Knorr-Bremse is a global leader in designing and manufacturing braking systems and mobility solutions for rail and commercial vehicles. The company’s mission is to make mobility on roads and railways safe, sustainable, and environmentally friendly. Knorr-Bremse recognized that digital transformation was critical to meeting evolving customer expectations and staying competitive in the automotive industry. To this end, Knorr-Bremse embarked on a digital journey in 2018 that involved implementing a robust, scalable customer platform to support its global expansion.
Armed with Birlasoft’s digital transformation expertise, strong manufacturing domain knowledge, and adaptive mindset, Knorr-Bremse has successfully implemented an SAP-based customer experience solution that spans 50+ countries worldwide. This solution enables 24/7 customer access and strong growth in digital orders.
This initiative is a credible example of how a strong ‘glocal’ vision for platform implementation can help effectively balance efficiency benefits via standardization/harmonization with contextual customer engagement via regional/local customization.
Knorr-Bremse embarks on a customer experience reimagination journey
Facing mounting challenges with an aging, inflexible e-commerce system laden with technical debt, Knorr-Bremse needed an overhaul that would meet current demands and allow for easy expansion into new markets. Knorr-Bremse’s vision was to implement a centralized, future-proof customer platform with the flexibility to cater to regional needs. Here’s how they approached it:
- Standardization and global harmonization: Knorr-Bremse aimed to create a single, standardized platform that could serve as a global template for its various regions and business units. This approach was designed to ensure consistency in product support, streamline future release enhancements, and facilitate smooth rollouts in diverse cultural contexts.
- Phased rollout: The transformation began with developing a minimum viable product (MVP). In June 2020, a pilot was launched with select customers in the US and UK to validate the new solution. Encouraged by the positive feedback, Knorr-Bremse expanded the platform rollout by December 2020 across 15 to 16 countries in the EMEA region. Subsequent phases included targeted releases in North America and later in the Asia Pacific, incorporating localized languages such as Japanese and high levels of customization to meet localized requirements.
- Enhanced functionalities: Beyond basic e-commerce transactions, Knorr-Bremse’s vision included integrating core processes such as warranty management and launching a dedicated training portal. The project was designed to be extensible—capable of accommodating future channels, markets, and operational enhancements with minimal additional effort.
We created the platform in the future in an extensible way, allowing us to roll out new countries with minimal effort. This extensibility, supported by the SAP product and Birlasoft’s services, has been our key value driver.
— Jitesh Mehta, Ecommerce Analyst, Knorr-Bremse
Birlasoft leverages an agile approach to transform Knorr-Bremse’s e-commerce platform
Knorr-Bremse roped in Birlasoft as the implementation partner for this strategic initiative, considering the service provider’s relevant domain expertise and flexible approach. Birlasoft’s delivery strategy was anchored to a multi-phase, agile approach:
- Comprehensive assessment and roadmap development: Birlasoft began by thoroughly evaluating Knorr-Bremse’s IT landscape and business processes. Together, they co-developed a detailed roadmap focused on migrating to a cloud-based, standardized platform while ensuring seamless integration across disparate systems.
- Modernization and global rollout: Using agile methodologies, Birlasoft led the transformation from legacy systems to a scalable e-commerce platform. The initial MVP pilot allowed Knorr-Bremse to gather critical feedback, which was then leveraged to fine-tune the system before a broader rollout across multiple regions and languages. The platform was designed for extensibility, enabling rapid adaptation for new market entries with minimal rework.
- Ongoing managed services and continuous improvement: Birlasoft has played a key role in ongoing application management services (AMS) and enhancements beyond initial implementation. Birlasoft has also guided Knorr-Bremse with its shift to a headless architecture, ensuring that the platform remains state-of-the-art and aligned with evolving business needs.
Knorr-Bremse reaps the benefits of its transformation journey
The e-commerce platform upgrade, executed in partnership with Birlasoft, has helped Knorr-Bremse realize the business value trifecta of operations efficiency, customer experience, and agility:
- Operational efficiency and scalability: The modernized platform has reduced technical debt and streamlined operations, enabling rapid rollouts across 50+ countries in 15 different locales. Its extensibility allows new markets and channels to be added with minimal additional effort.
- Enhanced customer experience: The new e-commerce platform provides Knorr-Bremse’s customers with round-the-clock access to essential information and services, significantly improving customer satisfaction. With a standardized global template and self-service capabilities, customer service calls have decreased by more than 40%, freeing internal resources to focus on strategic initiatives.
- Improved sales and business agility: The unified platform has directly contributed to exponential growth in sales, supporting multiple channels—from OEM to aftermarket—with a single, cohesive system. The platform has substantially increased digital order intakes, warranty claims, and core management.
Since the rollout, we have seen exponential sales growth and a 42% reduction in customer service calls. This proves the value of our digital transformation and allows our teams to focus on higher-value projects rather than routine order-taking.
— Jitesh Mehta, Ecommerce Analyst, Knorr-Bremse
The Bottom Line: Select the right horse for the course.
Every digital transformation initiative is unique and fraught with technical, process, and cultural debts. Choosing a relevant partner with the right domain expertise, problem-solving mindset, and adaptiveness to the enterprise’s specific environment and context is key to the initiative’s success.
As Jitesh from Knorr-Bremse puts it: “The main differentiator for us has been Birlasoft’s flexibility. Rather than coming with a fixed mindset, they adapted their solution approach based on what our leadership—both on the business and IT—needed.”
