When you talk about emergency power, you say Royal Van Twist. The 180-year-old Dordrecht-based company once began trading in diesel engines and then grew to become a specialist in emergency power generators. From hospitals to data centers, and from parking garages to shopping malls, Royal Van Twist offers the solution. Still, they were not ready for the digital future, but thanks to the Microsoft Team, they are!
“Our engineers in the field now all call via Teams. The video connection is especially nice. During workplace inspections, we can watch along without being present.” – Jeroen Eeuwijk, commercial manager.
New opportunities by corona
Royal Van Twist’s colleagues are on the road every day to serve customers well. Until the corona pandemic started. “Then it became March 2020. As a commercially driven manager, I think our people should be with customers as much as possible. That was suddenly a lot more difficult because of Corona,” Jeroen says. “However, it also provided new opportunities and a new way of working. We didn’t like the previous solution we had. Then we moved at breakneck speed to Office 365 and within that to calling via Microsoft Teams.”
Benefits of Teams
Jeroen continues: “The move to Microsoft Teams brings many benefits to the company. Our account managers and project leaders used to have a lot of travel time. Via Teams, we can now still schedule a lot of customer contact without having to travel a lot. Our own agenda now has more structure. An appointment in Alkmaar, for example, used to take at least half a day, now you know: it’s from 10 to 11, and then you can move on.” Meetings also run more efficiently, he notes. “We actually did a double whammy with this. You spend a lot less time arranging, planning and traveling.”
Watching on location
The biggest “working smarter” gain the company has made is in making it easier for everyone on site to follow along. “Our service engineers in the field all call through Teams. That image connection is especially nice. When we perform workplace inspections, account managers, the KAM coordinator and the immediate supervisor can now watch without having to be present. The service engineer can then literally zoom in on aspects that catch his eye. You can even record it if you want and use it to share with other colleagues.”
“It also makes any maintenance run better. For example, if something is broken, the service engineer used to call to the store and have to explain. Now he can just show a technical specialist what’s going on.”
But wouldn’t that switch have been made without corona as well? “Probably yes, but possibly not so soon. I honestly don’t know if we would have held a toolbox digital, for example, if corona hadn’t come along. In that sense, it really has been a gamechanger for us,” Jeroen Eeuwijk said.