Karsten Schmidt presents his new offices in Dresden

One of our german members, Mr Karsten Schmidt, just moved in his new office in Dresden, in a absolutely magical place. Let's interview him, and retrace a 20 years' membership !

Karsten, you were a partner of SGK Künzel Schmidt & Partners for 20 years, and are now flying to next horizons. Can you tell us about your reasons for leaving SGK ?

K.S : Yes, of course! In fact, we were five partners running the business in a similar way but in the course of time, we developed in different ways, for example:

• My core clients are rather internationally operating companies;
• My clients are more medium-sized companies and I do audit work;
• The qualification of the staff in need to care for my clients is different from the staff my former partners need to care for their clients;
• I had a different view regarding the impact of “digitalization” on our business.
• I wanted to focus more on VAT compliance, BEPS, transfer pricing and more advosory work than outsourcing work.

Owing to the fact that these different ways and different needs of procedures within the practice would cause problems in the future, I agreed with the other partners to leave the partnership on an amicable basis.

You decided to install your office in Dresden in an amazing building. Why and how did you manage to find such a great place to work ?

K.S :

How are you organizing your work after leaving SGK ?

K.S : Well, I think we can say it's really an INAA success story! Since January 1, 2014, I have cooperated with NS+P Dr. Neumann in Aachen. The first contact was made in 2009 during the INAA Meeting in Aachen. Since that time, Dirc Fröschen (from NS+P) and I have become close friends and we have shared a lot of strategic and business ideas.

To “cement ties” we created the idea to cooperate in the field of audit work. The advantage of this cooperation is to share cost in some areas like:

• Only one peer review for both locations (Dresden and Aachen)
• Running confirmations for debtors, creditors, banks, etc. on a central back office,
• Exchange of expertise,
• Common training sessions for staff,
• Maintenance of the QM-Handbook, and QM-Procedures,
• Exchange of staff,
• Strategic alliance for marketing activities (together we are bigger and stronger)
• Exchange of experience
• Someone where you can get a second opinion,
• Benchmarking,
• Etc.

Thank you very much for your time, Karsten !

K.S : Thank you !