That’s okay, no worries.

Yeah, everything’s fine. Perfect

Yes, hello. Thank you Ma’am. It’s great to be here, thanks for inviting me to talk about test exchange and our learnings. I'm really fascinated about engineering and technology and that is also my background and the core of test exchange. I’m a trained mechanical engineer, working in test engineering for a long time in research, in the automotive industry even at the Porsche research and development centre of testing transmissions, emissions and materials. I later on built my own material lab, based on a new testing method that I developed with friends and partners of mine in the research institutions and that gave birth to test exchange, the marketplace for the testing industry and yeah, I’m happy to go into details to look at how we’re doing this and why we are so convinced that this is something that was missing in this industry.

Yeah, sure. So testing is not something that everybody knows, but probably everybody needs in some way. So, every product, every physical product that we use, would it be cars or phones or hair dryers, whatever, needs some sort of testing before it can go to the market. That is because there's regulations, there's laws that producers have to fulfil, there's also performance questions that the manufacturers need to clarify. So of course, if you drive a car and you drive it to Finland and it's minus 35 degrees you're of course, expecting your car to start and open the door properly and that needs to be tested before that product can go into sales, and so this affects all of us and there's a large number of test labs out there that cater to these clients as, for example, car makers or Apple phone makers and so on and we connect the two sides with our marketplace.

We connect the manufacturers to the test labs because it's not always clear where and which company would be the best choice for the project at hand and maybe a little bit to our history. Yeah, I just quickly pointed out, I built up my own lab in the beginning, and I was not happy with many aspects of how interaction works with the clients and about the transparency of this market, so that gave birth to our platform and you already mentioned quickly, it’s more than a marketplace because these services are quite complex, it’s a complicated, technical problem and so, it’s not as easy to choose and find the right supplier, as it might be with hotels or consumer goods that you just want to buy.

Absolutely, yes. So in the very beginning, before even launching our marketplace, we built a database with the supply side, all the labs, and we needed to do this because as I said, those are complex services and it's not obvious to the demand side to the clients, who does what kind of testing, and so we built up this very large database, today comprising more than 7000 labs and listing for each individual lab. Mostly, couple hundreds of test methods that they actually offer and today, this is of course growing by itself but in the beginning this was our effort and we were looking for this information and compiling it into a structured forum into a database and that was also our way of solving this chicken, egg problem. We put this offering site online in a way that all these labs have something like a storefront, something like an online presence on our marketplace and the demand side could find those labs by browsing through our website and that is how we grew the demand site and at the same time, having offering site listed, we could, we call this onboard these labs by forwarding real request for business to these labs and I think this is a quite elegant and effective way of growing both sides, because of course if you come with an actual offer to a lab and tell them, this is our test exchange, we’re a marketplace and here’s a client that’s looking for something you are offering, would you like to take part? That was an easy pitch mostly and we’re able to grow the supplies quite quickly actually

Exactly, they didn't have to do anything. We just came with a real offer and connected the two sides and then, after a while when they got interested and accepted our terms and say, hey, this is great, let's work together. Then of course, we invited everybody to take over the profile and edit the profile and extend it and improve it and add more information and this is now a user curated database if you want and people are uploading quite a bit of information then correcting and putting emphasis on things they want to offer, taking out maybe things that they're not so interested in offering and so this is something that gets better every day and of course, the clients love this fact because they have been working with their own tool to keep track of what their suppliers do and this could be an Excel sheet for example, that’s always outdated if you want and so we have a much better offering already today for that problem

Yeah, that's right. Finding a lab is not, the biggest problem is that, maybe it could be one of the problems in the beginning, but one of the things that happens in these testing projects is that the collaboration between let's say, a larger client, an automotive maker maybe, or an aerospace company working together with, or contracting a small lab, because those are usually smaller kind of companies, called this middle standing, in Germany. Maybe 20, 50, a 100 people or so, not huge corporates usually. So if these two sides work together, then of course the lab is not able to provide the perfect tools that such clients would love to use, meaning, getting a status, for example, on our testing project or automatically entering data that is produced in the lab into the ERP or any other system that maybe the engineers use is not so common as we might expected and that is also one of my personal experiences, that we had to invest quite a lot of time for our clients in order to do things that didn't have to be done in a synchronous way.

So, for example, our clients would call us up or try to call us and they would reach us just for asking one small question, for example, the status of a project that could absolutely be put into a dashboard on the platform and then people are informed right away, we don’t have to speak about this via the phone and so, our initial idea of this platform, the vision absolutely comprises more than the marketplace, much more because we’re offering a real software for collaboration between those two parties of the market

Absolutely. Yes

Yes, that depends on what the client needs. So, if we help the client to find a new lab, we monetize this with a commission model, so basically we're matchmaking a lab to a customer, and we get paid by the lab with a commission on that business that is done. We also monetize in a classic license fee model, our software that we are improving and building still, meaning that if the two parties have been working together already for some time, and they're not actually looking, so the client is not looking for new lab, but he's looking for improving his way of working with that lab, then we charge both sides to pay us their license fee for using our software

We think this, both sides will be probably an equally strong revenue source for us because we already see that, for our clients, it's really important to not only find the right lab, but also to be able to get the contracting part of these projects done quickly. The contracting part, meaning choosing the right lab and then starting the project and that could also be if they already have options and they have partners where they could do the testing. So we see ourselves moving into a direction where we offer more services from our side, more technical services also, so we can really quickly quote on actual projects for the client and help him to get the right partner contracted and we’re even moving to, if you want a subcontracting role, where we act as a virtual lab, using all our lab partners as our resources and offering our clients a service where we are one single supplier to this company.

So that is an additional service that has a great potential and that has developed really well in this year especially, but of course, as the software side grows and features gets more depth, more vertical integration into both companies, the more we can of course charge for the service and this added value and so we really see this as equally important to our platform.

Yeah, that is absolutely correct and that is, I think one of the strengths also that we already provide to the market that we do have this large variety of different testing areas, different industries and just as you pointed out, the need for a collaboration software is different in those different industries and it’s very pronounced, for example, in testing electronics just as mobile phones for example, but now, even more important in the future will be connected devices, that’s very complex to test, huge amount of tests need to be done, a lot of regulations need to be fulfilled and here, our software is giving a lot of value because if you test such a device, today toasters have Bluetooth module or a refrigerator, all these home appliances or any component for cars or other vehicles have some sort of a connectivity and to test this, the software can really help to get the test planning done to get overview and status of the testing and to save a lot of money and a lot of effort on that side but, in other industries, you mentioned medical devices.

This year, of course, the personal protective equipment face masks and gloves, and all these things are a huge topic during the pandemic. Of course, the testing of these things is more manual and it also could be done quicker and here, our service of providing an overview and quoting fast and getting the contract in place quickly is a huge advantage to our clients in that industry

Yeah, that’s a very important topic, that’s true and it starts probably with making sure that the providers that we offer have high standards of quality, that is in part insured by the fact that most important labs have lab accreditation, there’s a management system in place for these labs and if you want to, for example, sell face masks in Europe, especially the filtering face masks for example, there’s special rules and a certificate you need for that and yes, there’s a lot of falsification done with that but if you do the testing at an accredited lab, that is actually accredited for this type of test you’re doing, then you can make sure that the quality of testing has the standard that is needed by the law and the rules applied in the EU.

Of course, and we’ve seen this so much this year, there’s a lot of falsification with certificates, people just start to falsify the actual document, the paper basically, that is actually not that complicated to avoid these problems, if you check out the number of the certificate and then go back and see who did this, does it actually exist and if it doesn’t exist, you can say sorry but this is not sufficient for selling this in our market and this way, protecting the consumers. As I told you, we have seen so many of these falsified certificates that’s actually very important to take a deeper look into those things and see what’s on the market and even so, we have seen some interesting products in the market also

Absolutely. That's a key element to the platform, the trust issue, especially in this industry, and not only because of the personal safety of all of us using these products, but also from the customer view, it's just too important for most customers to get this right in the first shot basically. If we’re talking about an automotive company testing, let's say a rear light of some vehicle that has built several hundred thousand of times per year and you have to realize three, maybe.

Then, of course you want to make sure that this product is not failing and of course this would be a huge cost if it did, but also the actual testing of this product is very expensive, it can be hundreds of thousands of euros. So yes, trust is of highest importance and we're making sure that we fulfil this by, for example, showing all the necessary accreditation and by providing a secure environment on our website, of course.

Yes, we are building that up and that is of course a classic tool that is used, especially in the B2C environment, because people of course trust the opinions of other people quite a bit .We call that or we consider that more of a soft approach to provide to the user, because as I said if you are contracting an accredited laboratory, then there is no such thing as manipulating data, especially, it’s not only a PDF you’re getting, it’s very usual that the clients also request raw data from the actual measurements and those are calibrated measuring instruments and so, that is really something more unlikely I would say, that data gets falsified in the lab for example, but it is a great tool for a platform to offer the experiences of other clients on softer facts just as, how was responsiveness?, maybe how was the project dealt with? Were they on time? Did they deliver exactly what they were promising and these things which are maybe just as important to a customer, as the more hard facts like data measuring the object

Yes. So we already see this coming our way, especially from the automotive industry, that there's a high demand for data protection and confidentiality and there's a standard for this, for the automotive industry implementing quality standards, ISO 16,949 where you have to ensure that all parties involved are safe in terms of there's no data leakage and there can be no problem issues with confidentiality, that is something we are already offering , of course SSL, encrypted environment, which is safe for the user today, but what we are still building up and which will be more important in the future is, it's for the two sides that are involved only to be de decrypted basically, that is something we do not offer yet, but we see that could be more important in the future and of course, even today , this is a great step forward because we do see a lot of the communication that goes from clients to labs and the other way, going through un-encrypted emails with attachments that actually need to be protected and that raises the question, what is the status quo today and where can really deliver some more value? And I think I just pointed out where, so that is something where we can increase the value we add quite a bit in the future.

There could be, I think that it's a very interesting technology that could be used, especially if we look at sharing data with other parties, for example, I in my lab have experienced this quite a bit that different clients ask for the same product to be tested, and of course the result is the same or similar and so we could think into the future building of databases of testing results, for example, for materials, there's companies out there already that built this and to make sure that everything which is in there is correctly treated and tested.

Blockchain could be one of the fundamental technologies used here. I don't know if our industry today in the way we operate is yet prepared for technologies of that kind, just because this industry is quite under digitalized right now and so, we have to catch up building basic things and I think we're already building the infrastructure for this market and this industry by what we're offering and so, there’s a way to go but absolutely, blockchain could be something that can be of importance in the future.

Absolutely, rolling out our marketplace onto a global scale is not trivial. We see that there's so many different markets and there's so many different ways of running and operating a lab in different countries and just the sheer task of compiling all this data about all the labs is not as easy as it might sound. So, there's quite a bit of work to do and the under digitalization is of course not helping so much because it's just unheard of for some clients to log into a dashboard and shoot them the message to your lab via the dashboard, and then attaching documents to that, even though it's so much easier and so much safer.

We do things like supporting internet Explorer 11 for example, right now, because I don't know how old this is probably 10 years old or so, just because our partners use that program still and so you can see that there's some work to be done but I think we have been lucky and really fortunate of being received quite well in the market, also on the side from the labs, because of course the platform also could be seen as a potential problem for that market.

Absolutely, yeah. Access to markets for manufacturers is a huge topic. So the same product that they sell in Europe and Europe is quite a big single market could pose quite a problem if it's supposed to be sold in Brazil or in Egypt, maybe or in these countries that are not part of the EU or maybe the North American market or Asian, like to China and so, that is also something that we can absolutely provide and help finding the right partner for those markets and that's reducing the time to market for manufacturers which is a key element for their success of course, to get this done quickly. So that is, something we hear quite a bit from our customers.

Absolutely. Yes, we do see the regulations getting more restricted almost every month, basically because we are passing laws and rules, that make products more sustainable and then that leads to more testing, plus to go all the way back to our conversation. All of a sudden, maybe the client does know who's actually offering that new kind of test for that new kind of rule that was just applied and yes, we absolutely see ourselves also as being part of a larger problem that's affecting everybody and is so important to us to work on sustainability and I think we, as a platform are helping also in this aspect, for example, by making sure that the testing gets done more locally. We have such a globalized supply chain in some areas, that it's just normal for clients to bring a product from China and then test it here and then send it back to China for example, just because it's the traditional way that worked so far very well, but we, with our global footprint now, our partner labs can absolutely offer to do the testing of maybe a larger product that is produced in China, do the testing also in China, because it's later on built into a product that is assembled in China.

So, it really doesn't make send this around the world and then send it back and that is, I think, quite an important part of where we can help out, plus of course, another aspect is that offering a better market transparency also gives the client the possibility to choose a more sustainable partner in whatever way for example, if he can choose between two labs and one is offering testing methods that are just less energy intensive, then he could be relying on that partner and fulfil his own goals in terms of sustainability, easier than before.

Yes, that’s true. It is not the priority number one, absolutely not and that is a problem, of course, for all of us, because it's all these little parts that play into working on a more sustainable world but I'm pointing out that we are able to offer such services if they get the priority and of course that is probably up to legislation or internal rules within the clients to actually make that happen. That is not something we can do for them, but we can help and offering the infrastructure and the possibilities via our platform, but yes, digitalization in general and other topics that we discussed today are of higher priority, especially time to market and getting things done fast.

Exactly. Very true

Perfect. Yeah, it was my pleasure and thank you very much for inviting me. It's always beautiful to share what one is doing, and to be honest, the testing and certification industry is not something that is on everybody's mind all the times. So, we're happy to share a little bit of insights here and yeah, that would be great to talk in the future and see how things are going and if we could contribute a little bit to the digitalization of that industry, testing and certification.

So building up a platform and a marketplace, I think is by definition, a complicated thing because you have to build these two sides and it's not only the chicken egg problem. It's just more complex to take care of several sides and so, we have experienced that you have to try a lot of things until you find the way to be successful and that's hard and tiring and you have to put a lot of effort and a lot of patience also into this, especially in B2B markets, I think it takes a little bit of time and so I would ask everybody to be a little bit patient, be consistent and follow your plan, but also be open and flexible enough to try other things, maybe even in parallel, even though of course, other parties might always say you have to focus on one thing and you have to do this and then you maybe fail with doing this.

So, I think it's really important to stay flexible, try many things and be patient and I know that is probably classic advice that maybe everybody gives it, but I think it is really not and this can't be stressed enough how important the team is and how it's the team that is actually building this and so, I think it's really worth trusting your gut feeling with the people you work with and then taking care of them quite a bit and foster and work on being an actual team that pulls forward. I think that is really the key of being successful and that is not nothing new really but it’s still true for us at least

That’s right

Thank you and good luck and all the best to you guys.