MURTFELDT, a family company with its head office in Dortmund, is a supplier of technical products. 700 staff members at six manufacturing centers across Europe produce high-performance plastics, standardized and personalized parts, and semi-finished products for tens of thousands of clients worldwide. Robert Höhner, who is running the company in the 4th generation, has placed it as “a professional in a specific niche market” and wishes to lead it into a significantly digital future. He described to an audience of around 50 visitors why his business needs further digitalization, what capacity this opens and which challenges he and his team have actually currently overcome along the method.
Like in numerous sectors, digital platforms, which make it possible to handle customer enquiries incredibly rapidly, quickly and instantly, have also established themselves in contract production in the past years. In addition, a brand-new generation of consumers progressively expects manufacturers to have digital circulation channels. That is why MURTFELDT’s management chose to establish a brand-new online store, where consumers can automatically obtain quotes and location orders for a variety of standardized premade parts. “We can offer up to 90% of our items by means of the brand-new store,” states Höhner. “For specific components or unique tasks that we establish and carry out together with our consumers, we naturally still have our direct circulation channel in place.” Apart from which, nowhere near all of MURTFELDT’s clients want to order online, suggesting that the business will continue to use one-to-one contact along with individual recommendations and assistance– and has no plans to make any cutbacks in sales personnel.
En route to an extremely integrated system
To establish the new store with the desired performances, it was necessary to start with to open MURTFELDT’s closed internal system to customers. Cleaning up and integrating the central IT system with its many isolated solutions and interrupted information flows to the point where the shop was prepared to go took over a year. At the very same time, however, Höhner stated that the store is just one of numerous big digitalization tasks: “Our ultimate vision is a highly incorporated system that reduces intricacy, is scalable, helps with complete information transparency and offers a completely automated digital consumer user interface.”
Bringing staff on board was important to the company’s management from the beginning. Höhner said: “In this regard, we benefit immensely from the trust our staff members have in us. Many have been with us for years and lots of have actually added to our digitalization tasks with a terrific sense of responsibility and their respective know-how.” Establishing the shop involved, for example, prices, shipment times and shipping and product packaging costs, which can now be computed immediately. In the process, the management group has learned, according to Höhner, that a mix of large, centrally collaborated projects and smaller, quick successes is an appealing way to inspire individuals. For example, the MURTFELDT group has actually established its own chatbot for customers and “fed” it with its substantial knowledge of materials. Another major project alongside the store is automated small-batch production.
Visitors made great use of the chance throughout Höhner’s speak with ask questions and actively add to the discussion. Beverages and snacks afterwards supplied an extra framework for sharing ideas.