BenLink
Today’s customers don’t just need machines and plants – they need fast and flexible solutions, know-how and skills for their everyday challenges with operational tasks. That’s why in addition to our regional set up in 140 countries worldwide, Bühler has partnered with BenLink to access an ever-growing pool of qualified external service technicians. This on-demand staffing platform is an important enabler for Bühler’s customer service strategy.
Lukas Hofstetter, June 1, 2021
Bühler aims for complete customer confidence by being a trusted and reliable partner, offering fast and valuable service solutions no matter the situation. Our goal is to ensure customer success over the whole asset lifecycle. With our consistently expanding service offering portfolio and our proactive approach to customers and a strong focus on new business opportunities, we need support in the fulfilment of service activities such as preventive maintenance or mechanical support from skilled experts.
Enter BenLink, where finding a service technician is like booking an Uber. With the help of modern crowd technologies, the Zurich-based company created a disruptive business model – and is striking a chord within a traditional industry. Thanks to its ever-growing global network of thousands of qualified maintenance technicians, BenLink allows Bühler to book a local expert with just one click.
Our unique platform enables us to source skilled technicians locally, quickly, and at a lower cost than we may have been able to do in the past – and will fundamentally change the service market.
Simone Wendler,
Chief Operating Officer at BenLink
Benlink AG is 100% owned by Bühler, has a successful track record in Germany and the UK of providing qualified local technicians, and now expanded into India and the US market. Founded in 2018, BenLink offers services such as maintenance, small repairs, or inspections for industrial production facilities in the food sector and other areas. It’s all based on a global crowd service platform on which thousands of maintenance technicians from all over the world are registered. Their recipe for success? Think globally, source locally.
“Our unique platform enables us to source skilled technicians locally, quickly, and at a lower cost than we may have been able to do in the past – and will fundamentally change the service market,” says Simone Wendler, Chief Operating Officer at BenLink.
BenLink is fully incorporated into Bühler’s Apollo strategy and is a key enabler of Bühler’s service transformation process. Focused on providing level 1 support, BenLink supports the execution of service deliveries, allowing Bühler to stay close to their customers, and being a trusted and reliable partner for their business. Through the BenLink Crowd, Bühler can execute TotalCare agreements in the most efficient way possible. Our vision for Benlink is to complement Bühler’s existing teams. “We want to help Bühler execute on more long-term recurring events such as the execution of TotalCare service contracts, but also be nimble enough to respond when Bühler’s customers experience difficulties. We want to be invisible and seamless to the end-customer, whilst adding immense value to Bühler’s SAS teams,” says Simone.
Martin Stäger, Program Director Service Transformation at Bühler, cannot stress the advantages enough. “With BenLink, there is enormous potential to tap into more market opportunities – just think about how great it is that we are now able to combine dry and liquid parts of breweries or bakeries for more integrated and better services. Think about expanding our scope under TotalCare agreements, where we can now include lower skill maintenance tasks or cleaning activities. It is always about offering the right skill level to perform the respective tasks: Bühler covers the expertise levels, and BenLink covers the labor part with local technicians. This provides us with the unique opportunity to grow our topline Customer Service business.”
Even though BenLink is a young company, they already offer a broad scale of services. And it continues to grow, ranging from traditional services in the milling segment such as roll change support, plansifter cleaning and maintenance, to conche support, and baking plate cleaning for ovens in consumer foods. Benlink can also contribute with basic mechanical or electrical labor support for an even wider range of jobs. Strategically, BenLink looks into providing remote on-site support for Bühler soon. Ultimately, BenLink will continue to respond to Bühler’s customers’ needs and support where Bühler sees its biggest impact.
BenLink brings global/local capacity and solutions to help develop and supply services, which is critical for achieving our service business targets.
Jonathan Abbis,
HEAD OF GROUP SERVICES & SALES
With BenLink we can be truly close to our customers and pull our experts in only when they fully unfold their value.
Samuel Schaer,
Chief Services and Sales Officer
“Our focus is to provide a network of technicians that perform level 1 services. These are technicians that provide routine maintenance, some basic troubleshooting and installation support – the type of work that top-notch Bühler engineers should not be doing, where their skillsets are not fully utilized, so we want Bühler engineers to focus on level 2 and 3 efforts. This includes more complex maintenance works, retrofits, and whole facility support that leverage their advanced training and leading industry knowledge,” highlights Simone.
Our goal is clear: by offering services on non-Bühler equipment as well, BenLink enables Bühler to expand its services from dry to wet areas within a plant. Services on pumps and valves or heat exchangers are just a few examples of BenLink's track record.
BenLink recruits top-quality service or installation companies that are locally established businesses. They may be new to food production sites but own a degree of competency around mechanical and electrical work. Simone’s team onboards them by performing background checks on the companies. Each technician employed by the service company is onboarded to BenLink’s proprietary digital platform where they document their specific training and certifications. Next, the technician completes some compulsory basic work environment and safety training. Once active, the individual technician is in the data base, queued up and ready to be deployed.
The moment a “match” occurs in the system, the service company and their technicians fulfilling the requirements receive the job offer automatically in their BenLink inbox. Just like an Uber driver, at this stage they can still decline the job offer, although this rarely happens. The assigned service technician receives all relevant information about the job on their cell phone or tablet; detailed instructions for the repair including checklists and video tutorials that need to be fulfilled prior to attending the service. Based on their qualifications and availability, technicians can undergo further online training and be certified for additional services that BenLink provides.
Since January 2021, BenLink also offers direct to customers (D2C) services and support. Customers can order tailor-made services directly on the myBenLink platform. What does this mean for Bühler? A direct link to potentially new customers and creating new business opportunities in adjacent service areas. For this, BenLink developed the myBenLink platform in-house as another channel for them to quickly expand into D2C offering. It was launched in April for India and is coming to the UK and Germany in June.
Martin is excited about reaping the benefits of the BenLink-Bühler cooperation. “Thanks to BenLink, we’re constantly increasing our service portfolio while adding speed and agility into the mix. I’m looking forward to leveraging BenLink to reach more customers inside and outside of the Bühler installed base, providing new and expanded services that improve the customers' business but also grow our service business.” Given the current advantages and future growth potential, it is safe to share Martin’s enthusiasm about BenLink.
Do you have a service idea or a business need? Let Simone know what is relevant for your market and customers: simone.wendler@benlink.com
In April 2021, Benlink won the Silver SAP Quality Award in the category “Digital Pioneer”, which recognizes projects that use SAP software in an innovative way, such as in the context of artificial intelligence, machine learning, IoT, robotic process automation, or blockchain. According to the jury, the project particularly stood out due to its uncompromising focus on the business benefits.
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