Knight's European charge
June 1st 2006

Knight is consolidating its European operations, implementing a customer service division and working on products specifically for Europe, according to European sales manager, Roberto Frenda. Brendan Coyne reports

By consolidating European operations to one UK office, Knight is removing duplication from its business, according to Roberto Frenda, who became European sales manager with effect from Interclean. "Having both the Holland and the UK branch meant there was a lot of duplication that the customer wouldn't see," says Frenda.

"So we chose to enlarge the UK branch and consolidate all the parts – customer service, engineering, stock and ordering – in one location."

Smooth operations

It's quite a transition to make, but Frenda says it is going smoothly. "As of now, no-one is actually noticing what is happening – we're working in the back office, taking care of the orders and its business as usual,"he says. "From here on we are only giving benefits: One delivery a week from the USA means customers don't have to make as large an order, reducing their stock inventory levels; we have product flow which is continuous and helps us achieve faster delivery; as of July the dedicated customer service division will be up and running – we now have people who are entirely dedicated to taking care of the customer from A-Z, which was lacking in the past. And having all parts of the operation in one place, for example, technical support next to customer service, means we can react that much quicker to market requirements, gather information and distribute it readily for product improvement and development. And input from our European customers will help us to make new products that are more suitable for the European market. We already have some of these in Beta phase. But we're hoping to surprise our competitors, so I can't go into detail..."

Pooled resources

Frenda says the move is part of continuous improvement driven by Knight. "The company refuses to compromise on quality to compete, instead it is pooling global resources – technology, supply chains, products, patents and knowledge – to reduce costs," according to Frenda. "Whereas Europe is involved in price wars, we try to innovate the market. Unitech (a dual purpose, modular 'smart bus' chemical dispenser for both commercial laundry and warewash) is a good example. With a change of a chip the system understands the feeds for one market or another - and the modularity means you can snap 'satellites' (be that a pump, data management module or alarm system) to expand or contract the system to any given requirement. What's more, we can give any satellite a specific configuration for a specific application. So, by way of explanation, it's like offering every single customer a tailored suit.

Seek and destroy hidden costs

Instead, Frenda says Knight works with the customer to help them highlight, and eliminate, hidden costs. "One of the main problems with the market today is that no-one has real control over cost of ownership after the purchase, therefore they are very focused on initial savings – maybe they want the lowest price on a pump. But they may not take into account the cost of maintenance on that pump. If we offer a pump that requires upkeep only half as often than a competitor's, that is removing a hidden cost. And the hidden costs can be very large: having more maintenance and technical people than necessary is a big part of the budget, but is hidden in the figures."

However, Frenda believes customers in the chemicals industry are now automatically looking at the hidden costs: "The raw materials have really jumped in price, the margins have plummeted so they are very focused on savings. It doesn't make it any easier to convince the customer that the more you spend, the less you spend. But I think the market recognises the innovation; the time and effort that goes into our products. They want to be able to respond quickly to customer requests, and with modular systems, they can respond quickly to any given configuration."

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