Annual report 2019
The HANSA-FLEX Group continues to grow as planned in Germany and worldwide – even if the momentum of this development slowed down somewhat in line with the global economic environment in 2019. Last year, more than 4,200 employees at 458 locations and 397 mobile service vehicles worldwide provided expert support to over 156,300 customers worldwide. In addition to engineering consultancy services, this included our 24-hour on-site emergency service, standard spare-parts business over the counter at our branches, and just-in-time deliveries from our central hose line production facility.
"We are focusing on the further development of digital solutions."
We are particularly pleased with the strong growth of our 40 foreign subsidiaries. We now successfully support many German customers globally with our well-known efficient performance and individual support. Word gets around quickly and, in many countries, local companies are also increasingly contacting us – not least because of our international operations and because, as a German company, we enjoy a quality advantage. As a result, our recently established companies in India and Singapore have been able to establish themselves very quickly. We are the market leaders in numerous countries and are growing organically at a strong rate – examples include Austria, the Netherlands, Poland as well as Lithuania and Latvia, where we offer the complete range of services and products as a hydraulics system partner, just as we do in Germany.
In Germany, we further expanded and automated our production facilities, while the branch network and our fleet of rapid service vehicles were also expanded. We are growing at an above-average rate, especially in the industrial hydraulic services sector. Above all, we were able to further consolidate and expand our base of satisfied customers, and carry out a range of interesting projects, as regularly reported in our quarterly HYDRAULIKPRESSE magazine.
"We are particularly pleased with the strong growth of our 40 foreign subsidiaries. We successfully support customers around the world."
However, a main focus of the management is on the development of digital solutions – with regard to our customers as well as to all the relevant internal processes. The further development of the My.HANSA-FLEX customer portal, for example, has been extremely well received; our customers benefit enormously from simplified processes and compliance-relevant documentation solutions that can be perfectly integrated. This portal has been relaunched on a modern software platform and integrated into our webshop and online catalogue environment.
Last year, we internally transferred our computer centres which we had previously operated ourselves in Bremen and to which more than 30 foreign subsidiaries are connected via our joint SAP R/3 ERP solution, to an externally managed cloud service operated by a global service provider. In the current year, as part of a global project, we are preparing the migration of this key resource to the new, updated SAP S/4 system in order to be strategically well prepared for further growth.
"Strategically, we are well prepared for further growth."
We would like to take this opportunity to thank all our customers who have made this positive development possible, and whom we assure of our continued professional support in the future. We could not have achieved this without the efforts of our large, highly motivated and experienced workforce, to whom we are also extremely grateful.