Wirtschaftsforum: Mr. Baumeister, what are the important features of your software solution charly?

Wilhelm Baumeister: charly is a 360-degree management software for dental practices. Core elements include the predictive appointment book, documentation, which forms the basis for billing, as well as the billing itself, with integrated controlling tools. With charly, the entire treatment of a patient can be planned, including preparation and follow-up. Treatment and cost plans, financial and material management, and an orthodontics module are also included. charly is fully integrated into the practice's processes and enables active management of the practice.

Wirtschaftsforum: What distinguishes charly compared to other management software solutions for dentists?

Wilhelm Baumeister: What distinguishes us is this holistic approach, which allows for managing the practice. What makes charly unique is that we accompany patients along the entire value chain, not just individual systems, themes, or areas. All treatment steps are integrated, guiding the dentist and the entire team on what needs to happen before, during, and after treatments. All elements of a treatment are planned. This leaves the practice team more time for the important things: treating the patients. This is a luxury that, until now, only we have been able to offer our customers to this extent. In addition, the patient is not only supported over the course of a treatment but in the long term. Furthermore, we offer not just our IT solution, but also support our customers in a partnership manner in their daily practice. We are on-site in the practices, conduct regular analyses, identify potentials, and help our customers remain sustain covered exams, openings, andore competitive. In addition, we also offer dentists their own billing service on-site. Since skilled professionals are scarce, this service is well received. Thus, we rely on a partnership relationship with our customers. Especially in times like these, this support is highly appreciated. We support both young dentists who are just starting out on their own as well as established practices.

Wirtschaftsforum: How would you describe your corporate culture?

Wilhelm Baumeister: Here too, partnership is part of our answer. We call ourselves the ‘Solutianer’, for we share a common spirit. Our spirit is significantly shaped by our founder and is still omnipresent in our company today. He inspired and created a sense of togetherness. We are a big family. This excites our employees – myself included.

Wirtschaftsforum: What exactly do you mean by ‘times like these’?

Wilhelm Baumeister: Dentists are neither IT specialists nor technicians nor bureaucrats. For years, politics have been posing ever new challenges to them from various sides. charly is a holistic solution package that relieves dentists of these problems and often time-consuming processes.

Wirtschaftsforum: Charly has obviously been developed very solution-oriented from the perspective of dentists. What are the roots of solutio and what have been the important development steps up to today that have made solutio what it is in the market today?

Wilhelm Baumeister: We celebrated our 30th anniversary in 2022. solutio was founded by Dr. Walter F. Schneider in 1992. He was a dentist himself and was looking for a practice management system for his own practice. Together with developers, he built charly, launched it in the market, and established the company. The difference to other systems back then, as today, is that charly does not just cover individual systems, but is holistically integrated and thus manages them. We have grown continuously over the years, at times even rapidly, because dentists immediately recognized the advantages of charly. For more than 15 years, Ilona Schneider, the wife of our founder, has been our managing director and owner. We have grown to 130 employees and over 3,800 customers rely on our solution today. I have been with the company since 2020.

Wirtschaftsforum: What's on your agenda for 2024?

Wilhelm Baumeister: Currently, we are working on renewing our software architecture. charly has been established in the market for more than 30 years and we are in the process of completely renewing and modernizing the solution. The interface will be browser-based and we will implement new features, such as location independence or mobile devices. We are working closely with our customers to deliver the best possible solutions for their current and future needs. We want to better support dentists in the future in meeting the diverse requirements of practice management. The professional profile of the dentist is changing and we are accompanying these changes with charly.