Joint sales and customer support structures for Tadano and Demag in Germany, Austria and Switzerland

Tadano announced that it would be taking advantage of synergistic effects and streamlining company structures

It was the largest acquisition in the global crane industry last year: Demag Mobile Cranes becoming part of the Tadano Group. As part of the acquisition process, Tadano announced that it would be taking advantage of synergistic effects and streamlining company structures in order to ensure that customers would be able to get all products from a single source in the future.

The overriding goal was to simplify business relationships for customers as much as possible, and this strategy is now being implemented region by region, with the current one being the German-speaking region consisting of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. 

These markets play a special role, as they are beyond the key markets for both Demag and Tadano. This is why streamlining the sales and service organization structures for both brands is absolutely crucial. And a vital step towards that goal has now been completed: effective immediately, the Demag and Tadano brands will have a joint sales organization structure with eight sales territories that will be headed by Christian Schroeder, previously the Sales Manager at Tadano.

He will be reporting directly to Klaus Kröppel, who will be assuming responsibility for the markets in the German-speaking region and for the UK, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Scandinavia as the VP of Sales. Meanwhile, the previous Demag Sales Manager for these countries, Christian Kassner, will be assuming the Senior Manager position for the global “Used Cranes” business unit.

“The organizational integration of our two companies is moving ahead perfectly and on schedule. That means that we now have a one-stop sales organization structure for all our products,” new Sales Manager Christian Schroeder explains. The company is expecting this to yield significant improvements for its customers, as has already been the case in other countries. For instance, this will enable customers to procure machines from both manufacturers from a single source and, as a result, benefit from better customer service and from being able to work together with Tadano more easily. Moreover, consolidating the sales organization structures made it possible to reduce unnecessary redundancies and strengthen sales know-how by combining the teams’ experience for the benefit of the brands’ customers. “Our customers in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland will benefit from all these advantages as well,” Vice President of Sales Klaus Kröppel points out.

Customer Support, which is also being consolidated, has been headed by Manfred Schlumberger since March 1st, 2020. However, the department is not just simply being placed under a higher-level manager, i.e., lower-level management levels are being merged as well. “This means that key departments such as Training and Customer Service will be led by a single person, enabling us to be closer to our customers and take better advantage of synergistic effects,” Manfred Schlumberger explains.

In addition, the service technicians for both brands are currently undergoing the necessary training in order to expand the service network and be able to respond to customer requests even faster. And something completely new for Demag: As was already the case for Tadano, both Service and Spare Parts Supply operations are now under a single roof. “Having Service and our Spare Parts Supply operations this close together will result in significantly improved services for our customers,” Schlumberger says. The Scheduling Department will remain unchanged so that customers can keep their familiar phone contacts. However, the Tadano-Demag team will also grow together in this context as soon as all internal prerequisites for a smooth transition without any drawbacks for its customers are established.

Positive interim results

Overall, the companies involved are very happy with the current state of the integration, proving that the two-brand strategy with the decision to keep the renowned Demag brand was the right choice. Merging the Tadano and Demag product portfolios made it possible to close gaps in Tadano’s all terrain crane product line and successfully expand the range of offerings with lattice boom crawler cranes. The Tadano Group will continue to make significant investments in the two German locations in Zweibrücken and Lauf. The goal is to expand production here and there and reduce lead times in order to be able to get cranes to its customers even more quickly.