Success story
KHS GmbHIndustry• Engineering, Construction & Operations

Solution• OpenText™ Extended ECMfor SAP® Solutions

KHS accelerates sales processes
with OpenText Extended ECM forSAP Solutions®

Results
Customer loyalty has been
improved by providing better
service supported by better
information management
Sales costs reduced due tofaster preparation of proposals
Better information accessand sharing has improved
collaboration with suppliers

Plant manufacturer sees immediate benefits in sales processes
and lays foundation for company-wide information management“OpenText Extended ECM for SAP Solutions, with itstransaction-specific files, met our demanding requirements
for comprehensive information management.”
Christian Niederhagemann
Chief Information Officer
KHS GmbH

KHS accelerates sales processes with OpenText Extended ECM for SAP Solutions

KHS GmbH (KHS), headquartered in Dortmund, Germany, is a leadinginternational manufacturer of bottling plants and packaging systems
for the food, beverages and non-food industry. KHS has over 4,500
employees and generates revenues in excess of €1 billion (2014).
From five locations in Germany and six other international locations,
KHS develops and manufactures their portfolio of bottling andpackaging machines. It is a respected market leader and supplierof innovative, reliable and highly efficient products and services,such as turnkey solutions for complete plants, individual machines
and refurbishments, as well as worldwide on-site services available
around the clock.
KHS started as a medium-sized business and has grown to be a global
manufacturer and supplier of customized bottling and packaging systems.
Their customers require a system tailored to their own requirements, andthe drive toward standardization—particularly from major customers inthe sector—is on the increase. Consequently, the sales process is bothtime-consuming and complex, often spanning many months. This involves
a large number of documents, such as correspondence, quotations, specification documentation, layout plans and draft proposals, etc. which areexchanged between customers, suppliers and employees. In order to speed
up their processes, KHS needed to consistently integrate the extensive
array of documents into their processes. To so do, KHS selected OpenText™
Extended ECM for SAP® Solutions due to its seamless integration with SAP.

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 of KHS
GmbH. “These documents must always be available in the right placeat 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 viewof documents to simplify and accelerate workflows. KHS originally only
wanted to introduce a solution in the sales department, because theprevious system was unable to satisfy user expectations. However,from the very start of the project, Niederhagemann and his teamfavored a platform solution that would allow all document-focusedprocesses to be managed—and that’s why OpenText made sense.

A 360-degree view of every customer and project

KHS has over seven million documents, with 3.7 terabytes of datastored in their sales archive, and this does not include emails. “Oursales workflows are managed in SAP CRM, which is our primarysystem for all of our sales related processes,” said Niederhagemann.
“We required a solution that would enable us to store all files andrelevant information for every transaction in one place. Users need
to be able to access all information directly from the sales processes
and the SAP interface.”“The infrastructure is inplace, and the connection
between OpenText
and SAP specifically isfunctioning smoothly.
The users feel that theinterplay of both solutions
is almost like dealing witha single solution. ”
Christian Niederhagemann
Chief Information OfficerKHS GmbHKHS accelerates sales processes with OpenText Extended ECM for SAP Solutions

Also, information had to be accessible to other departments. For example,documentation for a plant is created during the sales process. Information contained in this documentation is also relevant for the maintenanceteams. They must be able to access the documents at the touch of abutton, finding them easily by using a powerful full-text search. Locating
information was time-consuming and involved multiple queries andchecks with colleagues. In addition to needing a single, central content
repository, KHS also required extensive content management functions
that 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 a periodof around four months at the end of 2014, with an internal KHS teamcollaborating closely with OpenText Professional Services. The IT
department at KHS even began using the solution before sales as partof a pilot project. The first sales group has been using the solution sincethe spring of 2015, benefitting from quicker access to documents.

By the summer of 2015, the solution will be rolled out to another 200 of
the total of around 1,000 colleagues in sales worldwide. User experience
feedback has been uniformly positive. “Our colleagues in sales have
all the information about a customer order readily available, fromthe 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 specifically, is functioning smoothly. The users feel that theinterplay 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. In 2015,
purchasing will also be switched to the OpenText platform. Since KHS
has been using an OpenText Web Content Management system,
Niederhagemann is also considering linking it to Extended ECM. Finally,
there are also plans to introduce company-wide records management
using the OpenText platform as the basis for compliance purposes.
TMAbout OpenText

OpenText, The Information Company,
enables organizations to gain insight
through market leading information
management solutions, on-premises orin the cloud. For more information about
OpenText (NASDAQ: OTEX, TSX: OTEX)
visit opentext.com.
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