About Us
Digital transformation rarely fails because of technology.
It fails due to a lack of leadership, unclear expectations, and poor communication.
ZEMID provides clarity, structure, and decision-making confidence.
ZEMID – Center for SME and Digitalization guides executives and leadership teams in medium-sized companies through complex IT transformations.
We secure technological decisions that sustainably shape business models, organization, leadership, and culture.
We translate enterprise-level proven approaches into SME-suitable strategies and manage implementation and reviews precisely, with low risk and without unnecessary complexity.
At critical interfaces, we create clarity and decision-making confidence through professional negotiation between management, IT, business units, and external stakeholders.
Ralf Schmidt – Founder and Managing Director
Ralf Schmidt holds a degree in civil engineering and is a trained bricklayer. He worked on construction sites before leading consulting projects. His negotiation skills were not built in seminar rooms – but in real deals that he later analyzed systematically.
Digital transformation. By engineers, for engineers.
This is not a metaphor. It is a biography.
After training as a construction worker and studying engineering in Berlin, he moved into IT – first as a developer and consultant, later as a sales executive in the technology industry. He was responsible for demanding contract negotiations with companies of varying sizes – and led the teams that implemented those deals.
In parallel, he qualified systematically in negotiation – up to the certification as Certified Professional Business Negotiator.
He did not found ZEMID because the market needed another consultant. But because digital transformation, in practice, works differently than slides describe.
The experience from two worlds – craftsmanship and strategic consulting – is ZEMID's actual differentiator.
We Support You – When It Matters Most.
Your IT project is running – but milestones are slipping and results are falling short of expectations.
You're facing a technology decision with significant investment – and want to be sure that the offer and the actual delivery truly match.
A critical negotiation is ahead – and you want to be not just prepared in substance, but also tactically in the best possible position.
ZEMID provides clarity, structure, and decision-making confidence.
Strategic Advisory Board
Our Strategic Advisory Board complements ZEMID where experience, methodology and an international perspective need to come together.
Woody Wade – Scenario Planning
Author, Harvard MBA | Adjunct Professor, Rochester Institute of Technology | former Board Member World Economic Forum | Founder Wade & Company SA, Switzerland | Workshops in 35 countries
Woody Wade is one of the world's leading experts in scenario planning. His 2012 book Scenario Planning: A Field Guide to the Future, published by John Wiley & Sons, is required reading in the field. His latest work Designing Four Futures (2026) shows how organisations systematically develop robust strategies for the future — not as prediction, but as preparation for several possible worlds.
For ZEMID, this partnership opens access to a methodology previously reserved for large corporations with sizeable strategy departments. Mid-market decision-makers can test their strategy systematically against several plausible future scenarios — before the situation arrives.
Latest book
Designing Four Futures (2026)
Strategic Scenario Planning Manual
Wade's current work shows step by step how organisations systematically develop four alternative future scenarios, test their strategy against them and reach robust decisions — even under high uncertainty.
ZEMID is a member of BVMW – the German Federal Association for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises.
Talk to us.
Briefly describe your situation – we will get back to you promptly.