The Aebi Schmidt Group develops, manufactures and sells vehicles designed to clean roads and keep them clean in both winter and summer. The products are manufactured in the Netherlands, Germany, Poland and Switzerland and sold through 11 sales offices in Europe and an extensive dealer network worldwide. The products manufactured by the Aebi Schmidt Group are complex and offered in numerous variants, and this was the reason why the group went in search of a specialized product configurator.
WHAT DOES Aebi Schmidt ACHIEVE WITH SOFON?
Air Products touches the lives of consumers around the globe in positive ways every day. With more than 17,000 employees and operations in 50 countries, they serve customers across a wide range of industries, including refining, chemical, metals, electronics, manufacturing, and food and beverage. Air products does supply a unique portfolio of atmospheric and process gases, equipment and services. Founded in 1940, Air Products has built a reputation for its innovative culture, operational excellence and commitment to safety and the environment. Their passionate, talented and committed employees from diverse backgrounds are driven by Air Products’ higher purpose to create innovative solutions that benefit the environment, enhance sustainability and address the challenges facing customers, communities and the world.
ALTAS is an international manufacturer of minibuses, ambulances and special vehicles based in Lithuania.
Aweta develops, manufactures and sells installations for sorting and packaging vegetables and fruit. Aweta’s installations can be found in more than 50 countries. The growth in complexity and variety of the installations made it more and more important to control the product portfolio. Aweta looked for a solution to improve insight into margins and the quality of quotations.
WHAT DOES AWETA ACHIEVE WITH SOFON?
Bollegraaf Recycling Machinery is a global supplier of machines for the recycling industry. Its product portfolio includes balers, sorting systems, shredders, conveyor belts, star screens and reel splitters. Bollegraaf uses Sofon Guided Selling to configure, calculate and generate sales documents for these machines.
WHAT DOES BOLLEGRAAF ACHIEVE WITH SOFON?
Broekema is the specialist in the area of quality, high-end crop conveyor belts and the associated motor components. Broekema has production facilities in the Netherlands and the USA (Minnesota and California), but also has agents and dealers worldwide. The company needed some support for their sales and production process. Sofon and Microsoft Dynamics AX were the solution.
WHAT DOES BROEKEMA ACHIEVE WITH SOFON?
Contiweb is a global leader in the development, production, sales and support of state-of-the-art web offset printing presses and web-fed auxiliaries for a wide range of commercial, packaging and label printing applications. The company’s innovative solutions for web offset, web inkjet, packaging and labelling, and finishing are designed in collaboration with their customers and built to order, ensuring excellent quality, reliability and cost-efficiency.With market-leading products such as the Contiweb Thallo web offset press, Contiweb aims to reduce their customers’ costs while increasing flexibility and optimizing environmental footprint, as well as offering comprehensive after-sales support to ensure optimal productivity and profitability for their customers.
WHAT DOES CONTIWEB ACHIEVE WITH SOFON?
The Damen Shipyards Group consists of some 35 subsidiary companies in and outside the Netherlands with a total revenue of 1.3 billion euro. Damen Shipyards Gorinchem designs and builds a wide range of ships: from relatively small tug boats and working boats to large seagoing working ships. Sofon is in use at the High Speed Craft department. As the name suggests, speed is of the essence here. Think of patrol boats, customs boats and fast vessels for the off shore industry of up to about sixty meters.
WHAT DOES DAMEN ACHIEVE WITH SOFON?
DG press started as a service provider in 2009 and is now a global player in high quality printing machines for the printing of, among other things, flexible packaging. At that time, DG press provided servicing and maintenance for about 1200 machines from the former Drent Goebel. The company started with 12 employees from Drent Goebel. In this way the specific expertise remained available for the owners of the printing machines. DG press was soon doing revisions and reconfigurations of existing machines, but the revisions and maintenance business is finite. In 2012, the decision was made to develop a new machine: the Thallo, in order to ensure the continuity and growth of DG press. The company quickly grew to 60 employees. At present, they build new printing machines with a value of 3 to 5 million Euro.
WHAT DOES DG PRESS ACHIEVE WITH SOFON?
DHL and Deutsche Post form the largest postal service and logistics company in the world. Together they are known as the Deutsche Post DHL Group. They have an unrivalled portfolio of logistics solutions via the road, air, and rail. With half a million employees located across more than 220 countries, DHL effortlessly connects all four corners of the world. Two logistics giants were brought in under the yellow and red DHL flag, one from the business transport industry and the other from the consumer market. Together with Van Gend & Loos and Selektvracht, DHL Parcel is the ultimate shipping service in Europe.
WHAT DOES DHL ACHIEVE WITH SOFON?
Award-winning business ESSERTEC develops and produces domelights, flat-roof windows, daylight spots, continuous roof lights, smoke and heat extraction systems, blinds and roof gullies. From its sales and production site in Neuss (Germany), the company supports its customers in the design, planning, implementation and refurbishment of various flat roof properties. Thanks to innovations with an appealing design and a high level of functionality, ESSERTEC aims to attract customers from the specialist trade as well as roofers, architects, planners, steel and hall constructors and general contractors. ESSERTEC innovations have won several awards for their design in the past, including the Red Dot Award, the German Design Award and the BAKA Award for Production Innovation Practice Old Building. A success story The success story of ESSERTEC started in 1955. Specializing in wood processing and selling domelights, the Esser and Helpenstein families jointly operated Klaus Esser GmbH. By 1960, the business had relocated to the newly built factory in Norf. Klaus Esser sold the wood processing division and started to implement his ideas at the new site, all relating to flat roofs. In 1980, Eternit AG purchased Klaus Esser KG and in 1999, the flat roof elements business unit of Eternit AG was spun off as an independent company called Eternit Flachdach GmbH, which is still the market leader in Germany to this day. In 2015, Etex sold its subsidiary Eternit Flachdach GmbH to the French Soprema Group. Eternit Flachdach became part of Adexsi, the parent company of the Soprema business unit for skylights and smoke extraction systems. Eternit Flachdach GmbH changed its name to ESSERTEC GmbH, linking the history of Klaus Esser with the current and future product philosophy. Today, ESSERTEC GmbH employs some 100 people.
WHAT DOES ESSERTEC ACHIEVE WITH SOFON?
Euramax Coated Products is the global market leader in coating and processing aluminum coils (rolls). We color your world is the appropriate motto for the company with its factories in Roermond in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States. Clients are mainly architects, transport equipment builders and buyers of advertising panels. The end products of Euramax coated aluminum rollers can be found in buildings, halls, sports stadiums, transportation facilities and airports all over the world. One of the highlights is the high-end architectural project Ferrari World, the famous amusement park in Abu Dhabi.
Fri-Jado B.V. is active in the food retail and food service markets in the areas of refrigeration, electronics, store computerization and safety. As an all round installation and service company and systems integrator, Fri-Jado operates mainly in the Dutch market. They also export to more than seventy countries. Fri-Jado operates in the market via their own branches in the United Kingdom, Germany, Singapore and the United States. They have a global network of local distributors and service companies. Fri-Jado has been using Sofon Guided Selling successfully for many years as a sales, product and project configurator.
WHAT DOES FRI-JADO ACHIEVE WITH SOFON?
Fronius develops, manufactures and sells products from three divisions: Welding Technology, Solar Electronics and Battery Charging Systems. It focuses on the transformation of energy with all its products. The family business is renowned in the market for its technological leadership and now has a workforce of 2,500 employees. This growth has made it extremely important for Fronius to make complex product knowledge available for its staff in a simple way. Sofon provided a welcome solution to this problem.
WHAT DOES FRONIUS ACHIEVE WITH SOFON?
GEA Goedhart has been manufacturing heat exchangers - such as air coolers and aircooled condensers - since 1933 for (semi)industrial and commercial applications. Manufacturing takes place in both the Netherlands and in the Czech Republic. Since 2003 Sofon is utilized for product configuration and quotation generation at GEA Goedhart. The whole GEA division is using the Sofon model after Goedhart became part of the GEA Group in 2006.
WHAT DOES GEA GOEDHART ACHIEVE WITH SOFON?
The GEA Refrigeration Division manufactures refrigeration systems. These systems are put to use primarily in the food industry (breweries, slaughterhouses), during industrial processes, for sports and relaxation (ice skating rinks) and in air-conditioning systems. The division consists of various types of companies: 3 manufacturing companies, 30 sales offices and 10 contracting companies who produce refrigeration systems from all the components. The Refrigeration Division has purchased Sofon to bring together all the components produced in the division in one catalog. In this way, sales offices can, for example, produce complete quotations with incredible ease and effi ciency. Sofon has been live since February 2009 at GEA Grasso BV – one of the manufacturing companies within the division. Apart from that, GEA Grasso is involved in the worldwide roll-out of Sofon at the 30 sales offices.
WHAT DOES GEA GRASSO ACHIEVE WITH SOFON?
Goudsmit Magnetics has 50 years' experience in designing and manufacturing magnets and magnet systems for a wide range of applications. Goudsmit Magnetics' products are exported to 80 countries all around the world. Goudsmit Magnetics has three divisions: separation, recycling, and handling & conveying. Goudsmit Magnetics utilized the engineer-to-order principle, in which production is only carried out on assignment from the customer. Although Goudsmit performed well using this philosophy, all of the changes had become unmanageable for production. The company therefore decided to increase standardization in its products. To support these efforts, the company went in search of a suitable sales support system, and ultimately decided on Sofon.
WHAT DOES GOUDSMIT MAGNETICS ACHIEVE WITH SOFON?
The JENSEN-GROUP develops and produces client-specific solutions for heavy-duty laundries, from individual machines to complete lines and turnkey solutions. Originally from Denmark, with its head office and stock exchange listing in Belgium, the Group achieved a turnover of 318 million euros in 2016.
WHAT DOES JENSEN GROUP ACHIEVE WITH SOFON?
Kinkelder develops, manufactures and sells metal circular sawblades. The manufacturing of these saws takes place in the Netherlands and the Czech Republic. The other companies within the Kinkelder Group - located in the US, France, Belgium, England and Germany - take care of purchasing, sales and service. When Kinkelder needed a new ERP package, a good product configurator was absolutely necessary. Kinkelder saw the solution in the combination of Microsoft Dynamics AX and Sofon.
WHAT DOES KINKELDER ACHIEVE WITH SOFON?
Langguth GmbH from Senden (Westfalen, Germany) is a mid-sized manufacturer of customer-specific solutions for labeling all kinds of products. At the Senden location, the company employs more than 100 people. Langguth wants to achieve further growth and has realized that restructuring is unavoidable.
WHAT DOES LANGGUTH ACHIEVE WITH SOFON?
What do you do if your sales representatives require detailed knowledge to make a quotation? That was the challenge facing MarFlex, a developer and manufacturer of electrical deep well pumps for the shipping and offshore industries. The abundance of options and combinations made it difficult for the sales staff to provide an accurate quotation quickly. They often needed the help of the Engineering department. But, these days, Engineering is no longer involved in 90% of quotations that are made.
WHAT DOES MARFLEX ACHIEVE WITH SOFON?
Minkels is a knowledge-driven producer and worldwide supplier of high-quality solutions for data centre infrastructure. The Minkels brand is part of the product portfolio of Legrand, a publicly traded company (NYSE Euronext Paris: LR) with worldwide sales in the low voltage installation, data network and data centre markets. Legrand operates in more than 180 countries and achieved worldwide revenues of 4.8 billion euros in 2015. Minkels products stand out for their innovative and fexibility. Customers can always be assured that they will get the very latest data centre technology: modular solutions that respond to evolving, customer - specific business requirements.
WHAT DOES MINKELS ACHIEVE WITH SOFON?
Mitsubishi Elevator Europe (MEE) is part of the Mitsubishi Electric Group, which is itself part of the well-known Japanese Mitsubishi conglomerate. With more than 63 years of experience in their field, MEE is one of the most leading producers of lift installations.
WHAT DOES MITSUBISHI ELEVATOR EUROPE ACHIEVE WITH SOFON?
Montis designs and manufactures high-quality designer furniture – generally seating furniture. Leading designers and innovative production methods guarantee an “honest and efficient industrial product.” To be able to handle the extensive range of designer furniture, Montis utilizes an international sales network to both companies and consumers. For years now, Montis has focused on the upper segment of the design market as the targeted purchasers do not buy standard furniture. They put together their ‘own’ design furniture in a customer-specific manner. They do not choose a standard chair, but rather a chair by that designer, with those legs and seat, and upholstered in that color leather/fabric. The number of options is extensive, which in turn makes order processing very complex. To streamline that process, Montis implemented Sofon’s advanced sales configurator.
WHAT DOES MONTIS ACHIEVE WITH SOFON?
Nassau Indus Deur is the result of a merger of two companies: Nassau Deur and Indus Deur. Both companies were active in the area of doors for the industrial market since the seventies. In 2000 Nassau decided to pool their strengths. As part of Nassau Door, Nassau Indus Deur are one of the biggest door manufacturers in Europe. The doors are made at the Danish branch. The other branches concentrate on sales and servicing (placement, maintenance) of industrial doors.
WHAT DOES NASSAU INDUS DEUR ACHIEVE WITH SOFON?
Novoferm Nederland BV (part of Sanwa Shutter Corporation since 2003) is a manufacturer and supplier of quality doors for the industrial and private markets. Novoferm develops, produces and sells these doors from different branches in the Netherlands. Through a dealer organization and sister companies in just about every European country, their products fi nd their way to an international marketplace. The Dutch branches have started using Sofon as their Guided Selling solution.
WHAT DOES NOVOFERM ACHIEVE WITH SOFON?
Pentairs' Dutch branch in Breda. This branch sells drives and circuit breakers - mainly from their own Pentair factory - in the Dutch market. Pentair supplies a customer-specific construction of these products to industrial installers and industrial end users: factories in which steam, water and gas are processed or moved. Pentair was looking for a way to improve their quotations both in terms of content and of design; Pentair got in touch with Sofon…
WHAT DOES PENTAIR ACHIEVE WITH SOFON?
FROM HARVEST TO PROCESSING The PETKUS Group is one of the world‘s largest suppliers of cereal and seed technologies. For over 160 years, PETKUS has been designing, producing and selling machines for the cleaning, drying, storage, harvesting and dressing of various crops – from grass seeds through wheat and maize to nuts. The product range includes deawners, rotary-drum cleaners, airscreen cleaners, gravity separators, indented cylinders, optical sorting equipment, treaters, dryers, silos and conveyor technology. PETKUS creates a bridge that extends from harvest and processing to seeds, food and forage. In contrast to pure machine manufacturers, the PETKUS Group supplies technologies as well as engineering (i.e. technological solutions for seed lines, complete turnkey treatment plants, port and inland silo facilities and mills). GLOBAL PLAYER RELIES ON REGIONAL TIES WORLDWIDE PETKUS is a global, mediumsized company with over 350 employees in 20 countries. As a global player, PETKUS attaches particular importance to regional relationships and ties. The aim is to provide a direct and personal contact person for customers in all the world‘s time zones. PETKUS has therefore connected a total of 23 sales, service and engineering centres to six regional hubs. More than 200,000 cleaning machines and more than 2,000 seed processing lines have been installed over the past 40 years. The company has averaged doubledigit growth throughout the past decade. Its beginnings go back to founder Christian Friedrich Röber, who began to build farm wagons, ploughs and chang machines in his blacksmith‘s workshop in 1852, but also manufactured grain sieves. Following the division of Germany, RÖBER GmbH became increasingly international in the West, while in Eastern Germany PETKUS was integrated into „Kombinat Fortschritt“. In 1994, it was decided to continue the tradition of the internationally successful company and build on the past, and RÖBER and PETKUS were re-united. The company headquarters remained in Wutha- Farnroda, Thuringia.
Two of the greatest challenges many companies face are dealing with the complexity of their product portfolio, and the intensive training required to enable sales to offer these products error free. One such company was Philips Healthcare, which provides innovative, intuitive, and affordable healthcare solutions. Offering the company’s broad range of high tech products requires extensive product and clinical process knowledge. The company’s legacy system created quick budgetary quotations, however, these quotations lacked descriptions and pictures and were unintuitive for customers – and worse still, were at times incomplete. To help improve the sales processes and more in particular the quotation quality, Philips Healthcare has chosen Sofon to support their Configure- Price- Quote (CPQ) processes.
WHAT DOES PHILIPS ACHIEVE WITH SOFON?
Picanol develops, manufactures and sells highly technical weaving machines to weaving mills worldwide. In addition to the complex machines, the weaving machine giant also offers clients additional products and services, such as training, upgrading kits, interchangeable parts and service contracts. Now that Sofon has been up and running for a few years, it has proved its ability to streamline Picanol's quotation and contract generation process.
WHAT DOES PICANOL ACHIEVE WITH SOFON?
World market leader for optical systems Berlin-based Scansonic offers systems solutions for laser and electric arc joining as well as laser hardening. Scansonic stands for innovation, perfection and reliable partnership in the field of material processing with solids lasers, diode lasers, fiber lasers and traditional electric-arc methods such as MIG/MAG, Plasma, Plasmatron®, ColdArc® and CMT. Scansonic's modular processing heads for automatic laser welding and laser soldering of fine sheets represent the latest state of the art in manufacturing technology. Its integrated seam tracking solution in particular has made a name for the company in car body construction. Furthermore, with its adaptive platform for seam tracking, Scansonic offers its tried-and-tested technology for electric-arc welding and soldering. Scansonic MI, a company within the Scansonic Group, considers itself a premium provider and global market leader in optical systems. Its users include the car manufacturing, car component, energy technology and rail vehicle sectors. The Scansonic Group’s customers include companies like Audi and Volkswagen, BMW and Mercedes-Benz, Porsche and General Motors, Siemens, Bombardier, ThyssenKrupp, Kuka and Magna.
WHAT DOES SCANSONIC ACHIEVE WITH SOFON?
Scheider Electric is a global specialist in energy management, with branches in more than one hundred countries. They offer integrated solutions for energy production that is safe, reliable, efficient, productive and green, for multiple market sectors. Schneider Electric has leading positions in energy & infrastructure, industrial processes, automation of buildings and data & network centers. They also have a broad presence in housing construction applications. In 2010, more than 110,000 staff achieved a revenue of more than 19.6 billion euro. With their motto ‘make the most of your energy’, Schneider Electric helps private citizens and companies get the most out of their energy. Now Sofon helps Schneider Electric get the best out of their sales process.
WHAT DOES SCHEIDER ELECTRIC ACHIEVE WITH SOFON?
Smeva manufactures walk-in coolers and freezers, cold storage units and refrigeration systems. Their products are used in supermarkets to chill milk and pre-packed meat. Smeva also produces service counters and customer-specific counters for butchers. Their dealers are spread over the world and are the ones in contact with the end customers: supermarkets and specialized stores. Smeva’s dealers consult with them on plans for supermarkets so that they can make an appropriate offer. The dealers then take care of the actual installation.
WHAT DOES SMEVA ACHIEVE WITH SOFON?
Smit Draad manufactures and sells insulated copper sectional wire (enameled, glass fiber-wound, paper-covered) and continuously transposed cables. These high quality products are supplied to manufacturers around the globe, which make extremely large transformers, engines and generators. Their copper wire therefore represents an important and critical step in the production of capital goods. Every wire is different and is configured separately for each order. Keeping wire in stock is therefore not possible.
WHAT DOES SMIT DRAAD ACHIEVE WITH SOFON?
Active worldwide with 470 employees Established in 2004, the products of the TB and C Group – until that time, the outsert area was part of the Philips Group – include wind deflectors and sliding roof mechanics for the car industry, components for blood glucose meters, and optical units for laser measuring devices. Customers are supported throughout the entire supply chain, from development to the serial product. Various sectors such as mechanics, wind protection, automotive, medicine, and industry trust this outsert technology from TB and C, which today has 470 employees. The production and development site is located in Herborn, Germany. The company has additional production sites in Arad, Romania, and in Puebla, Mexico. A branch in Suzhou, China, was opened in 2016.
Veenman is traditionally a dedicated supplier of printing systems with experience in document management, digital solutions and process optimization. With a network of powerful partners, tailored advice and solutions are offered. Through a customer-oriented approach, the quality of organizations in many sectors is optimized. Sofon recently went live at Veenman.
WHAT DOES VEENMAN ACHIEVE WITH SOFON?
Veko Lightsystems has developed, manufactured, and assembled aluminium (LED) linear lighting for over 40 years. Veko has always delivered its lighting systems unpackaged, encoded and pre-assembled. By doing this, Veko saves its customers at least 50% of the assembly time: their (LED) light lines are installed in a blink of an eye without any waste. By using 100% recyclable aluminium for its profiles and luminaires from the very start, Veko was already delivering sustainable lighting even before the term was invented. Furthermore, Veko lighting is durable: after years and years of service, our profiles look as good as new. With Veko lighting, renovation is a piece of cakes since profiles are left in place, in most cases. New (LED) luminaires just need to be clicked into the light system, giving you lighting that is once again as good as new.
WHAT DOES VEKO ACHIEVE WITH SOFON?
VelopA provides street furniture, playground equipment and coverings for public open spaces. VelopA seeks to make sure that people feel encouraged to exercise, cycle and play in this shared environment. They also bring a splash of green into an otherwise built-up outdoor environment.
WHAT DOES VELOPA ACHIEVE WITH SOFON?
VMG supplies balcony and gallery balustrades. The company is automated and robotized to a large extent. Thanks to this combination VMG is able to deliver custom solutions for the price of standard balustrades. Market leader VMG places the emphasis here on safety, quality and an eye for detail. With around 120 internal staff and 60 installers working in the field, each year work is carried out at 200 to 250 construction sites. This equates to around 1,700 quotations and 250 kilometers of balustrading. When it comes to producing so many quotations, quality plays an important role. Sofon provided a welcome solution to this problem.
WHAT DOES VMG ACHIEVE WITH SOFON?
VMG supplies balcony and gallery balustrades. The company is automated and robotized to a large extent. Thanks to this combination VMG is able to deliver custom solutions for the price of standard balustrades. Market leader VMG places the emphasis here on safety, quality and an eye for detail. With around 120 internal staff and 60 installers working in the field, each year work is carried out at 200 to 250 construction sites. This equates to around 1,700 quotations and 250 kilometers of balustrading. When it comes to producing so many quotations, quality plays an important role. Sofon provided a welcome solution to this problem.
WHAT DOES VOORTMAN ACHIEVE WITH SOFON?
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