For the acquisition, each of us drew up a list of potential companies we wanted to approach. At the same time, a cover letter was drawn up, which served as a basis but could be individually adapted. In some cases, we contacted companies with whom we had no personal contact or via third parties - it proved to be rather difficult to make contact here, so in these instances we had to use connections. Many appointments were made through business partners and good contacts. In some cases, we only received a promise at short notice, possibly due to the American mentality, which in this case is much different from ours.

Regarding the deadline status there were continuous update meetings, and a list in our project management tool Trello was used for control and comparison. The project area Company Management also included the creation of a questionnaire, which we wrote in two versions: A version with closed questions on the topics of General, Social, Environment, Economy, Human Resources and Carbon Footprint, which was sent in advance to the companies for the first contact. The detailed variant consisting of open and closed questions served as a basis for the personal appointments on site. The interviews were evaluated for internal use and for dispatch as a summary including a letter of thanks to the companies in order to share our findings with them afterwards.

Company management also included planning and organization. Since we were able to arrange a total of 11 appointments for the period, the coordination of appointments and travel management was particularly important. For each appointment, the participants created an agenda setting in advance and determined who would lead through the appointment and who would record what had been said. The appointments were then prepared.