An early-stage connected journey
HF’s reality is project-based, relationship-driven and highly engineered. Customers typically buy custom machinery through long sales cycles and then return with new projects over many years. That shapes what a connected experience can realistically look like.
“It's not like we are winning a completely new customer,” Jeremias says. “We have many customers and connections through our long history, and they have new projects. Then, it's about this project.”
Rather than forcing a fully digital sales model, HF has focused its early efforts where digital clearly helps: after-sales service and ongoing collaboration. One recent move was to link the corporate website and customer portal more tightly.
Today, the Group’s key digital touchpoints include:
- A website for product and innovation information
- A customer portal with documentation, ticketing, spare parts catalog and webshop
- A real-time online condition monitoring solution to assess “how our machines feel”
Together, these shift the relationship from one-off orders to something closer to ongoing exchange. The most visible impact so far is in service experience. The portal’s ticketing capability complements HF’s traditional hotline.
“A hotline is not always reachable 24/7,” Jeremias says. “If it's one hour behind business hours, you need to wait. With a digital touch point, when an issue happens, you can open the ticket and the next morning you are quite sure that somebody has taken care of it.”
For HF, that matters commercially, as well. These experiences influence whether a customer buys from HF again in the future, and that’s why service is one of the Group’s top priorities as they become a connected manufacturer.
HF’s connected experience strategy therefore starts where the value is most accessible: keeping installed machines supported, documented and visible through simple, always-open touchpoints.
A horizontal digital team inside a siloed business
To support this, HF treats digital as a dedicated, cross-entity function.
“Quite early at HF, we decided to treat digital solutions its own department at quite a high level,” Jeremias says.
His team consists mainly of product managers for the digital offerings, working hand-in-hand with experts from each entity and with external development partners. “We don't have any software developers in-house,” he explains. “We have an idea what we want to do, and then we look in the market for the best partner who is the best match for us to develop this tool.
The speed we can get with having the right partner is something which we would not be able if we say we start something from scratch internally.
This model, however, must operate across an organization naturally arranged in silos: by product, entity and value step. Jeremias needs experts from each of those silos to provide input and perspective, and those people are in demand.
HF’s response: Bring more domain and IT knowledge directly into the digital solutions team, so it can move faster without constantly drawing on scarce local resources. The aim is to heavily reduce the support needed from classical departments, but keep them involved as domain experts.
Change management runs in parallel. For some long-tenured colleagues, especially in sales, digital products are still outside their comfort zone.
“If someone struggles to promote a digital product because they don’t feel comfortable talking about it, will they talk to a customer about this offering?” Jeremias says. This is why alignment at the leadership level is so important.
His overall philosophy on organizational change: persistence and adaptation. “You're not that speedboat that you could be and want to be. But you also don't want to be like a big container ship. You need to find the middle.”
A vintage stack with new layers
HF’s technology and data landscape bears growth marks.
“HF is not the youngest company on the planet,” Jeremias says. “You see this history in the IT tech stack we have, and that's for sure a challenge.”
One challenge is data quality. An ERP migration in one entity highlighted just how much duplication had accumulated. “We do a migration to the new version of our ERP system,” he says. “And then you check the data you have, and then you see how data has evolved through the years and through organizational changes.”
Another is the mixed level of modernization across entities. Some use cloud systems to store and work with data. Others use legacy data storage systems that would not support any AI ambitions.
As a result, HF often chooses not to build new digital products on top of existing systems. “We partially say we don't build digital touch points based on this existing tech stack we have,” Jeremias says. “We completely establish a new one.”
Where it standardizes, HF leans on well-known platforms:
- Microsoft (including Azure) for infrastructure
- Tools like Zendesk for ticketing that are integrated into the customer portal so customers see a unified front end while HF works with familiar back-end systems.
Looking forward, AI is seen as an important addition, but not a silver bullet. “I'm a little bit skeptical still, but I think it will be something you need to integrate into your business, into your workflows,” he says. “It will not work without it,” he says.
He expects “a lot of trial and error” but sees experimentation as necessary to find the right use cases and tools. One planned experiment: Introducing AI into the customer portal so available documentation and tickets are more easily accessible for users, whether customers or HF employees.
A big topic in industrial manufacturing is reluctance around data sharing. Customer hesitation around this remains a sticking point, so HF modernizes selectively, building new where needed, introducing AI in places where the benefits will be obvious. We continue to have careful conversations about data and value with customers.
Digital products and what ‘good’ looks like
Within this landscape, the digital portfolio under Jeremias’ remit is intentionally focused. He distinguishes between digital components essential for machine operation and add-on solutions.
In his scope today are two primary offerings:
- A customer portal with documentation, ticketing, spare parts catalog and webshop
- An online condition monitoring solution for HF machines
The portal is free to access, with certain services like the spare parts catalog offered for a fee. Condition monitoring follows a subscription-based SaaS model.
HF measures success in straightforward, usage-led terms. For the portal, two indicators matter most: onboarded customers and recurring visits. For condition monitoring, the first focus is on the number of connected machines and then again on recurring use.
Underneath those metrics sits a clear conviction: A digital product only creates value if it becomes part of someone’s everyday work.
The real success, he suggests, is when customers are so integrated with a solution that they actively take steps to keep it. That moment arrives “when you can say: ‘OK, you don't pay. I’ll deactivate your user. You cannot use it anymore.’ And you hear: ‘Hey, hey! I will pay as long as I can keep using it.’” Or, if they want to actively take part in further development, shaping tools to their specific needs.
Jeremias’ advice to peers
- Create a dedicated digital team. “One topic that’s quite important is the organizational one,” he says. “You need a new know-how if you want to really start with this journey.”
- Place digital close to the business and leadership. Digital should report near top management, not be buried inside IT or automation.
- Don’t operate in a silo. Identify key stakeholders early, keep them informed, and make them part of the journey.
- Anchor digital in real customer needs. “I want to support my customer, not because I want to establish a new revenue stream.”
- Think big, start small. Have a clear end vision, but begin with manageable steps. “Success and fast success helps you again to get all these stakeholders on board and happy.”
