Overview

Digital throughout: GEZE optimizes sales processes

In order to drive forward company-wide digitalization, save costs and increase sales quality, the long-established company GEZE introduced the digital sales file from top xRM. With the help of the ECM suite, the specialist for door, window and glass systems now benefits from complete transparency in its sales processes and efficient document management.

Train stations, hospitals, hotels, office buildings and schools all have one thing in common: many people come together and move around in them. This poses special challenges for the building. Access and safety, ventilation and fire protection must be solved functionally, comfortably and aesthetically. In Leonberg, Baden-Württemberg, the specialists at GEZE GmbH take care of such solutions.

In close cooperation with international architectural firms, GEZE develops and produces door, window and glass systems for buildings as diverse as the Frauenkirche in Dresden, the Mercedes-Benz Museum and the AIDAdiva cruise ship. The company has been family-owned since it was founded in 1863 – and has developed into one of the world’s leading suppliers during this time. Today, GEZE is represented by branches and subsidiaries on all continents and serves the regional markets with quality products.

Special solutions are the rule

The more individualized the required solutions are, the more complex the sales processes become. Every project is different – usage and room design play a role, as do fire protection requirements and the question of whether electronic access control is required. In the revolving door systems segment alone, there are numerous variants that differ not only in terms of dimensions, material and design – they also offer a wide range of functions: from manual revolving doors for low volumes of people to fully automatic doors with motion detectors, light curtains and links to the electronic escape route system.

“For our sales staff, this means having a precise overview of the offer and the technical possibilities,” says Marc Michalik, Head of Sales at GEZE. To ensure that individual requirements can be met, numerous documents are passed back and forth in the quotation process: e-mails and technical drawings, for example, parts lists and, of course, entire quotations, confirmations and approvals. The company has been using SAP’s document management system (DMS) for years to handle the documents correctly.

A lot of work with scans and faxes

Clean documentation has always been important to GEZE. A great deal of effort was sometimes put into this – including manually: inquiries, orders or correspondence usually arrived by fax and were scanned by hand. This took the responsible employee around one and a half hours a day. The digitized documents then had to be laboriously imported via the SAP system and assigned to the corresponding order in the asset list. But the asset list from SAP is inconvenient. This is because there is no sensible structure, no hierarchical folder system and no automatic links for the SAP documents. The result: important information is difficult to find.

For example, if an employee was off sick, the entire sales process came to a standstill. “If a customer then called and needed a specific document, our colleagues had to know the file name in order to find what they needed in the attachment list. There was a lack of transparency here,” recalls department head Michalik. In addition, a single quotation process with all product descriptions could extend over 200 to 250 A4 pages. Extensive information was also faxed in exchange with the customer. Marc Michalik: “In addition to the lack of transparency, we also wanted to get rid of such process brakes and optimize our sales processes with an end-to-end digitalization strategy.”

An interface-free digital strategy is required

The brief search for a suitable provider began in late summer 2014, with the requirement for a comprehensive solution that could be integrated into the existing software landscape. With SAP ERP as the leading system, the existing CRM and typical office programs such as Outlook. “It was clear to us that if we wanted to pursue a successful strategy, the solution had to harmonize seamlessly,” recalls department head Michalik. GEZE was able to build on its previous experience with the introduction of a manufacturing execution system from top flow: “We knew that we had a competent partner in top flow. And their ECM suite top xRM was already so close to our requirements in the standard version that we were able to make a quick decision.”

The focus of the considerations was the convenient, error-free and accelerated processing of quotations. To this end, a digital sales file was to be integrated into SAP to centrally control document management and sales processes. “We wanted a solution that logically structured our document storage and aligned it with the processes,” says Marc Michalik. All documents and information pertaining to an offer should be quickly findable and accessible without media disruptions. GEZE relied entirely on top flow’s experience with SD processes and the complete Outlook integration of top xRM. The goal: high user convenience when sending quotations and order confirmations and complete transparency in all process stages.

Structure ensures transparency

The implementation phase for top xRM at GEZE began at the end of 2014. Project manager Michalik: “The consultants from top flow were well attuned to us and developed creative concepts that were directly geared towards our needs.” A few months later, digital sales files for quotations and orders as well as an additional bonus file for managing bonuses were set up. SAP applications, receipts, documents and e-mail functions were merged with top xRM as the central platform. Since then, the adapted folder structure of the sales file has defined how the different types of information are managed.

“With top xRM, we have more structure in document management. The seamless integration of Outlook alone saves a lot of time and paperwork. The use of top xRM has paid for itself after a year at the latest.”
Marc Michalik, Head of Domestic Sales at GEZE

“As soon as a colleague creates an order in SAP, the corresponding sales file is automatically created,” says Marc Michalik, describing the process. The digitally collected documents are indexed as required and can be found using these keywords, the metadata or e-mail subject lines, for example. Of course, you can still search by file name – ” but unlike before, you no longer have to. Instead, we can display documents that belong to a process stage and send them directly with Outlook. Or we can save incoming emails in the file with just a few clicks and reply to them in the same step.”

Close to the paperless office

Around 100 GEZE employees in Germany are now working with the ECM solution from top flow. top xRM is also gradually being rolled out to the international subsidiaries in order to establish the same processes everywhere and benefit from the advantages. Sales Manager Michalik: “The solution makes everyday work easier. That’s why we want to use its possibilities in greater depth and are trying things out in Germany in order to introduce them worldwide – and vice versa.”

Central information is now accessible to other areas of the company in the defined folders of the sales file. This eliminates a lot of unnecessary mail traffic and the new transparency gives everyone involved an overview of the current status and history of a process. “For us, the deployment had long since paid for itself after a year,” says Marc Michalik. “The fact that we now work almost paperless alone saves us an enormous amount of time and money. We are more efficient, no longer need to scan and fax and use 2,000 to 3,000 sheets of paper less – every day. Other benefits, such as error-free quotations, are on top of that.”

Success Story top xRM – GEZE GmbH



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Overview