Trendstudie "Die Zukunft des Arbeitens": Nicht einmal ein Drittel der deutschen Unternehmen hat die Umstellung auf Homeoffice und mobiles Arbeiten ohne Probleme bewältigt. Hinweis: Redaktionelle Nutzung nur in Zusammenhang mit der Berichterstattung über die DIND Trendstudie. / Weiterer Text über ots und www.presseportal.de/nr/164615 / Die Verwendung dieses Bildes ist für redaktionelle Zwecke unter Beachtung ggf. genannter Nutzungsbedingungen honorarfrei. Veröffentlichung bitte mit Bildrechte-Hinweis. Foto: Deutsches Innovationsinstitut f/Deutsches Innovationsinstitut fü/obs

In order for companies to invest more in digital technologies, the Senate Department for Economic Affairs has relaunched the “Digital Bonus Berlin” funding program.

Berlin solo self-employed and small and medium-sized companies with up to 249 employees receive grants of up to 17,000 euros.

You must have a place of business in Berlin. With the funding, advanced hardware and software can be subsidized for the first time in order to digitize work, production and management processes and improve IT security. Advisory and qualification training courses are also supported.

The program started in November 2020 and ran for a year. According to the administration, almost 10,000 digitization projects were made possible within this year.

“The successes of the first funding period have made it clear that the digital bonus is starting in the right place,” said Economics Senator Stephan Schwarz (independent, for SPD). To date, more than 25 million euros have been paid out to more than 4,000 companies with the “Berlin digital bonus”.

Above all, companies with up to ten employees benefited from the funding of up to 7,000 euros per company with 71 percent of the approved applications. Software (44.7 percent) and production-relevant hardware (29.7 percent) and options for introducing or improving IT security (25 percent) were purchased.

[If you want to have all the latest news live on your mobile phone, we recommend our app, which you can download here for Apple and Android devices.]

With a rate of 45 percent, word of the program got around primarily through recommendations.

The “Digital Bonus Berlin” is part of the “Neustart Wirtschaft” program, which is aimed at the tourism and event industry, retail, the hotel and catering industry and the creative industries. It bundles more than 30 tailor-made programs that are designed to relieve affected companies and allow their business to flourish again.

[In our newsletters we report weekly from the twelve districts of Berlin. Free and compact: leute.tagesspiegel.de]

The restart program was developed in close cooperation with the affected sectors and will be implemented in cooperation with the tourism promotion agency Visit Berlin and the investment bank Berlin (IBB).

“Digitization is elementary for the vast majority of Berlin companies and they see a great need for support offers. We are pleased that we are again a partner for the implementation of the funding and that we can offer Berlin companies another essential funding measure in our portfolio”, said Andreas Bißendorf, Managing Director of IBB Business Team GmbH, a subsidiary of the Investment Bank Berlin.