UTG Mixing Group: a clear and cohesive international business process

UTG Mixing Group is a technology group providing mixing solutions to companies globally. Located in Finland and Germany, the group previously made tanks and rolls for the manufacturing industry but later shifted its focus to mixing equipment, for example for chemical plants.

UTG Mixing Group has grown by purchasing other companies, and with new operations came the need for new tools for control and transparency. For example, their subsidiaries’ information systems did not communicate together.

CTO Zakaria Mönkäre started working for the group in early 2018:

“I noticed that the current IT expenses and the large spectrum of different tools did not contribute to unifying the subsidiaries,” Mönkäre says.

Unifying business processes

Before embarking on a project, Mönkäre compared different CRM tools and decided that Salesforce suited them best. The decision was made from a platform perspective with the goal of a unified experience for end-users.
“For the first couple of months we did an analysis on our IT environment. After that, we could start the implementation process in mid 2018.”

Together with Fluido, UTG Mixing Group looked into all of their operations and processes to see if there were business processes that could be streamlined and unified. The fundamental elements were CRM, CPQ, ERP, and HR-support functions. The CRM was updated to run on Salesforce and the CPQ and HR-support functions were introduced as new.

The group had a lot of processes and information on paper and in Excel. Following workshops and discussions, they were able to identify which business processes they could discard.

“I was thinking, do we need these processes when Salesforce enables automating them?” Mönkäre says.

UTG Mixing Group’s old CRM had a lot of information fields for employees to fill in. They reviewed the lead’s journey and, with the new Salesforce CRM, they changed this so that only certain fields are required when the lead is added to the CRM.

“The same process had to get up and running, and well integrated. We focused a lot on the user experience and user interface. We created an end-to-end process, where the data moves into the system with a single press of a button without having to enter the same data twice.”

UTG Mixing Group bravely decided to start over, throw the old tools in the bin, and leap into a new way of doing things. Fluido handled the project professionally.

Goals achieved: more transparency and quicker pace

Fluido helped UTG Mixing Group to make their business processes quicker and digitalize them with systems such as CRM and CPQ.

“The CRM brought together both the Finnish and the German sales teams and unified the sales process. Everything we have done speeds up the sales processes and brings transparency.”

UTG Mixing Group plans, manufactures, and sells their own products with unified processes. The manufacturing process is dependent on where the manufacturing machines are, and now the manufacturing capacity can be divided better between manufacturing plants.

“If the planning department has the same tools, then the work can be divided. The same is true with the purchasing and project management departments.”

UTG Mixing Group’s sales cycle became faster, and the process became more consistent. For example, all the necessary documents, such as terms of delivery, can be printed from the CPQ in eight different languages. The time they had to wait decreased from weeks to a few hours.

With Salesforce’s Outlook integration, UTG Mixing Group is now able to quickly answer all inquiries and the overall quality of answers has increased.

“The paper process in our German unit was difficult, the inquiries were printed out and put into piles. A new pile was added on top of that thus some of the inquiries were unanswered. Now all the customers get an answer, and the quality of the answers is unified. This has a positive influence on the customer experience.”

UTG Mixing Group was missing a clear revision control; now they have a clear project and customer numbering. They used to dig the product serial numbers from Excel files or paper; now the system automatically creates the serial number. The reclamation process has become more straightforward: the customer is notified when a reclamation ticket has been set up and the handling of these reclamation cases is quicker.

“Also, the HR tool we introduced to both Finland and Germany has been really efficient and easy to use. The employees can use their mobile phones to fill their holiday applications and log expense invoices.”
Mönkäre concludes:

“I am ready to recommend Fluido. The cooperation has been flexible, and we’ve been supported by Fluido Care. They have broad expertise and I, as a person with technical knowledge, have been able to get straight to the point with Fluido’s experts. They have also been able to challenge my views.”