With the support of Arineo GmbH, the company from Middle Franconia is in the process of moving key business areas to the Microsoft Cloud as part of its digital transformation. Our colleague Harald Tingelhoff, Director of Business Development, spoke with Felix Dingermann, Chief Digital Officer (CDO), from Brodos AG about the project.
Harald Tingelhoff: Hello Felix. As Chief Digital Officer you are the pioneer of digitalization at Brodos. This applies both to internal processes within the company and to the development of new digital solutions. What were your most important reasons for moving to the Microsoft Cloud?
Felix Dingerman: Brodos has now been successful in the market for over thirty years and I have been with the company for a good 20 years. We realize that our customers’ needs have evolved significantly over time. Therefore, we wanted to digitally reorganize our entire collaboration – fit for the future.
With Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales, we can optimize our customer communication, improve our colleagues’ connectivity, and harmonize our processes across all sales channels. This has enabled us to create added value in all areas.
Harald Tingelhoff: What steps have you already successfully implemented?
Felix Dingerman: We started with Office 365 and renewed our base systems, bringing them up to date. We already use all the collaboration, communication, and content management capabilities. For example, by forming groups via Teams, chatting quickly with each other, or working on files together. We work state-of-the-art with Office 365.
The Brodos Power Package
Harald Tingelhoff: One major step was your five sales channels and multichannel marketing for the respective target groups. What does your solution look like?
Felix Dingerman: Yes, that was one of the challenges. Because we have grown strongly over the years, our sales department serves many divisions and very diverse target groups. Therefore, we also have differently tailored sales channels – from specialist dealers and key accounts to our major corporate customers. With the shift to Dynamics 365, we can ensure that there is now a consistent, traceable, but still customized customer journey across all channels.
We had examined several CRM solutions. The possibilities of the target group-oriented customer journey, the seamless integration of D365 into the Microsoft ecosystem, and the opportunities for individual customization with the Microsoft Power Platform were the deciding factors for choosing Microsoft over Salesforce. Last but not least, the strategic advice and detailed demos provided by the Arineo team convinced us to go the Microsoft way.
Harald Tingelhoff: What were the sales department’s expectations?
Felix Dingerman: The overriding goal for us was to further optimize customer relationships and increase customer lifetime value. The more intelligently we bundle our channels and the more transparently we design the environment, the better the collaboration ultimately works for everyone involved.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 offers us the opportunity to manage everything in a single platform instead of isolated solutions, thus creating synergies. In concrete terms, this means that we have centralized all customer management in Microsoft Dynamics Sales. Everyone works with the same system and is therefore always up to date.
Harald Tingelhoff: How does the individual customization of the cloud solution for the company work?
Felix Dingerman: We are glad that we consciously chose the standard Microsoft D365 Sales and Marketing Platform. This way, we have very little adjustment effort. In addition, Arineo supports us in the change to Dynamics not only technically, but also with internal training. Since Arineo brings a wealth of trade experience, it runs really smoothly. This has the advantage for us that we can start operationally very quickly.
The add-on Arineo.Essentials also provides us with significant added value. This is a small but very efficient collection of best practice features that Arineo has developed specifically for Dynamics 365 Sales. For example, it checks whether a customer address has been input correctly as soon as it is entered. It also provides ready-made dashboards that help us get a quick overview of our sales activities. A perfect tool for even more effective sales.
Since Arineo brings a wealth of trade experience, it runs really smoothly. This has the advantage for us that we can start operationally very quickly.
It is already clear to us that the move to the Microsoft Sales Cloud was absolutely the right choice. We will certainly continue to follow this path in the future.
Harald Tingelhoff: Felix, thank you for the interview!
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