AI assistants
Chat and research assistants for teaching, administration and research. Usually billed per person and term.
Software licensing for universities and research
Procurement that fitsyour administration
Research groups need modern tools — vendors sell by credit card and self-service. We clarify what you need, obtain the terms and put a quotation in front of you: against a purchase order, by invoice, with a named contact.
Principles
Purchase order
not a credit card
Invoice
with payment terms
Named contact
one person, not a queue
Procurement file
paperwork included
Scope
What this is about
About tools your people already know and cannot order through the regular channels of your institution. Three kinds of them are what departments ask us for:
Coding assistants
Tools that write along in the editor. Demand usually arises at chair level rather than institution-wide.
Cloud subscriptions and specialist software
Applications available on subscription only — with a term, a renewal, and a vendor who would rather sell by credit card.
Vendor names are deliberately absent: as long as the agreements with the vendors are unsigned, naming one would be a promise we could not keep. What is available for your institution is what we clarify in response to your enquiry — including when the answer is “not through us”.
What we do
Where procurement in academia breaks down
Rarely for lack of money or of will. It breaks down because vendor sales channels and the rules of a public institution do not match: self-service by credit card on one side; purchase orders, invoices, procurement law and data protection review on the other.
We sit in between and translate — in both directions.
Clarifying the requirement
How many people, what term, a single chair or the whole institution, renewal or one-off. Only then does a question about price make any sense.
Quotation against a purchase order
A written quotation with line items and term, ordering against a purchase order, an invoice with payment terms. No credit card, no subscription that quietly renews itself.
One named contact
One person who knows your case and answers in German or English — instead of a ticket queue that starts over with every follow-up.
Data protection
We obtain what your data protection review needs
Data processing agreement, technical and organisational measures, server location, sub-processors, handling of the inputs from your institution: we request these documents from the vendor and put them in front of you — as one set, with someone to ask about them, not as a collection of links.
What we can promise is to obtain the documents, and a straight answer when a vendor will not provide them. What they say is the vendor’s decision — whether that is enough for your institution is yours.
How it works
Four steps to the licence
The first one costs you an e-mail and commits you to nothing.
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Enquiry
You describe what you need — roughly is fine. If you do not yet know which licence model fits, that is precisely the question we answer.
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Clarification and quotation
We check what is available for your institution, obtain the terms and send a written quotation with term and price.
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Order
Your procurement office orders against a purchase order. We supply the paperwork for the procurement file where it is needed.
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Provisioning and invoice
Licences are set up, the invoice follows with payment terms. For renewals we contact you in good time beforehand — not afterwards.
Enquiry
Write to us informally
Helpful but not required: which institution, roughly how many people, from when and for what period. If your procurement office has already issued a request for quotation, simply attach it.
Contact
There is deliberately no contact form — an e-mail can be forwarded, filed with the procurement records and read by several people. A form can do none of that.
Provider and mandatory details: legal notice