A clear picture of the client base for Hansa Luftbild AG
Hansa Luftbild AG is world leader in aerial photography and associated products and services. It is very important that the company be attuned to each of its 30,000 or so clients in what is by nature an international market. On the one hand, subsidiaries in such markets as the Arab states or China must drive business development locally. On the other hand, sales processes need to be harmonised. Then again, the common client database must be consistent at all times and accessible across the board. In short, Hansa Luftbild needed an up-to-the-minute CRM system as a solid stepping stone to long-term growth. Thanks to Selligent, Hansa Luftbild is now in a position to enhance the quality of its offerings. But above all, it can guarantee consistency across different regions. In view of the international scope of its client base, that makes for a real competitive advantage.
Hans-Christoph TielbaarHansa Luftbild Sales and Marketing Director
“The unique Global & Local functionality provides Hansa Luftbild with a powerful technology base for its international business”
“Selligent stood out for its more interesting price and ease of implementation”
Hansa Luftbild AG is one of the world’s foremost suppliers of geographic information, aerial photography and associated products and services. It is one of the rare organisations to marry the traditions of a company boasting an 80-year history with the efficiency of a state-of-the-art engineering organisation. A global presence has long made sense to Münster-based Hansa Luftbild. It has direct representation in key markets via its subsidiaries located in Bahrain, China, Hungary, India, Morocco, The Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, The UAE and The Yemen. But the aeroplanes criss-cross the whole globe. Their aerial photos are as necessary to the exploration of natural resources as they are for cartography or geographic data sourcing. And some time ago, traditional film was joined by digital photographic systems that open the door to new applications. In other words, this traditional engineering company has always been at the cutting edge of innovation and technology, offering its clients better and more comprehensive services.
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International business: the company’s driving force
Hansa Luftbild likes to have an overview of the world, but also – indeed, above all – of its clients. In such an international market environment, it absolutely must adapt to each of its 30,000 clients. The different business practices – from Münster to Shanghai – have to be taken into consideration and respected. The subsidiaries located in major markets such as the Middle East or China have to drive business development locally. In addition, sales processes have to be designed to fit a harmonised management approach. And of course, the common client database has to be accessible across the board and consistent at all times. “Hansa Luftbild’s demands in terms of sales processes are highly complex”, explains Hans-Christoph Tielbaar, Hansa Luftbild Sales and Marketing Director. “By virtue of their complexity, our services are absolutely customisable”. And recently, target groups have been re-focused, adding to the day-to-day complexity the company faces. “In Germany in particular, we are concentrating more and more on private-sector clients since the public sector is in decline”, Tielbaar adds. Furthermore, head office takes care of managing all the countries where Hansa Luftbild is not represented by a subsidiary. That creates supplementary sales processes In such a dynamic, ever-evolving environment, it was crucial for Hansa Luftbild to “introduce clearly standardised sales processes”, Tielbaar emphasises. That is why the old sales IS was replaced by a state-of-the-art CRM solution based on Selligent Xi.
“Client information is a shared asset“
When talking about the Selligent implementation, Hansa Luftbild management’s leitmotiv reads as follows: “information is a shared asset and must be transparent to all employees”. An approach like that simply had to be based on an up-to-the-minute and powerful CRM system designed to last. “But of course, before implementing the Selligent solution, we took a close look at the market”, says Tielbaar. Aided and abetted by outside consultants, a team at Hansa Luftbild started by defining the needs of the new solution, which would act as the basis for a detailed assessment of the many offerings on the market. The consultants first short-listed the 12 most interesting offerings out of a total of 120. Then, Hansa Luftbild submitted a list of basic needs to these suppliers and asked them for a price quotation. Five suppliers made the grade. They were sent detailed specifications so that they could fine-tune their bid. Three of them were invited to present their solution to Hansa Luftbild during a half-day session each. Finally, every single project team member individually evaluated each solution. Yet the conclusions were unanimous: of the two most promising solutions, Selligent stood out for its more interesting price and ease of implementation, which was carried out with the help of Selligent partner OSG GmbH. The decision was taken and the order placed in October 2003. By December 17, the data from the old system had already been transferred. And the Selligent solution is now up and running. The implementation schedule even left time for training the 20 or so regular users and 30 occasional users.
Benefits for international operations
Other than price, a whole series of other criteria were in Selligent’s favour. In particular its unique Global & Local functionality, which provides Hansa Luftbild with a powerful technology base for its international business. With Global & Local, Hansa Luftbild can now grant its various subsidiaries substantial freedom to adapt the solution to their local business processes and workflows, the client information they want to store and update and their choice of working language. And all the time, the totality of their client data and CRM processes are guaranteed to be consistent. Having experienced the success and speed of implementation of the Sales module, Hansa Luftbild is now working away at introducing the Marketing module, which is planned to go live in the autumn of 2004. When the company has amassed enough practical experience, the international subsidiaries will also be able to exploit the advantages of the Selligent system and standardised sales processes, across the company. This is expected to happen in the course of next year. However, Hansa Luftbild has not yet decided whether the English interface should be applied across the company – but the flexibility of the Selligent system means that this kind of decision can be taken on a case-by-case basis and the conversion can take place immediately. Hansa Luftbild also acknowledges the impressive flexibility of the on-line access and data replication. “At first, we thought we would use the replication mechanisms mainly for the field personnel. However, in practice it turned out that the 15 or so sales people who use the Selligent solution on a regular basis almost always access the CRM data on line”, explains Tielbaar. When they are off site, employees use a VPN-based secure connection to get the latest client information from the Selligent system.
