We reached break-even within one year. This result shows that the Simplifier technology is state of the art.

Dr. Philip Gerstner

CIO at Felix Schöller

1 year

for achieving break-even

20.000 €

Savings per month

through reduction of work process costs

ROI 1:4

is forecast for the long term.

Optimal use of resources for application development

Paper manufacturer from Osnabrück secures competitiveness through digitalization with the use of Simplifier's low-code technology

Felix Schoeller was founded in 1895 and is a globally active family business. Headquartered in Osnabrück, the long-established company develops and produces specialty papers and sells them worldwide. The products are used for photographic applications, digital printing systems, packaging, self-adhesive applications and for the furniture, wood-based materials and wallpaper industries. The company relies on modern technologies.

The company encountered challenges when it came to optimizing processes and the efficiency of the production lines. There were many manual processes that resulted in time delays and faulty workflows. Felix Schoeller’s IT department was looking for a solution to eliminate these deficits and increase process efficiency. It was important that the solution was quick and easy to implement.

Although the paper manufacturer was already using low-code platforms, these were unable to meet the requirements for an optimal interface to SAP. There was also a desire to create applications based on Fiori – but the high initial requirements made this difficult to implement.

It was also important that the platform had a solid technical basis and a stable framework to ensure high performance and availability. Equally crucial was good support from the provider and a strong developer and user community in order to be able to access support and expertise if required. Overall, flexibility, user-friendliness, scalability, integration capability and partnership-based collaboration were important factors in the selection of the new low-code platform.

Felix Schoeller opted for Simplifier because the platform met all its requirements. The connection to SAP works flawlessly and the interfaces are transparently documented. The platform enables simple integration with the SAP system and does not require any specialist knowledge of different languages, special databases or programming tools.

In addition, the flexibility of the platform allowed it to be adapted to the specific needs of the company. The ability to create individual modules and applications enabled Felix Schoeller to develop customized solutions that were tailored precisely to the company’s specific requirements.

The platform also enabled integration with SAP and other systems and data sources, which facilitated collaboration and data exchange. This was a decisive factor, as Felix Schoeller uses various systems and applications that need to communicate with each other. But beyond the platform itself, there were also decisive criteria for Felix Schoeller to choose Simplifier.

An initial application was implemented in a short space of time in close collaboration between Felix Schoeller and Simplifier. This was particularly important and was intended to demonstrate the rapid feasibility of an integrated app in the existing merchandise management system.

Another application, the Gasometer app, was implemented in just nine days, leading to considerable savings in gas purchasing. The app uses production planning data from SAP to calculate the exact gas requirements for the company’s own power plant. This enables Felix Schoeller to precisely control the purchase of resources and determine the actual resource requirements. In light of the current energy situation, this is particularly important in order to make conscious use of resources.

By introducing Simplifier, Felix Schoeller was able to make its business processes faster and more efficient. The digital mapping of processes has eliminated manual work steps and potential sources of error, resulting in greater efficiency and faster process execution.

Thanks to the applications already implemented, the break-even point for the Simplifier platform was reached after just one year.

Felix Schoeller is already recording savings of almost €20,000 per month with one of the applications created with Simplifier. An ROI of 1:4 is expected in the long term.

The start of the collaboration was accompanied by an enabling service from the Simplifier team. This provided Felix Schoeller employees with the necessary knowledge to successfully use the low-code platform, so that two of the planned applications were implemented together within just two months.

Overall, Felix Schoeller plans to further expand the use of Simplifier. On the one hand, as many departments as possible, such as logistics, purchasing and power plant operations, should benefit from the advantages of the digital applications. The backlog is therefore well filled. Especially as word of the benefits is gradually spreading throughout the company.

Specifically, applications in the areas of freight costs, order picking, sales and maintenance will be implemented over the next few months. This is not just about replacing Excel tools and expensive end devices, but above all about creating applications that minimize the processing effort of the relevant processes and eliminate data transfer errors by integrating them into SAP.

In the long term, Felix Schoeller also wants to implement the citizen development approach for the use of Simplifier in order to enable the specialist departments to (co-)design their digital solutions.