Company

Our "crew" regularly arranges major events like our annual sailing weekend on the Dutch wadden sea. Those who invest in team building create an extraordinary feeling of togetherness.

On a daily basis, we actively promote a principle of dialogue with each individual, within our teams and with our business partners. We meet each other with interest, openness, eye-to-eye contact, empathy and respect. Only if all five requirements are met, do we create a dialogue, the foundation of our corporate culture.

As Germany's leading specialist for store-individual optimization of space, range and placement, we received the European patent EP 2697752 (= WO 2012/139747) for the "method for producing individual shelf images for different sales locations". According to this patent-protected method, the Hoffrogge software creates store-individual planograms in a unique and highly efficient way. The time-consuming creation and maintenance of master planograms, also called mother planograms, is not necessary in the Hoffrogge software.

In a simultaneous process, the assortment determined on the basis of key performance indicators taking into account strategic requirements and local sales performance is produced as a rule-based planogram according to shopper-oriented placement principles with an exact fit to the shelf structure available in an individual outlet! This process saves the user of the Hoffrogge software a great amount of time and is therefore a prerequisite for the true scalability of outlet-specific optimization - both in the back-office and in-store.

Over 800 companies participated in the Great Place to Work® competition in 2022 and took part in an anonymous employee survey with an detailed cultural audit. The results are measurable and comparable within a region, an industry or even across Germany.

As a part of this year's "Germany´s Best Workplaces", "Lower Saxony / Bremen´s Best Workplaces " and "Best Workplaces in ITC" competitions, we are pleased to have received three awards, as we already did in 2019. This is the second time that we have been one of the top-ranked companies whose workplace culture is characterized to a particularly high degree by trust, respect and team spirit.

Great Place to Work® is an internationally recognized research and consulting institute that supports companies in over 100 countries worldwide in shaping an employee-oriented corporate culture. A trust-driven and high-performance culture not only ensures motivation and loyalty on the part of employees but also strengthens the economic performance of a company.

In March 2022, we were awarded a gold medal by EcoVadis, the leading sustainability rating agency, for our performance in the area of corporate social responsibility. We achieved the 97th percentile rank of all companies assessed by EcoVadis and are among the top three percent with this result.

The award reflects the quality of our company's CSR performance and confirms our commitment to sustainable development.

EcoVadis evaluates participating companies based on their performance in four thematic areas: Environment, Labor and Human Rights, Ethics and Sustainable Procurement. More than 90,000 companies work together on the EcoVadis platform to have their performance evaluated and improve their CSR activities.

This coveted award, which is also known as the “Oscar” of the consumer goods industry, was presented for the 15th time in 2017. Around 400 invited guests from top management of leading manufacturing and retailing companies attended the celebratory gala at BMW Welt in Munich.

After receiving the award in 2014, we were once again honoured with the ECR Award in the Demand Side business cooperation category for a joint project with Rewe and Mondelēz International. In the project, we developed outlet-specific sales forecasts in order to optimise order quantities for seasonal business.

Together with our partners, we developed the forecast model on the basis of around 4 billion data sets from the Rewe check-out system and well-based insights into shopper behaviour. Outlet-specific order recommendations for more than 3,000 Rewe stores were implemented directly through the Rewe ordering system or through the Mondelēz International field service. An exemplary use of “big data” for more efficiency throughout the value chain, this resulted in a significant increase in sales and, at the same time, a significant reduction in costs thanks to fewer residual goods.

Together with REWE, ABInBev and Coca-Cola, we won the 2014 Demand Side “industry Oscar”. The ECR Award honors outstanding multi-company management cooperation for the consumer.

The prestigious award was presented during a celebratory gala with around 400 guests from top management of leading manufacturing and retailing companies at the Meistersinger Hall in Nuremberg. Under the motto "every outlet is different", we jointly implemented a forward-looking project.

The idea: a nationally consistent concept for beer and non-alcoholic beverages in all REWE beverage stores, which simultaneously takes into account outlet-specific conditions and the very different local consumer needs. The result in numbers: REWE increased its sales in the converted stores for beer by 9.4 percent and for non-alcoholic beverages by 8.5 percent. The concept was implemented in 200 REWE stores in just three months, with 600 more to follow. The analysis-supported work processes we provided and the software programs specially developed for this purpose make it possible to optimize each individual outlet over a large number of stores.

As part of the annual general meeting of the local Medium Business Association (MIT), we were honoured with the business award in April 2018. In a celebratory atmosphere at Gut Altona in Wildeshausen, we received the "Triumph" with great pleasure in front of around 230 guests.

We are very delighted by this regional award. Many topics that have been of great importance to us for many years were highlighted in the presentation speech as reasons for granting us the award. In particular, our development from a small consulting firm into a technology company, as well as the high employee satisfaction due to our dialogue-oriented corporate culture were singled out.

Since the company was founded, we have made it possible for 36 young people to complete apprenticeships, and we are currently employing nine apprentices in three different professions. We have already been honored five times by the Chamber of Industry and Commerce for outstanding performance in vocational training. At 44%, our proportion of female employees is significantly above average, especially in a technological market sector. Our social and ecological commitment and loyalty to Wildeshausen were also decisive for the jury.

At the start of 2021, we were accepted into the Lower Saxony Alliance for Sustainability. Environment Minister Olaf Lies presented us with the "We're in." label at our site in Wildeshausen in May. The award recognizes special commitment to corporate sustainability in the three areas of ecology, economy and social affairs.

The implementation of our corporate climate protection concept was recognized as an ecological measure. For example, we promote climate-friendly mobility and motivate our employees to travel CO₂-neutrally by means of incentive systems. Furthermore, e-charging stations were installed on the company premises and company vehicles were converted to e-mobility. Within three years, we were able to reduce the CO₂ footprint per employee by around 60% through numerous climate protection measures.

The investments in sustainable and particularly energy-efficient technologies in the office building led to the corresponding recognition in the economic area.

The social area of sustainability is expressed through our special commitment to the younger generation. Our company's trainee ratio is above average in the country.

We are very pleased to receive this award. It is a strong motivation for us to commit ourselves to even greater sustainability within the alliance.

Climate change is the central issue of our time. To meet our social responsibility, we are committed to more climate protection. After determining our CO₂ footprint with the service provider KlimAktiv, we compensated our total greenhouse gas emissions retroactively since the company was founded in 2001, through a certified reforestation project.

In addition to the numerous measures implemented for more climate protection, we as a climate-neutral company support the certified reforestation of 100.000 trees, which corresponds to an area of approximately 60 hectares or 84 football pitches. The planted trees will in future remove approx. 18.000 t CO₂ from the atmosphere. 50.000 trees have already been planted in Nicaragua through the myclimate carbon offset project "municipal reforestation" as part of our previous activities.

It was important for us to support the planting of trees, as this has been proven to help absorb CO₂ from the atmosphere. At the same time, this also increases the diversity of species in the forests. The local people are integrated into the projects, which contributes to an improvement of their living conditions. We have set ourselves the target of avoiding environmental pollution as far as possible, continuously reducing our CO₂ footprint and neutralizing unavoidable greenhouse gas emissions in the future.

Our office building is already particularly energy-efficient. We cover our electricity needs with green electricity. Heating is provided by renewable energy from renewable raw materials. The conversion of company vehicles to e-mobility has already begun and the corresponding charging infrastructure has been installed. Further measures for active climate protection are: avoiding air travel, promoting the use of trains, buses and carpools, holding business meetings in the form of video conferences and raising the awareness of all employees through training courses.

With the principle "avoid - reduce - compensate", we actively take on this responsibility as a company.