For high-tech providers such as Wincor Nixdorf, Research and Development (R&D) is more than just the basis of future success; our ability to innovate also helps to boost the competitiveness of our customers. With this firmly in mind, we increased global R&D expenses in fiscal 2007/2008 by 8% to €105 million (2006/2007: €97 million), leaving the R&D ratio (R&D expenses as a proportion of net sales) unchanged at 4.5%. In order to maintain our strong high-tech profile and allow us to drive forward research that will benefit our customers, we also took on additional staff in this area during the year under review, bringing the headcount of R&D personnel at the reporting date to 945 (2006/2007: 843), equivalent to 10% of the total headcount. They are based at our development sites in Germany, Switzerland, Brazil, Singapore and China. In Asia, we have combined our research and development resources at two sites in Shanghai and Singapore. Our strategy has proven to be very successful. Over the last 12 months our developers have been producing innovative concepts on a grand scale with 94 new patent applications worldwide (2006/2007: 75). The total number of active patents now stands at 1,045 (2006/2007: 1,028).
Main Focus of R&D Activities.
During the last fiscal year, our R&D activities focused predominantly on three areas:
- the development of convergent base technologies for our core business activities in retail banking, the retail industry and new branches
- improvements to the serviceability (Glossary) of our hardware and software with a view to reducing the cost to customers of operating our solutions (Glossary)
- software as the key to optimizing the overall branch process chains of retail banks and retailers
