ZND Makes Purchasing, Production and Sales Processes Data-Driven with Digital Talent from Sweav

ZND Makes Purchasing, Production and Sales Processes Data-Driven with Digital Talent

from Sweav

You see them at many construction sites or public events around the world: temporary fence panels and barriers from ZND.

ZND is a global leader in the production of temporary fencing, barriers, hoarding and accessories. Through their network of distribution partners, they supply the construction and events sector. With their partners, ZND fence panels and barriers have been featured at some of the world’s most prestigious events, including multiple Olympic and Commonwealth Games, the Tour de France and the funeral of HM Queen Elizabeth II. However, most will be familiar with ZND products for their day-to-day role of protecting the public from the hazards of construction sites.

In recent years, more and more production and sales processes have been digitized, resulting in a deluge of data being available, although the full potential of this has not been utilized due to how disparate the systems are. Different systems are employed across ZND sites in the US, UK, the Netherlands and Poland, making it difficult to create a common picture of company performance, resulting in a lot of manual work in separate spreadsheets. Tackling this has been a priority of CEO Marcel van Kesteren.

Since van Kesteren’s appointment as CEO in mid-2021, digitization, IT and data have become high priority on ZND’s strategic agenda. At the forefront of this digital strategic agenda is the creation of a joint crosscountry picture of purchasing, production, and sales performance. Collecting data from dozens of machines and international sales channels in a data warehouse and making this transparent with dashboards at the strategic, tactical and operational levels to enable ZND to make datadriven decisions and optimize processes at a level previously unthinkable.

“For more than 60 years, ZND has been producing, selling and supplying the highest quality fencing in dozens of countries around the world,” says van Kesteren. “Since the digitization of production and sales processes, the amount of data generated has increased enormously, and we are now using it more and more to substantiate our decisions. This ultimately results in more accurate, but above all, faster decisions.”

An example of a data-driven process is the purchase of steel pipes and wires, both vital in the production of ZND’s core products. The steel price has been extremely volatile in recent years, first due to the COVID-19 crisis, and later, the sky-high inflation due to rising gas and electricity prices and the war in Ukraine. By consolidating the market, production and raw material data from various steel suppliers around the world, this can be converted into smarter and more efficient purchasing and pricing for the end user.

A challenge around the realization of a digital transformation strategy is that this requires a skillset that is not always represented within a production company. This challenge was overcome together with Sweav, a community and platform for independent, (ex-)strategy and merger and acquisition professionals who often have 5-7 years of experience at leading digital strategy firms, including McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, SparkOptimus and Deloitte. Ex-strategy consultant Maarten Steinfort was appointed Head of Digital Projects to implement ZND’s digital agenda. ZND is not the only manufacturing company that suffers from the scarcity of digital specialization on the labor market. Sweav founder Joeri Schouten encounters this every day at companies within the manufacturing industry that are often owned by private equity. “Sweav often works with successful manufacturing companies that want to take the next digital strategic growth step with their investors,” says Schouten. “Our collaboration with ZND and Steinfort is a perfect example of accelerating the realization of such growth ambitions.” According to Steinfort, the first dashboards have been operational within ZND’s central management and finance team since November and will be used at scale throughout the rest of the organization by the end of the year. “Within digital transformations, it is essential to start small with a concrete project, make mistakes and learn from them, and finally gradually scale up successes. For example, our business intelligence dashboards were first tested within the local finance teams, then with the group management team, and later with the local production managers, purchasing and sales teams.”

Learn more about ZND’s products and services at www.znd.com/us/.