In recent years, we have increased our spending on research and development on average by 10%. The R&D ratio (R&D expenditure (Glossary) as a percentage of net sales) has remained constant at 4.5%. As of September 30, 2008, 945 employees were busy implementing this innovation strategy at our development sites in Germany, Switzerland, Brazil, Singapore and China.
All our research and development activities form an integral part of efforts across the entire Group to reduce production costs. As another means of improving our competitive position, we work closely with our suppliers to produce a clear picture of their processes and then identify the most suitable product for manufacturing purposes.
Main Focus of R&D Activities.
Our main R&D focus is currently on:
- further development of convergent base technologies that can be used to support process optimization in the retail banking and retail industries
- improvements to the serviceability (Glossary) of our hardware and software to reduce the cost to customers of running our solutions (Glossary)
- software as a key to optimizing the overall branch and store process chains of retail banks and retailers
