Hidden champion but not for long! CEO Gerald Kromer on the podcast

Despite this market position, Kromer clearly names a challenge in the podcast:

"Too many organizations make decisions about their compliance platform without knowing ASC at all without even thinking of us. We are a hidden champion. And the 'hidden' part is a bit of our problem."

Decisions about compliance platforms are no longer made solely on the basis of technical evaluations increasingly, they are driven by brand awareness. If a CCO or CIO doesn’t already have you in mind when they start their research, you often don’t even make the long list

That is the context in which ASC is actively working on its market presence with the ambition that the brand’s visibility matches the strength of its technology.

Company culture alone doesn’t fully explain the success. What also comes into play is a clear understanding of what it means to operate at the technological forefront on an ongoing basis. Kromer puts it directly:

“Mission-critical” is not as hyperbole, but as a precise assessment. ASC competes with American corporations that deploy many times the resources. In this competition, there is no middle ground. Either you deliver excellent software and stay close to customers and partners or you fall behind.

Every one of the following company decisions: the Microsoft partnership, the native cloud approach, the AI integration reflects exactly this mindset.

When Microsoft Teams began its rise through the enterprise market from 2017 onwards, ASC made an early decision: not to observe this development from the sidelines, but to help shape it. The partnership with Microsoft led to jointly developing the compliance API for Teams — at a point in time when this was anything but a foregone conclusion.

"We were one of three companies worldwide that co-developed this compliance API for Teams with Microsoft. And that is quite an achievement for a software company from Hösbach."

"Sometimes as an entrepreneur you also need a little luck. We had hit the right moment — when Microsoft was also looking for partners."

Technological substance and the right timing. Both together made this partnership possible. A collaboration that continues to shape how ASC operates in the market today: staying close to platform development by partners like Microsoft and delivering new integrations early.

But the Microsoft partnership was never just a strategic signal to the outside world. It had a direct impact on the architecture of the solutions themselves. If you commit early to a communications platform and actively participate in its development, you build differently: more scalable, more integrative, and designed for global requirements. This difference remains tangible in customer conversations today — particularly when companies are evaluating the speed, reliability, and global availability of their compliance infrastructure.

What it actually means to develop cloud-native rather than operating server-based systems becomes clear quickly in practice: a German insurance company wanted to roll out its compliance solution simultaneously in Germany, Australia, and South Africa, and asked ASC and a competitor the same question: How long does implementation take?

The competitor planned on-site engineer deployments. The answer: six weeks.

"We said: two hours. There is Azure in South Africa, there is Azure in Australia. I can activate it wherever you need it."

For IT leaders, this becomes relevant the moment a new office opens, an acquisition closes, or a regulatory deadline is set. Six weeks is simply not an option.

"One-day-readiness" at ASC is not a marketing promise — it is the direct result of an architectural decision. For organizations with international operations, this means compliance infrastructure that grows with the business: no lead times, no technician travel, no rollout projects.

ASC is a software company. But when Kromer talks about the future, he doesn’t talk about roadmaps. He talks about people.

“Our only asset is our people. We live and breathe having good, motivated people.”

That may sound like standard corporate language — until you put it in context. ASC is a family-owned company from Bavaria’s Main region that operates on equal footing with American billion-dollar corporations. In this competition, what ultimately makes the difference isn’t processes — it’s people who genuinely enjoy what they do.

“When I conduct hiring interviews, I always talk about this: We are a global company — do you enjoy that? I enjoy it. And those are the people you need to find.”

An employee recently told Kromer he hadn’t expected to work with such interesting technologies again in his career. That’s not an employer branding quote. It’s the result of a company culture run on the conviction that technological leadership and personal growth are not in conflict.