On the Path to Efficiency and Innovation
Introduction
Our family business, located in Stadtlohn, specializes in machinery for environmental care, landscaping, and agriculture. We are among the leading suppliers of front-mounted flail mowers. Our product range includes universal mowers, universal side mowers, verge mowers, embankment mowers, and mowing combinations. Additionally, we offer branch and hedgerow trimmers, hedge shears, sweeping machines, and shoulder milling machines.
Our customers include federal authorities, state-owned enterprises, municipal and city administrations, contractors, and farmers. Sales are conducted through a network of factory representatives in Germany, as well as through Unimog general dealerships and agricultural machinery dealers. We have various sales partnerships across Europe, with exports accounting for 20% of our business.
The company was founded in 1904, initially producing hay blowers, hay turners, and grain mills. We currently employ approximately 130 people and have an annual turnover of 35 million Euros. Mr. Christian Dücker now leads the business in its fourth generation.
The Challenge
The electronic spare parts catalog, which had served faithfully for years, proved to be no longer future-proof. With an outdated system that no longer met current requirements and offered no online publishing capabilities, a solution was urgently needed. The biggest hurdle, however, was not just the technological change, but also the migration of data from the old system and the transition to automated processes. This led to the following core requirements that the new system absolutely had to meet:
- Online publication of spare parts catalogs.
- Migration of existing legacy catalogs into the new solution.
- Extensive automation of processes for data creation and maintenance.
- Ability to create serial number-specific catalogs and select the appropriate catalog by entering serial numbers.
The Decision
After a thorough review of available options, the choice fell on SpareParts365. The decisive factors for this decision were primarily:
- Integrated portal solution
- Cloud variant available as SaaS (Software as a Service)
- No investment required through a subscription model
- Low implementation and operating costs
- No duplicate data maintenance
- Modern and intuitive “Look & Feel”
- Low-risk entry into the project possible
This innovative software solution promised not only a solution to current problems but also a future-proof platform for the company. From the integrated portal solution to the intuitive user interface, SpareParts365 offered everything Gerhard Dücker GmbH & Co. KG needed to provide its customers with easy and fast access.
The Implementation
Once the decision was made, the company began implementation. First, the data from the existing system was converted, providing an online catalog whose content was a 1:1 match to the old catalog. In the meantime, Dücker began adapting its data maintenance processes, allowing initial test data to be generated from the ERP system. After deciding not to invest internal effort in data transformation, the development of a pre-processor was commissioned. This pre-processor converted existing data from ERP, engineering, and documentation into the import format of SpareParts365.
The Results
Finally, the moment of truth arrived: the Go-Live of SpareParts365 at Gerhard Dücker GmbH & Co. KG. The new possibilities offered to employees were impressive:
- Selection of a catalog via a product structure or serial number.
- Use of the new, automatically generated serial number-specific catalogs for newly produced equipment, as well as the old, converted catalogs for older equipment.
- Display of supplementary documents and price information.
- Collection of required spare parts in a shopping cart, with the option to send an email inquiry to Dücker’s spare parts sales department via a full-fledged shop function.
From simple catalog navigation, serial number-specific catalogs, to fast and error-free ordering of spare parts – SpareParts365 made it all possible. Catalog creators also benefited from simplified data maintenance and automated processes:
- The maintenance of data required for the spare parts catalog is done entirely in proALPHA, thereby avoiding inconsistencies and transmission errors.
- Using product records from proALPHA – in addition to standard catalogs for individual product types – serial number-specific catalogs are generated, ensuring that the customer finds a spare parts catalog that precisely matches the configuration of their machine.
- The effort for catalog creation and maintenance could thus be significantly reduced.
The company was ready for a new era of efficiency and innovation in the spare parts business.
Conclusion
The task of transferring all necessary information from the legacy system without data loss proved challenging, but achievable with manageable effort.
The setup and configuration of the online solution with SpareParts365 involved surprisingly little effort. The functionalities needed to easily and accurately identify and order spare parts are available in the SpareParts365 portal solution and are intuitive to use.
Operating the portal as a cloud solution offers significant advantages compared to an in-house operation. All efforts for building, operating, and maintaining a corresponding infrastructure, as well as the need to build and maintain expertise for it, are eliminated. The use of the subscription variant of SpareParts365 also allowed for a risk-free entry into the project.
Adjusting the required processes for data maintenance and successfully integrating affected employees once again proved to be an internal challenge.
What Happened Next:
After a short testing phase with selected factory representatives in Germany and abroad, the spare parts portal was made generally available to our dealer network. Additionally, every buyer of a machine now has limited guest access to the catalog data, which was quickly and easily realized through SpareParts365’s authorization concept with a role model. Due to the intuitive operation, user acceptance was high from the outset, and the use of the ordering function quickly surged. This led to a noticeable relief for employees in advisory roles within spare parts sales and reduced the error rate in order entry by 15%. Workshops of our specialized dealers, in particular, now appreciate the ability to view assemblies and machines in a 3D model. This is often valuable assistance in identifying and assembling spare parts.
