KHS

KHS started as a medium-sized business and has grown to be a global manufacturer and supplier of customized bottling and packaging systems. Its sales process is both time-consuming and complex, often spanning many months and involving a large number of documents, such as correspondence, quotations, layout plans and draft proposals exchanged between customers, suppliers and employees. To improve timelines and manage documents more efficiently, KHS selected OpenText™ Extended ECM for SAP® Solutions.

KHS plans wider usage by digitizing processes

“The construction and maintenance of plants take years. Every day, new documents are created and are part of company-wide processes,” explained Christian Niederhagemann, Chief Information Officer at KHS GmbH. “These documents must always be available in the right place at the touch of a button. Our employees have to be able to exchange content simply with both customers and suppliers. The OpenText solution makes this possible.”

The project was triggered by the demand for a process-oriented view of documents to simplify and accelerate workflows. Niederhagemann and team favored a platform solution, initially introduced in the sales department, that would allow all document-focused processes to be managed.

A 360-degree view of every customer and project

KHS has over seven million documents, with 3.7 terabytes of data stored in their sales archive, excluding emails. “Our sales workflows are managed in SAP Customer Experience, which is our primary system for all of our sales-related processes,” said Niederhagemann. “We required a solution that would enable us to store all files and relevant information for every transaction in one place. Users need to be able to access all information directly from sales processes and the SAP interface.”

Also, information had to be accessible to other departments. Sales documentation is also relevant to KHS’ maintenance teams, which need to access documents at the touch of a button with powerful search. Locating information was time-consuming, involving multiple queries and checks with colleagues. In addition to needing a single, centralized content repository, KHS required extensive content management functions seamlessly integrated to SAP.

“OpenText Extended ECM for SAP Solutions, with its transaction-specific files, met our demanding requirements for comprehensive information management,” confirmed Niederhagemann.

KHS strengthens customer loyalty

Implementation of the OpenText solution took place within four months, with close collaboration between KHS and OpenText Professional Services. Initially, KHS’ IT team began using the solution in a pilot project, then it was adopted by sales and employees worldwide. Feedback has been uniformly positive.

“Our colleagues in sales have all the information about a customer order readily available, from the construction plan to documents from our suppliers. This ensures we can prepare proposals considerably quicker and answer queries from our customers immediately, improving our customer service greatly,” explained Niederhagemann.

Financial and time benefits for future projects

“The infrastructure is in place, and the connection between OpenText and SAP is functioning smoothly. The users feel that the interplay of both solutions is almost like dealing with a single solution. On this basis, we will be able to implement the follow-up projects quickly and with little additional effort,” said Niederhagemann.