Customer case

How Nextview helps press manufacturer Koenig & Bauer to make customers successful

Being the oldest and second-largest press manufacturer in the world, Koenig & Bauer has been in business for over 200 years. The company offers the widest range of products and applications for the printing industry, says Thomas Göcke, Head of Digital Business Transformation. Together with Nextview’s Head of Sales Germany, Michael Zimmer, he explains how Nextview helps them to optimize the value of their digital investments. “We strongly believe that we can only be successful if our customers are, and I think we share the same DNA here.”

From folding cartons to metal decoration, and from security printing to holo containers. The Award-winning presses of Koenig & Bauer print almost anything. As the Head of Digital Business Transformation, Thomas and his team are, among other things, responsible for the development of products, helping their customers to stay ahead of their competition. Thomas: “That’s why we started implementing Salesforce back in 2010. Today, it's our system of engagement, our single source of truth, which helps us to understand the market better and collaborate internally as well as with customers.”

A single source of truth

For Koenig & Bauer, Salesforce is not simply a customer portal, aimed to answer service requests. The manufacturer wants the system to help them give smart advice to customers. “We provide our customers with recommendations that help them to take the right action at the right time”, Thomas explains. To do so, delivering the highest performing and iconically designed presses is not enough. “Customer expectations have changed. Customers are not only focused on the assets itself but also on the services and offerings around these products.” 

To meet customer expectations and fulfill the role of the trusted adviser, Koenig & Bauer collects - with permission of course - a lot of data from presses installed at customers. The data give insight into customer performance. Based on this, the manufacturer reaches out with recommendations on how to increase productivity, profitability, and uptime. Because that, in the end, is what customers want: to be successful in their marketplace.

The Netflix experience

Thomas stresses that the customer expectation today is highly driven by experiences in private life, where the smartphone offers anything from online shopping to tv control. “Customers want the Netflix experience. An easy to use interface, no manuals, highly interactive with quick access to data and information.” This shift from private to B2B market not only influences the design of the Koenig & Bauer presses but every part of the journey. This is exactly where Nextview comes in. “This holistic experience for our customers needs to include the way we interact with them. We strongly believe that we have to provide our employees, our service staff, and our customers with a modern, state-of-the-art experience.”

A distinctive approach

The first touchpoint between both companies was field services. For the technicians on the road, Koenig & Bauer wanted an application that would be highly accepted, highly usable, and with a high engagement review. All to make sure that the daily business of both customers and staff would be affected by a top-notch experience. With their design-led approach, Nextview helped them to understand the needs of the business and the business processes, and build these into a field service application which is now successfully rolled out.

Along the road, Thomas became a huge fan of the Nextview way of working. “We love it because they really try to understand our business needs and the processes behind them instead of just implementing the requirements.” It's exactly this approach that makes Nextview so distinctive for him. “It's a journey you go on together, very professional and structured, but always with a fun aspect, where you jointly develop a solution. At the end of our meetings, everybody would be excited about the collaborative way of working and the professional way we were guided through the process, with a clear focus on its success.”

For the acceptance of the solution by the people working with it, Thomas thinks this is key. “In the classic project management world, you would send your requirements to an implementation partner who builds the solution and delivers, and that’s it. In the Nextview approach, however, all stakeholders are involved, so there is a common agreement and understanding of why we are doing this, how we are doing it, and how the solution will help you, as an employee of Koenig & Bauer, to deliver more value towards our customers.”

Bringing business and IT together

Another area in which both companies cooperate is marketing automation. Looking for ways to build a one-on-one conversation with customers in a totally changed, digitally focused world, Koenig & Bauer asked Nextview for help. Salesforce offers several tools to provide customers with the right information at the right time. But, says Michael, “to find the right solution within the Salesforce world is not as easy as it sounds. In the first phase of our design-led approach, called ‘Creating the context’, we, therefore, determine what is necessary. Our strength is in the combination of this approach and our extensive knowledge of the entire Salesforce ecosystem.”

“To find the right solution within the Salesforce world is not as easy as it sounds. We, therefore, determine what is necessary.”

• Michael Zimmer, Head of Sales Germany, Nextview

Meanwhile, Nextview also supports Koenig & Bauer with project governance. How to set up the internal team? How to shape processes to gain higher efficiency and better results out of the Salesforce platform, how to deliver it to employees? “Nextview helped us to find the best possible solution”, says Thomas, “while sticking as close as possible to the standard.” Because that is, for sure, one of the main conditions for successful implementation: don’t over-customize. “If you do, you lose the power of the platform and the opportunity to take advantage of the innovations that are constantly being built into it.”

Making customers successful

For Michael, it's all a matter of bringing business and IT together. Thomas agrees: “To be successful in today’s world, especially in the context of digitalization, is not about implementing Salesforce or any other solution. To us, Salesforce is a platform for innovation and collaboration with our customers, putting them at the center of all activities. You need an IT department that is the partner of business, with joint responsibility for success or failure. That’s why Nextview is like a converting partner for us. They helped us move ahead on our journey.”

“I guess”, Michael adds, “It’s in our DNA. It’s not only about implementation or design thinking but also governance and business success. Of course, we don’t know better than our customers, but we can deliver real impact on these levels.” It’s a fulfilling partnership: both successful companies, both using award-winning designs for the highest performance, both connected with a real focus on client and customer. “We strongly believe that we can only be successful if our customers are”, says Thomas, “and I think we share the same DNA here. I can really feel that is a core value of Nextview as well: making customers successful. Period.