4 December 2024. Bonn, In November 2024, the Bonn-based IT company BusinessCode celebrated its 25th anniversary. Since its foundation, BusinessCode has continuously developed together with its customers. Current trends and technological progress have always been incorporated into customer projects and the company’s own software library, BCD-Suite. ‘Right from the start, it was important for us to be up-to-date,’ begins CEO Martin Schulze. As an employee from the very beginning, Schulze knows what he is talking about. The IT expert started as a student assistant in December 1999 and has been managing the company since 2018.
‘Digitalization is our core business. We focus on flexible, customized solutions. Among other things, we are a sought-after partner for our customers in the logistics sector,’ says Schulze, explaining one of the software service provider’s main focuses with a view to well-known customers such as DHL Express, Kühne & Nagel, Aramex and Hellmann. Today, over 20,000 users worldwide use software ‘Made in Bonn’.
The history of BusinessCode is rather unusual for a software service provider. It is characterized by many years of cooperation with individual customers for whom solutions from BusinessCode have become a central component of the business model. This also includes the unusual step of a management buy-out in November 2020, when ten senior employees decided to take over the company, a step that particularly emphasizes the close ties between the employees and the company. The company was honored with the regional ‘Ludwig’ SME award in 2021 for this special succession.
But that’s not all. In October 2020, BusinessCode founded BlueBox Systems, a subsidiary specializing in the development of a software product for logistics. ‘We made a conscious decision to take this step in order to expand and round off our portfolio so that we can now offer an immediately usable product in addition to customized solutions and consulting,’ explains Schulze. BlueBox Systems can also address customers for whom in-house solution development with BusinessCode is not an option. The very different business models can be better realized with separate companies on the market.
BusinessCode has changed step by step, but many highly trained employees with extensive experience have remained. Many young IT talents have joined them. ‘As a result of this development, we have a very efficient team that works excellently with a mix of young and experienced employees,’ emphasizes CEO Schulze with an eye on the claim “IT for Future” and the next 25 years in Bonn.
And it is precisely such a future-proof solution based on future-proof technologies that BusinessCode is currently developing. ‘In the coming years, IT for companies will be shaped by three major mega-topics: the virtualization of infrastructure, cyber security and artificial intelligence,’ explains Managing Director and CTO Martin Bernemann. ‘We are developing processes and methods to make AI usable for companies,’ explains Harald Wagener, co-partner of BusinessCode and responsible for this new future-proof solution.
Caption: BusinessCode CEOs Martin Schulze and Martin Bernemann look back on 25 years and into the future