and adapt their business model to face the future in these rapidly changing environments.

“We’ve got a checklist (pretty long, it scares people sometimes) and we pass that checklist to our clients and we say ‘this is the information we need. If you don’t have everything right now, then that’s ok; we’ll work on it. Information starts trickling in, we file it, and with Ansarada, we’ve found out that now you can do this in a smarter way.”

With Ansarada, this information can be digitized using Pathways or Deal Workflow and shared with clients to upload their documentation much more securely and efficiently.

“If anything, it means that should you ever get into a situation where you feel like you would like to sell your business, you are prepared… in terms of the data that needs to be provided to [potential investors], it’s pretty much the push of a button,” said Johannes.

Ultimately, the key to success is governing your information to a degree that you are always placed to act quickly and respond to the changing market.

“If you want to know what you need to be doing to make your business run well, it’s put it in a place where it’s sellable,” said Johannes. “If your business is in such a condition that you could sell it at any time, you’ve done everything right. (And you’d probably not want to sell it, because it goes right!) But should you ever want to, or need to, or have to, you can.”