Digi-Flow - Making Life Easier for Customers

Technical services provider Breemes supplies customers with PLCs, drives and other materials. Customers like industrial automation company Digi-Flow. Turnover, both parties feel, is not the ultimate indicator of a good relationship. Coming up with solutions together and providing knowledge are equally important. Ultimately, Breemes has to make the customer’s life easier, Digi-Flow CEO Eric Decant believes.

Antwerp-based Digi-Flow assists industrial companies in their transformation to smart industrial environments using industrial automation and digitalisation. The company is a spin-off from ESAS Automation in 2020. Solindus, now ESAS, had grown into a company with 2,000 employees after its founding in 2003 by Eric and Robert Decant. With Digi-Flow, they wanted to go back to small-scale entrepreneurship. Eric Decant is now the CEO of the company, which has 30-plus employees. ‘I’m still ambitious, but I don’t want to complete this kind of strenuous trajectory on such a large scale anymore.’ Meanwhile, he is grooming his son to take over the reins. This makes Digi-Flow a true family business, as reflected in its core values of co-creation, long-term vision, lifelong growth and personal.

Good Relationship

Across all kinds of sectors, Digi-Flow carries out industrial automation projects, from the food and pharmaceutical industries to metalworking. ‘We are an integrator that mainly provides the software and electrical cabling. For this, we employ no less than 20 programmers and 5 electricians. We don’t build control cabinets, but we do projects for charging infrastructure and in that case, we will sometimes build the small panels ourselves.’ Nevertheless, Digi-Flow is one of Breemes’ important customers, says Managing Director Kurt Colin. ‘Don’t underestimate their volume with us. Their project business still includes a lot of consumables.’ Decant: ‘Our growth rate is 20% a year and we currently have a turnover of EUR 4 million; of which 30% is materials. And the suppliers who make panels for us also often order their materials from Breemes.’

‘We know each other’s strengths and weaknesses and also use those strengths’

Turnover is not the ultimate indicator of a good relationship.’ Colin: ‘We want to support customers like Digi-Flow with solutions, for example by providing complete packages for automation or instrumentation. It is then up to Eric to say where we can be successful together. Sometimes they are better positioned for a particular package, they might find a better fit elsewhere; in which case, of course, we will acknowledge that. We know each other’s strengths and weaknesses and also use those strengths. The other day, for instance, we needed a troubleshooter for a customer. We turned to Digi-Flow for that. That is the type of partnership we have; we help each other where necessary. Ultimately, we want to create a kind of ecosystem where we can introduce our customers to other customers when appropriate.’

Instrumentation Partner

While this reciprocity is important, Breemes’ task as a technical service provider is mainly to give customers like Digi-Flow peace of mind, Decant believes. ‘Yes, Kurt and his team’s main task is to make my life easier.’ Colin agrees. ‘We need to make sure our customers can do the things that are important to them.  Sourcing and selecting components and contributing technical input is our task.’ Decant: ‘We have PLC materials and drives from different brands. We can position them in a single package at Breemes. Otherwise, it would have been much more complicated for us; we would have had to visit all those suppliers separately. Then, getting a quote or even a reply could take weeks.’ Colin: ‘Digi-Flow then has to obtain its information from all different parties, while they can do a one-stop shop with us for all knowledge. Across all brands, we can help them come up with the best solution because we are independent.’

Decant wants Breemes to do even more. ‘Our salespeople have to learn to delegate even more of their work to suppliers. They may want to figure out everything themselves, but they end up spending a lot of time doing that. I’d rather have them explain to the supplier what they need and then focus on the commercial side themselves, so they are more occupied with sales.’ Colin is on the same page. ‘Our focus is finding out the cost and availability of products, Digi-Flow’s is with their customers. Focus always works: the more questions we answer for them, the more they are on sales, the more requests we get.’

‘We can position PLC materials and drives from different brands in a single package at Breemes’

Decants’ wish for Breemes to do even more, is immediately granted by Colin. ‘Recently, we also became a Siemens instrumentation partner and will be the only wholesaler to distribute their instrumentation package. We have the in-house knowledge and expertise of instrumentation for a wide range of sectors, such as industry, petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals and food & beverage, where a lot of measuring takes place. Over the past six months, three of our colleagues have been trained for this at an engineering level. Digi-Flow can benefit from this in several ways. They can ask us about instrumentation and if they place their instrumentation package with us, they will have reduced the number of suppliers again.’

Technologies and Solutions

Thus, the relationship between Digi-Flow and Breemes continues to develop not only in size - both parties have healthy growth ambitions - but also in depth. Decant: ‘We have set up an R&D group to research new technologies to find out which markets we can pursue commercially. We will certainly also consult Breemes in this respect. They are a supplier who contributes ideas on technological solutions.’

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