Customer-Experience-Project: Stabilus creates global sales visibility with SAP Sales Cloud

In many cases, these are the innovative quality products of the Stabilus Group from Koblenz, the market leader in gas springs and hydraulic dampers. In 2019, the group of companies, which has 17 production sites in nine countries and operates through a network of subsidiaries and sales partners in more than 50 countries around the world, achieved a turnover of 953 million euros with more than 6,700 employees. In the long term, Stabilus hasthe ambitious goal of establishing itself as the world‘s leading supplier of motion control solutions.

To this end, the management is turning numerous screws: product design, quality, production and organization are being continuously improved. At the same time, the aim is to create a uniform corporate culture that strengthens the idea of teamwork and belonging and promotes innovation and a constant willingness to change. Another key factor is the digitalization, optimization and standardization of business processes.

„By implementing the SAP Sales Cloud solution from the SAP Customer Experience Suite (CX), we have already made great progress with sales processes in the Industrial business segment,“ says Alexander Donat, Operations Manager at Stabilus. SAP Sales Cloud replaces a combination of Microsoft Excel and CRM software from another manufacturer. In the cloud solution, Stabilus now brings together several hundred thousand pieces of sales-relevant information, as well as material master data, centrally, uniformly, consistently and in high quality. This creates a single source of truth that enables a transparent view of the global sales pipeline and a consistently digital and harmonized lead-to-cash process across all locations.

Management also benefits greatly: with SAP Sales Cloud, they can plan strategic sales measures in an even more targeted manner and better exploit cross-selling potential. The solution offers predefined, easy- to-understand key performance indicator reports and dashboards „out of the box“, which could be optimally adapted to Stabilus‘ sales processes with simple tools.

„That and the flexibility of the cloud solution is a big plus,“ explains Alexander Donat. Thanks to an individual function extension/additional development, the complete technical development process could be mapped in SAP Sales Cloud and the previously used in-house developed project management tool could be replaced.

In addition, SAP Sales Cloud functions as a central data hub. The solution exchanges sales-related information both with the central SAP ERP system and with the ERP systems of other manufacturers installed at individual locations. Customer, employee and material master data, quotations, orders, invoices, but also graduated prices are loaded directly from the different ERP back-ends into the cloud solution. At the same time, a possibility was created to create quantity-dependent graduated offers at the push of a button and thus largely automatically and quickly instead of manually as was previously the case - a real advantage.

The data exchange with SAP ERP takes place via SAP Cloud Platform Process Integration (CPI-PI). The non-SAP systems, but also the various configuration and pricing tools with which the individual locations work, are connected via SAP standard interfaces. The individual items required to create a quotation, including the technical drawings, are transmitted by these tools to SAP Sales Cloud after the configuration has been completed.

Stabilus commissioned ORBIS AG with the implementation of SAP Sales Cloud. The Saarbrücken-based IT service provider submitted the most convincing offer in the extensive tender. It has profound expertise in sales processes and the integration of on-premise and cloud software in the SAP environment and has also successfully implemented several SAP projects at Stabilus.

Thanks to the trusting and collegial cooperation of all those involved and the use of the agile SAP Activate method with short sprints, the implementation went quickly. „The sprint phases with their short cycles proved to be a great advantage in the course of the implementation, because it allowed us to react quickly and flexibly to new requirements,“ Alexander Donat clarifies. Another decisive factor for the success of the project was that both sides had each appointed a project manager and that the implementation as well as the rollout were controlled by the German head office.

Currently, eleven locations are working with SAP Sales Cloud. In the final expansion stage, 20 locations with around 500 end users are planned, and the sales software will then be linked to eight different ERP systems. But this is just the beginning.

Where possible and sensible, existing SAP on-premise solutions will be expanded with SAP cloud offerings. For example, the introduction of SAP Integrated Business Planning (SAP IBP) and SAP Analytics Cloud are being considered.