Anniversary year for CDS

The company CDS Service GmbH with headquarters in Lage/Lippe (near Bielefeld) celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. The company does exist in its recent legal form as GmbH since 1993. Within the past 25 years CDS has been firmly established throughout their technology services at various renowned manufacturers.

“A quarter-century of company history. This does not happen on its own“, underlines Paul Koch, managing director of the CDS Service GmbH.“ Therefore, I would like to say thank you to all of our employees, business partners and customers for the outstanding collaboration, loyalty and the joint success stories.”

The beginning of the CDS Service GmbH is being located two years previous the formation of the company. In 1991 they started to handle the demo pool of HP (former: Hewlett-Packard) as an external service provider. CDS as a sole proprietorship was born. Over the 1990s the business unit „Rental“ has continued to develop positively. Essentially loan processes are managed there. New customers have been acquired, the company has moved to a new location as well as new premises have been built. At the end of the 1990s, the predecessor of the current Limes software has been developed. Paul Koch, managing director of CDS Service GmbH remembers: „The enterprise resource planning system for loan units has been web based at that time and was from today’s point of view forward-thinking.”

Together with increasing turnover, the quantity of employees rises steadily. Another business sector „Remarketing“ has been developed at the turn of the century. Since then the demo devices were self-financed and afterwards refurbished as well as resold. As at the beginning of the 2000s a long-term business partner decided to conclude their processes internally again, this led to huge increase in turnover, which forced CDS to make around two thirds of employees redundant. „This has been a really hard time for all of us. Never-the-less we understood this as a chance and were convinced, that this may lead to a new start. Perhaps the East Westphalian pragmatism helps in these kind of situations, which forces us to roll up our sleeves and to look forward“, Paul Koch points out. Meanwhile the processes are managed by CDS again.

Whether pragmatic or solution-oriented, the new beginning has definitely succeeded. In recent years, CDS Service GmbH has stably positioned itself on the market as IT and high-tech service provider and has made a name for itself as a niche provider of tailor-made solutions. In the meantime, the company from Lage serves manufacturers and wholesalers throughout Europe in the branches of IT, electrical as well as medical technology industries. The business units were expanded to include hardware rollout and IT repairs. With the opening of the extension building, the renaming and the relaunch of the corporate design last year, further pillars of the CDS growth strategy have been established. Meanwhile, more than 100 employees are working from the locations in East Westphalia-Lippe and southern Germany for a total turnover of € 22 million (2017).

"Every business unit with the right software solution and individual service modules - we have done very well so far with this model, which means that digitalization affects us to the highest degree and we are constantly working on improving our products, developing new ideas and solutions, as well as living up to our quality standards", explains Koch.

For the future, Paul Koch sees the CDS Service GmbH and its affiliate companies solidly positioned: "Although our rental processes have a different origin, they can be transferred and adapted to the current development of the 'rent instead of buying' models. This is our approach to develop the business area "Rental" and make it fit for the future."