Accelerating its strategic agenda in tech and data , Bertelsmann - a global media, services, and education company - began connecting experts across the group and enabling them to work jointly on innovative software projects amongst its seven divisions – RTL Group, Penguin Random House, BMG, Arvato Group, Bertelsmann Marketing Services, Bertelsmann Education Group and Bertelsmann Investments Today the BCP connects more than 6,000 colleagues for knowledge sharing and collaboration. In partnership with Deloitte, both companies launched a new tech sharing marketplace on the BCP allowing rapid sharing and scaling of internal software developments via APIs within the Group.
The digital era has ushered in a whole new playing field of technologies, and Bertelsmann has been at the forefront of many innovative developments such as AI for media, in OCR and address verification software, a sentiment analysis tool, and video recognition for entertainment content. However, sharing these achievements across other business units had its challenge, as accessibility and transfer of solutions were complex to operationalize.
With the help of Deloitte CAMPfire, a solution borne out of a deep understanding of intra-group technology, the BCP was able to overcome Group's challenges by offering a center stage for tech sharing. The platform's user interface could be customized for each company and even provided as a backend-only service allowing for an highly integrate approach. This enabled seamless and legally compliant provisioning, sharing, pricing, and billing of digital assets across all markets, thus stimulating enterprise-wide software innovation.
But the collaboration needed more than just technological expertise – it also required solutions addressing challenges such as transfer pricing and other legal factors. The teams comprising experts in business, technology, legal, and cyber departments from both Bertelsmann and Deloitte came together to deliver a successful proof of concept.
Following four months of intensive work, including feasibility studies, developing first APIs, and extensive testing, the SaaS Marketplace was born. The platform's critical success factors boiled down to time-to-market, total cost of ownership, and functionality.
The launch of the digital marketplace is only the beginning. Looking ahead, Rhys Noelke and Jan-Niklas Keltsch envision growing the ecosystem by opening the ecosystem. „Looking at the dynamics here at Google Next, we will soon see more companies networking with each other and perhaps sharing their digital assets not only internally, but in meta-marketplaces across company boundaries as well.” shares Dr. Jan-Niklas Keltsch. Rhys Noelke adds “We already see the potential of Gen AI, that has already made a huge positive impact on the BCP with many experts sharing our vision to benefit from collaboration in tech.”
The goal is clear: with the new CAMPfire SaaS Marketplace, Bertelsmann strives to become a leading player in the application of AI, cloud and data technologies, employing the diverse competencies and knowledge sharing capabilities within the Group. The narrative of collaboration between Bertelsmann and Deloitte echoes a shared ethos and symbolises a beacon of hope in the realm of digital tech exchange, lighting a path for others to follow.
