New opening of the Digital Sales Hub in Spain

Rec­og­niz­ing the new dig­i­tal trends with max­i­mum ben­e­fit and imple­ment­ing them for cus­tomers is becom­ing increas­ing­ly impor­tant for busi­ness suc­cess. Fes­to, a glob­al play­er in automa­tion and tech­ni­cal edu­ca­tion, has opened its new Dig­i­tal Sales Hub in Barcelona, one of the trend hotspots. With its dynam­ic envi­ron­ment, the start-up metrop­o­lis offers the best con­di­tions for this.

Today, three quar­ters of B2B buy­ers in Europe already buy online and would like to use this chan­nel much more. Pur­chas­ing deci­sions are based pri­mar­i­ly on the qual­i­ty of the online pres­ence. With a new, younger gen­er­a­tion of buy­ers, the so-called mil­lenials under the age of 35, this trend towards online pur­chas­ing in B2B is set to intensify.

Fes­to has iden­ti­fied the Dig­i­tal Cus­tomer Jour­ney as a cen­tral field of action in its cor­po­rate strat­e­gy. By 2025, almost forty per­cent of sales are to be gen­er­at­ed and processed digitally.

“90 per­cent of all pur­chas­ing deci­sions, even in B2B, begin with a dig­i­tal search in a search engine. With our Dig­i­tal Cus­tomer Jour­ney, we con­sis­tent­ly focus on the needs of our cus­tomers. In doing so, we sup­port our cus­tomers through­out their entire dig­i­tal cus­tomer jour­ney: from find­abil­i­ty in search engines and intu­itive prod­uct selec­tion to the effi­cient order­ing and sales process,” said Dr. Ans­gar Kri­wet, Chief Sales Offi­cer, at the offi­cial inau­gu­ra­tion of the Dig­i­tal Sales Hub in Barcelona.

Already a quarter of sales online

The com­pa­ny already gen­er­ates a quar­ter of its sales online. In addi­tion to its own e‑business plat­forms, this also involves inte­gra­tion into cus­tomer and dis­trib­u­tor order por­tals. Sup­pli­ers must guar­an­tee smooth elec­tron­ic inte­gra­tion and high data qual­i­ty here. Such solu­tions are also part of Fes­to’s glob­al dig­i­tal­iza­tion strategy.

“We are aligned with the lead­ing B2C plat­forms and are con­stant­ly devel­op­ing in dig­i­tal tech­niques. The dig­i­tal envi­ron­ment is extreme­ly dynam­ic and strong­ly char­ac­ter­ized by start-ups. In addi­tion to San Fran­cis­co, which is still the lead­ing tech loca­tion, Lon­don, Berlin and Barcelona have estab­lished them­selves in Europe as inno­v­a­tive, dynam­ic metrop­o­lis­es for dig­i­tal trends.”

- Heiko Lands­berg, Head of Glob­al Dig­i­tal Sales

Start-up metropolis

As Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of the Span­ish nation­al com­pa­ny, Xavier Segu­ra rec­og­nized the oppor­tu­ni­ties of the metrop­o­lis ear­ly on: “I was a fan of this idea from the very begin­ning. At Fes­to Spain, we have been very suc­cess­ful­ly exploit­ing the poten­tial of the uni­ver­si­ties in Barcelona and the tech envi­ron­ment that exists there for sev­er­al years now. The city is an extreme­ly attrac­tive loca­tion for inter­na­tion­al tal­ent and tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies, which brings many advan­tages for our project.”

Dig­i­tal oppor­tu­ni­ties are chang­ing rapid­ly. In addi­tion to the head­quar­ters in Ger­many, the hub is anoth­er base for dig­i­tal sales with a strong focus on ana­lyt­ics and inno­va­tion. This allows the Group to pick up on new trends very quick­ly with devel­op­ers on site and test them in pilot projects togeth­er with the Span­ish nation­al com­pa­ny and its customers.

“We had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to house the Dig­i­tal Sales Hub in the same build­ing as our Span­ish nation­al com­pa­ny. This allows us to take advan­tage of the prox­im­i­ty to the oper­at­ing busi­ness of an inno­v­a­tive nation­al sub­sidiary and its cus­tomers. With the sup­port of Fes­to Spain, we are also recruit­ing the right spe­cial­ists on site,” explains Vik­tor Nord­strom, Head of Dig­i­tal Sales Hub Barcelona.

AI and design thinking

The Dig­i­tal Sales Hub already has 20 pro­fes­sion­als work­ing in data ana­lyt­ics, pro­gram­ming, inno­va­tion and cus­tomer sup­port. The inter­dis­ci­pli­nary teams use cre­ative spaces. State-of-the-art tech­nolo­gies such as AI-sup­port­ed data ana­lyt­ics and agile work­ing meth­ods such as design think­ing are used.

“We sup­port our cus­tomers in sav­ing time and becom­ing more pro­duc­tive in all process­es. Our dig­i­tal engi­neer­ing tools play a very cru­cial role in this. From prod­uct selec­tion, con­fig­u­ra­tion, ener­gy con­sump­tion assess­ment to down­load­ing draw­ings and tech­ni­cal data, we offer our cus­tomers an easy-to-use Fes­to ecosys­tem with a lot of added val­ue,” sum­ma­rizes Dr. Ans­gar Kriwet.