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THE POLUMANA® SALES APP IN USE AT FÖRCH

FÖRCH is a modern family business with a multi-channel sales approach that perfectly combines the benefits of interpersonal relationships and digital solutions.

INDUSTRY

trade and industry

EMPLOYEES

3.500

TURNOVER

514 Mio. EUR

LOCATION

Neuenstadt am Kocher, Germany
Steffen Federer - Head of IT and Digital Business at FÖRCH

STEFFEN FEDERER

Head of IT and Digital Businesses at FÖRCH
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We had the plan to introduce a new web store, a sales app and, above all, a new ERP system with SAP S/4HANA within three years. If we had known that in parallel to this idea we would have to deal with a global pandemic with partly collapsing supply chains worldwide and a war in Europe with exploding freight and procurement prices, this plan would probably have disappeared in the drawer again for the time being.

CEO BLUE-ZONE Dr. Richard Mayr

DR. RICHARD MAYR

CEO at BLUE-ZONE GmbH
_________________

The special thing about FÖRCH is the personal relationships that the field staff have with their customers, some of which have grown over decades. You can't digitize that away. On the contrary, you have to support it with digital tools, for example by using a renewed web store and our POLUMANA® app in combination with a modern ERP system.

CASE STUDY

In 2019, the decision was made to replace the aging, self-developed ERP system first in Germany and then also the respective systems in the approximately two dozen European national companies with SAP S/4HANA.

The systems are to be standardized across the company so that it is not necessary to look at umpteen different interfaces every time a small change is made or for new projects, and so that it is not necessary to rely on many different ERP service providers in the individual countries.

WHAT TO EXPECT

The case study highlights the initial situation and shows the path to a digital customer and service portal including a spare parts store and advice function in the form of a chatbot as an important component of the digitization strategy.

With the SAP Commerce Cloud, Stiegelmeyer has embarked on a path that leads away from company-specific applications towards more standardization and a more homogeneous IT environment.

Using the All for One Customer Experience proprietary development Equipment Viewer, all information on the respective bed including installed components is now bundled in the portal. This 2D exploded view makes it much easier to order the right spare part. Likewise, the service technician on site can call up all relevant product information as well as installation instruction videos in an offline-capable app at any time.

Furthermore, you get a compact overview of the biggest challenges, the most important lessons learned during implementation, and the key success factors of the project.