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to an increasing extent, as Chris- tian Prokopp, Director of kloeck- ner.i GmbH con rms. “We have increased the percentage of busi- ness accounted for by digital sales successively to 16% most recently in the third quarter of 2017. This corresponds to an annual volume of about one billion euros”, the digital expert stresses. He reveals that Klöckner is observing a cross-sector trend towards online ordering. It seems that ordering patterns differ according to the size of the customer, however. “Larger customers from the auto- motive or machine manufactur- ing industries like to place orders directly with us via EDI connec- tions or via appropriate interfaces in their inventory control systems. Smaller building companies or craft businesses, on the other hand, prefer our online shops”, Prokopp explains, adding that what is particularly interesting is
that not only existing customers are ordering online to an increas- ing extent: “Thanks to our digital sales channels, we have already obtained a substantial number of new customers in a ercely com- petitive market”.
The next steps are coming up in online business. “Now that we have already achieved very good success in the digitisation of our sales channels and the inter- nal processes, the focus in 2018 is on expansion of our product range that is available online. To this end, we are expanding our online shops into marketplaces, by opening them up to com- plementary products from third parties”, says Prokopp, who adds that Klöckner is at the same time establishing XOM – an entirely open industry platform independ- ent from Klöckner and incorporat- ing direct competitors.
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