soft-nrg Development GmbH has acquired the time recording system division of the long-established Erlangen-based software house AZE GmbH with effect from June 1, 2012. The primary aim is to augment the company's portfolio of products and to offer from a single source a system that covers the entire process chain consisting of time planning, recording and monitoring in car dealerships.

Time recording based on hours worked or orders worked on has a long history going back to the early years of the 19th century.

The Swiss company Hasler was one of those to recognize the potential of digital time recording when it introduced its first time recording computer, the CT733, as early as 1973. We have seen an inexorable rise in the use of electronic time management in the intervening years – and time management has become an indispensable element of a modern approach to business.

By the start of the 80s, Erlangen-based AZE GmbH was developing the first data key concepts for the car industry. These were designed to help plan, record and link hours of work. Not until 2008 did AZE GmbH cross paths with soft-nrg Development GmbH, which by that time had already developed a wide-ranging portfolio of software for car dealerships – but did not yet have a highly specialized time recording system such as AZE's DakyPro.

Given the market and development costs, soft-nrg did not give serious consideration to developing its own system. It would have been too complex and too time and cost intensive to develop anything that went beyond pure order-based time recording.

Following a series of successes working together, the two companies reached a deal in June 2012. In addition to the well-established DakyPro time recording system, soft-nrg also came away from the deal with Peter Bienert and Thomas Nachbauer, the system's developers. Whereas previously they were responsible for development, distribution and the hotline as well, now they can concentrate solely on the further development of the system and let others deal with the rest.

For Bienert and Nachbauer it is of little importance that their product's name has changed from DakyPro to soft-clock. According to Peter Bienert, they are much more interested in the "interesting new interfaces and synergies" between their time recording system and the soft-nrg products soft-planning and soft-expert, because there is still a great deal of potential to be exploited by bringing together workshop management, appointment planning and time management.

DakyPro becomes soft-clock

In the interests of streamlining the portfolio, DakyPro will in future be known both in Germany and abroad as soft-clock and be managed and distributed by soft-nrg GmbH exclusively. There will be no transitional problems of any kind as a result of the acquisition or the system's integration into the soft-nrg portfolio.

Nothing will change for the customer because, in addition to taking on DakyPro's developers, soft-nrg GmbH has also taken over all of the commitments made by AZE GmbH to its customers in relation to the product. The previous DakyPro web pages will shortly become available on the website of soft-nrg Development GmbH (www.soft-nrg.de).