Hugo Hamann

Higher customer satisfaction at Hugo Hamann

With digitalized processes in sales, technology and software consulting, the full-service office supplier optimizes customer care

At Hugo Hamann GmbH & Co. KG, a full-service office supplier in northern Germany, the workforce has provided the impetus to modernize and digitize processes in customer support. Specifically, in the IT system solutions department, where around 90 employees in the three departments of sales, technology and software consulting serve medium-sized companies. From hardware and software equipment to cloud solutions and services, small and medium-sized enterprises, craftsmen's businesses, law firms and architects' offices: the different customers can obtain everything from a single source. 

Prepared for the future

In view of the rapidly growing structures of the traditional company, process optimization between the departments became indispensable. This triggered a change management process that ultimately resulted in the implementation of a new project management software.

The goal was to bring the three departments together and to establish a continuous, cross-departmental process from sales to technology to software consulting. For organizational, economic and technical reasons, Hugo Hamann finally decided to implement the project management solution InLoox PM. Since the employees are already familiar with Microsoft Office, a solution with an integration into Outlook is easy to use and learn for them. In addition to the price/performance ratio, the fact that the solution runs "on premise", i.e. on Hugo Hamann's own systems, also played a role. This also fits in with the "in-house strategy", which goes hand in hand with the company's high value-added depth.

How do you work?

Janine Butenberg was responsible for the introduction and implementation. She started work as IT project manager at Hugo Hamann with the launch of the new solution in April 2020. As a key user, she was also responsible for providing training to all colleagues together with the key users in the respective departments. Due to the CoVID19 pandemic, the training sessions for the key users had to be held online by InLoox's training department. The introductions to the new system extended to a total of four times two hours.

While the implementations were running from April to mid-May 2020, Butenberg conducted process surveys in parallel. In this context, employees were asked about their workflows. The processes were recorded using the graphical specification language BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation) and process templates were implemented in InLoox. The goals and wishes were recorded in a regular management meeting with the department heads and the head of the department. Finally, a manual was written.

Hugo Hamann started productive work with the project management solution in mid-August 2020. According to Butenberg, the implementation also went so quickly because the software and the introduction process were identity-forming, which is also expressed in the fact that "everyone from the specialist department stuck together more."

Overview and transparency as well as more effective and efficient project planning

Meanwhile, all 90 employees of the IT system solutions department work with InLoox. For each order, there is a project manager with a team of employees in sales field service, office service, software consulting and technology. In addition, customer inquiries are handled centrally by one contact person. This person creates a target document that contains cross-departmental information about the customer's wishes, type and number of products, deadlines and contract details. The project plan can then be used, for example, to distribute tasks to employees and to monitor deadlines and budgets.

Because the project plan is presented as a Gantt chart, tasks, deadlines and resources can be dynamically visualized for the respective customer projects. The nature of the projects at the customers is very variable, and the project duration can extend over a period of several months. For example, if a new ERP software is being introduced there. Within the first ten months after the launch of InLoox, more than 50 projects have been created. Since everything is mapped in a central system in InLoox, colleagues are more productive, according to Butenberg. In addition, customer satisfaction is increasing.In addition, the controlling of projects has improved significantly. This means that teams, as well as project managers and department heads, can generate evaluations of workload. They also find out when they can start a new project, for example, by looking at the degree of completion of their current project.

For the future, Hugo Hamann plans to expand the dashboard and further develop the reports. In this context, the company has already created its own time tracking report. The time record from InLoox, which the IT system house's customers sign off on when they accept the respective project, is used to finally incorporate this into the invoicing process.