Zöllner Fensterbau GmbH, a German window manufacturer with 90 employees, has spent 50 years perfecting the hands-on, traditional approach that sets the business apart. “At Zöllner, we design and build high-quality wood-aluminum windows,” explains Frank Severin, Head of Organization and Processes at Zöllner Fensterbau GmbH. Unlike many manufacturers in the market, Zöllner not only designs and builds, but installs its products. “We’re part of the customer journey from A to Z,” says Severin.
While Zöllner’s clientele love hand-crafted windows and an old-school focus on customers, the Zöllner team needed to find a new, more refined approach to collaboration with customers. “Our people are highly focused on making great windows and having happy customers, but when it came to automation and digitization, we weren’t working in a modern way,” says Severin. That realization, paired with rising material costs and increased competition for talent, led to what Severin calls an “obligation to optimize”—and to the implementation of Microsoft 365 Business Premium. “We created a three-year strategy focused on how to grow our business in a challenging time,” says Severin. “A key part of that strategy was to invest in modern collaboration tools like those in Microsoft 365.” Today, Zöllner is bringing its history of craftsmanship into a new era, growing its business, connecting with customers, and dramatically boosting efficiency. “With Microsoft 365 tools, we’ve found a way to maintain the quality of a small manufacturing business while scaling like a much larger business,” says Severin.
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