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100 articles

Notes from practice.

Where processes in mid-sized companies get stuck, when custom software pays off for you, and which automation actually saves you time. Short, practical pieces you can read before you commission anything.

General Articles6 min

4,333 job ads in the mid-market. First thesis: AI is barely a topic.

Thousands of mid-sized firms, observed continuously and counted: what do they publish themselves? First thesis from 4,333 job ads: AI is barely a topic.

Jonas HöttlerRead article
Topics
General Articles13 min

What a Change Really Costs: Process, Data and Systems Belong Together

Automating a way of working always changes three things at once: the process itself, the data underneath it, and the systems that carry both. When those sit in three separate documents, every cost estimate is a guess. A simpler way to do it, and what AI is allowed to do here.

Automation · IT Landscape · Cost Estimation · Data Quality

General Articles13 min

Automating Processes: What Pays Off and What Doesn't

Almost anything can be automated technically. So the arithmetic decides, not the feasibility: five variables, one case worked through in full.

Process Automation · Automation · ROI · Business Case

General Articles14 min

134 European Alternatives Reviewed, and This Site Fails Its Own Test

Digital dependency can be measured instead of lamented. What reviewing 134 European products teaches you, why the location of the server is the wrong question, and why the tool itself gives a poor score to the very site it runs on.

Digital Sovereignty · Europe · Open Source · Cloud

General Articles12 min

The Seed and the Farm: Why the Best Open AI Models Are Being Given Away

Chinese labs are releasing frontier-class models as free downloads – and still making money. What “open weight” actually means, who it affects, why Nvidia is for it and Anthropic against it. And what a mid-sized company should take from it about its own dependencies.

Artificial Intelligence · Open Weight · LLM · Strategy

General Articles17 min

Eight Keys, One Lock: How an Advanced Chip Gets Built

No country on Earth can build an advanced chip alone. A tour through the eight chokepoints of the most concentrated supply chain ever assembled — and the dependency-mapping lessons that apply to any company, not just chipmakers.

Supply Chain · Semiconductors · Concentration Risk · Dependency Mapping

Company News8 min

From Paper Stacks to a Real-Time Fleet: a Haulage Firm Goes Digital

A driver app, an admin portal and a digital departure check for a mid-sized haulage company — multilingual, GDPR-compliant and in production. A case study with no names, but plenty of substance.

Fleet Management · Logistics · Haulage · Compliance

General Articles13 min

What Used to Take Months: The Case for Building Your Own Tools

A tool that once cost months of development and a small fortune now takes weeks. Why that flips the build-versus-buy question for mid-sized companies – told through one logistics case.

Mid-Sized Business · Custom Software · Build vs Buy · Digital Transformation

General Articles15 min

Concentration Risk: The Case for European Software Independence

A single government letter switched off two AI models for every customer overnight. A measured look at why concentration — not any one country — is the real risk, and which barriers Europe should remove to compete.

Digital Sovereignty · Europe · Concentration Risk · Artificial Intelligence

Guides & Tutorials8 min

What Does Software Development Really Cost? Prices, Drivers & Hidden Costs

What software development truly costs cannot be read off a price list. Three patterns we see in our projects again and again – and the questions to clarify before you hire anyone.

Softwareentwicklung · Kosten · Budget · Preise

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In an intro call you find out where the biggest lever in your process is and whether a change pays off for you.

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