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References

Selected projects in software development, IT administration and IT consulting. Projects from Frank Maier’s career before founding M4IER are marked as such. Where clients or former employers are not named, we describe them anonymously.

Frank Maier’s experience in figures

Years of enterprise IT
21
National subsidiaries in a global platform rollout
56
Transaction volume of the commerce platform led
> €1bn

  1. Development · SAP & commerce

    Festo SE & Co. KG

    Frank Maier’s project experience, before M4IER

    Industry
    Industrial automation (B2B)
    Company size
    Group with 56 national subsidiaries
    Duration
    2025–2026
    Technologies
    • REST/OData APIs
    • API governance
    • API security
    • n8n
    • Intelligent Document Processing
    • EDI

    Partner integration & commercial APIs (API4BIZ)

    Starting point

    Distributors, dealers and end customers were to connect directly and automatically to the sales systems.

    Solution

    As enterprise / system architect with hands-on API development: strategy and delivery of commercial APIs, complemented by n8n automation and AI-assisted document processing.

    Result

    Commercial APIs delivered for distributors, dealers and end customers; partner ecosystem expanded

  2. Development · Consulting

    Retail company

    Client anonymised

    Industry
    Retail
    Company size
    10 employees
    Duration
    10/2025–02/2026
    Technologies
    • Web scraping
    • Geospatial Mapping
    • Route planning
    • CRM
    • Email marketing

    Website relaunch, CRM set-up and lead generation

    Starting point

    An outdated website, no CRM in use and slow customer acquisition.

    Solution

    Website relaunch, a basic CRM and automated lead generation with web scraping, geographic assignment (geospatial mapping) and route planning – plus the groundwork for email marketing.

    Result

    Lead generation automated · leads assigned geographically · basic CRM in use · email marketing enabled

  3. Consulting

    Festo SE & Co. KG

    Frank Maier’s project experience, before M4IER

    Industry
    Industrial automation (B2B)
    Company size
    Group with 56 national subsidiaries
    Duration
    2022–2026
    Technologies
    • SAFe 6.0
    • Lean Portfolio Management
    • CI/CD
    • Team and architecture coaching

    SAFe transformation of sales IT

    Starting point

    Sales IT was to be planned, steered and delivered jointly across many product teams.

    Solution

    As system architect (SAFe ARCH) and product manager / owner (SAFe PMPO): introducing the Scaled Agile Framework, building the Sales Agile Release Train, Lean Portfolio Management, raising DevOps maturity and the "Assessment & Grow" programme for the structured development of the product teams.

    Result

    10 product teams enabled · end-to-end portfolio steering and deployment pipelines established

  4. Development · Consulting

    Festo SE & Co. KG

    Frank Maier’s project experience, before M4IER

    Industry
    Industrial automation (B2B)
    Company size
    Group with 56 national subsidiaries
    Duration
    2022–2026
    Technologies
    • n8n
    • Intelligent Document Processing
    • GitHub Copilot
    • Recommendation Engine

    Automation and AI in sales and development

    Starting point

    Recurring processes in sales and back office were to be automated and development teams made more productive.

    Solution

    n8n workflows, AI-assisted document processing, introducing GitHub Copilot in the development teams and an AI-powered recommendation engine.

    Result

    Automated workflows and AI-assisted document processing in use; Copilot introduced in the development teams

  5. Consulting

    Festo SE & Co. KG

    Frank Maier’s project experience, before M4IER

    Industry
    Industrial automation (B2B)
    Company size
    Group with 56 national subsidiaries
    Duration
    2024–2025
    Technologies
    • ARC42
    • C4
    • ArchiMate
    • Capability Mapping
    • Portfolio roadmapping

    Sales Architecture Strategy 2030 – target architecture for sales IT

    Starting point

    The entire sales IT lacked a shared target picture and an agreed way to get there.

    Solution

    As system architect: developing the target architecture with roadmap and implementation plan – from inventory through target picture and gap analysis to a decision paper.

    Result

    Target architecture, prioritised roadmap and implementation plan as a decision paper for top management

  6. Operations

    Festo SE & Co. KG

    Frank Maier’s project experience, before M4IER

    Industry
    Industrial automation (B2B)
    Company size
    Group with 56 national subsidiaries
    Duration
    2024

    Infrastructure and operating costs of the commerce landscape cut for good

    Starting point

    The infrastructure and operating costs of a business-critical, internationally operated commerce landscape were to come down – without compromising operations.

    Solution

    Systematic analysis of the infrastructure and operating costs of the entire commerce landscape and implementation of the optimisations identified.

    Result

    €176,000 in lasting cost savings per year – winner of the group-wide “IT Cost Challenge” ideas competition

  7. Operations · SAP & commerce

    Festo SE & Co. KG

    Frank Maier’s project experience, before M4IER

    Industry
    Industrial automation (B2B)
    Company size
    Group with 56 national subsidiaries
    Duration
    2023
    Technologies
    • SAP S/4HANA
    • SAP HANA DB
    • SD/MM
    • ABAP
    • Interface redesign

    SAP S/4HANA migration "Next Gen. ERP"

    Starting point

    The company-wide ERP system on SAP R/3 was to be modernised – affecting all connected commerce, CRM and pricing processes.

    Solution

    As product manager & IT portfolio owner: modernising the ERP system and replacing the SAP R/3 legacy architecture; aligning the ERP transition with upstream and downstream commerce, CRM and pricing processes.

    Result

    ERP transition aligned with commerce, CRM and pricing; interfaces redesigned for S/4HANA

  8. Consulting · SAP & commerce

    Festo SE & Co. KG

    Frank Maier’s project experience, before M4IER

    Industry
    Industrial automation (B2B)
    Company size
    Group with 56 national subsidiaries
    Duration
    2022–2023
    Technologies
    • Customer Data Platform (CDP)
    • Data integration / ETL
    • Machine-learning recommendations
    • SAP Commerce

    Customer data platform and AI-powered recommendation engine

    Starting point

    Customer data was spread across commerce, CRM and ERP systems; the B2B shop was to address customers more personally.

    Solution

    As solution architect: building a customer data platform for a unified customer view across commerce, CRM and ERP data, and developing an AI-powered recommendation engine for the B2B shop.

    Result

    A unified customer view across all sales systems and AI-powered recommendations for personalisation in the B2B shop

  9. Operations · SAP & commerce

    Festo SE & Co. KG

    Frank Maier’s project experience, before M4IER

    Industry
    Industrial automation (B2B)
    Company size
    Group with 56 national subsidiaries
    Duration
    2021–2022
    Technologies
    • SAP Commerce Cloud v2
    • Microsoft Azure
    • Container
    • CI/CD
    • 24×7 operations

    SAP Commerce Cloud v2 – migration to the public cloud

    Starting point

    The business-critical commerce platform ran on SAP on-premise / private cloud and was to move to the public cloud – without interrupting the group's live websites.

    Solution

    As project lead: migrating the commerce platform to the public cloud (Microsoft Azure) during live operation, including adapting the operating, release and cost model.

    Result

    Commerce platform migrated to Microsoft Azure during live operation; operating, release and cost model redesigned

  10. Consulting

    Festo SE & Co. KG

    Frank Maier’s project experience, before M4IER

    Industry
    Industrial automation (B2B)
    Company size
    Group with 56 national subsidiaries
    Duration
    2018–2022
    Technologies
    • Scrum
    • Nearshore/offshore delivery
    • Vendor Management
    • Business case calculation

    Insourcing platform development and building teams in five countries

    Starting point

    Development of the commerce platform was entirely in the hands of an external agency and was to be brought in-house.

    Solution

    As project lead / IT product owner: business cases and location decisions, recruiting and building agile Scrum teams in Germany (2018), Kaunas, Lithuania (2020) and Barcelona (2022), plus a globally distributed operations team.

    Result

    Grew from 0 to 46 employees in five countries while significantly reducing external agency costs

  11. Development · Operations · SAP & commerce

    Festo SE & Co. KG

    Frank Maier’s project experience, before M4IER

    Industry
    Industrial automation (B2B)
    Company size
    Group with 56 national subsidiaries
    Duration
    2017–2022
    Technologies
    • SAP Commerce Cloud (hybris)
    • FirstSpirit CMS
    • informatica PIM
    • encoway
    • Java
    • Spring
    • API
    • Camos
    • ABAP
    • ESB
    • SAP R/3
    • Container
    • Docker
    • Kubernetes (K8s)

    Digital commerce platform for 56 national subsidiaries

    Starting point

    Global B2B sales were to move to a new, unified commerce and content platform – across 56 national subsidiaries and operated around the clock.

    Solution

    Concept and global rollout as product manager / IT product owner and project lead: MVP go-live in the US in 2018, China in 2020 and DACH in 2021, followed by a standard rollout to 53 further subsidiaries. Set-up of a 24×7 operating model across three regional competence centres (CN, LT, US) with around 30 developers in the content, frontend and backend streams.

    Result

    Online share of sales raised from 15 % to 40 % · over €1bn transaction volume · around 1 million orders a year · 99.99 % SLA availability

  12. Consulting · SAP & commerce

    Festo SE & Co. KG

    Frank Maier’s project experience, before M4IER

    Industry
    Industrial automation (B2B)
    Company size
    Group with 56 national subsidiaries
    Duration
    2015
    Technologies
    • informatica PIM/MDM
    • Java
    • OSGi
    • ESB
    • Adobe InDesign
    • WerkII Comet
    • SAP

    Introducing product information management (informatica Product 360)

    Starting point

    Product data for the online shop, catalogue and print was to come from one central data source instead of separate ones.

    Solution

    As solution architect: building product information management with informatica PIM as the central data source for online shop, catalogue and print – including data-driven print production and automation.

    Result

    Still the foundation of the eBusiness platform today

  13. Development

    Festo USA

    Frank Maier’s project experience, before M4IER

    Industry
    Industrial automation (B2B)
    Company size
    US subsidiary of the Festo group
    Duration
    2015
    Technologies
    • C#
    • Xamarin
    • Couchbase
    • Talend ETL
    • iOS
    • Android

    Festo FAST – customer app for the US market

    Starting point

    Customers in the US market were to use product information and eBusiness functions on mobile devices, even without a network connection.

    Solution

    As head of development: cross-platform app for market communication with product catalogue, offline mode, eBusiness functions (price & availability), tracking and push notifications.

    Result

    One code base for iOS and Android with an offline product catalogue and eBusiness functions

  14. Development

    Festo SE & Co. KG

    Frank Maier’s project experience, before M4IER

    Industry
    Industrial automation (B2B)
    Company size
    Group with 56 national subsidiaries
    Duration
    2014–2015
    Technologies
    • C#
    • ASP.NET MVC
    • HTML5
    • Responsive Design
    • SAP PS / SD / MM
    • ABAP
    • MSSQL
    • Oracle
    • SOA

    xTimeR and customer pricing simulation

    Starting point

    Project effort was to be recorded directly against the project portfolio sources, and sales needed a fast tool for price negotiations.

    Solution

    As project lead: xTimeR, a service-oriented project time recording connected to the project portfolio sources, plus a lightweight pricing simulation for strategic and operational price negotiations – delivered in agile sprints with a nearshoring team in Lithuania.

    Result

    Two applications in use: time recording with SAP integration and a pricing simulation for sales

  15. Consulting

    Festo SE & Co. KG

    Frank Maier’s project experience, before M4IER

    Industry
    Industrial automation (B2B)
    Company size
    Group with 56 national subsidiaries
    Duration
    2013–2014
    Technologies
    • SAP Cloud4Customer
    • SAP HANA Cloud Integration/Platform
    • ESB
    • Opportunity & lead management

    Future CRM environment – system selection and transition

    Starting point

    The in-house legacy CRM "Sales Force Assistant", with around 5,000 users in 50 companies, was to be replaced by a future-proof platform.

    Solution

    As product manager: evaluating the future CRM platform (SAP, Salesforce, Microsoft) with a proof of concept on SAP Cloud4Customer and designing the replacement of the legacy system.

    Result

    Platform decision based on a proof of concept; replacement concept for around 5,000 users in 50 companies

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Ringstraße 101
73257 Köngen, Germany
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