What the customer thinks
Interviews
What the
customer thinks
The focus on how we do business is customer centricity. We want to see our customers as partners as much as anything else. There is always a human being at the end of the line at Hager Group, ready to hack out solutions.
Customer-centric digital solutions
Electrical installer Franck Epifami from ETTS in Kirschnaumen, France, has been working with Hager for eleven years. He appreciates the human scale of Hager Group and the ease with which he can get hold of someone to talk to.
Digital solutions now play a major role in the work lives of electrical installers. They use Hager Ready, our digital assistant, to plan their installations, collaborate with others remotely and to consult documentation at any time. Previously, this tool was only available for tablets and mobile devices. Recently, we have developed Hager Ready further, and installers can now also use it on their PCs. Another digital tool we provide is Hager cad, which is used for the planning of low voltage main distribution systems.
Hager Ready is excellent for labeling distribution boards. I look forward to more integrated digital tools.
Hager Ready, says Franck Epifani, is an excellent tool for creating and printing labels for distribution boards. For the future, he expects an even more integrated digital tool which can be used to produce easily the references he is looking for and to directly print out the placement of a site’s actuators (switchboards, sockets, switches from any computer). What's more, he's counting on Hager to develop other digital tools of this type, for example tools providing access to product availability information.
We are committed to continually evolving our solutions to meet our installers' needs. Electrical installers were our very first customers, and making their work easier has been one of our core objectives from day one.
Pioneering green building initiatives
Recently, Hager was an integral partner in the construction of a new hospital in the Netherlands, the first to run completely on renewable energy sources. What’s more, Rijnstate Elst hospital, built by the Berghege Heerkens Unica construction consortium, will use hydrogen to store surplus energy, radically reducing Rijnstate’s CO2 emissions.
Rijnstate Elst is a great example of teamwork where Hager was not just a supplier, but a project partner.
Hager was approached in August 2020 to consider the possibilities for an electrical installation which fitted the renewable energy setup. “In close cooperation with Unica, we determined the right technical interpretation for the main switchboards, distribution boards and power distribution,” remembers Account Manager Ed Kooijmans. “By coming to the table at an early stage, we were able to contribute to the end result as much as possible.” The use of a digital twin was an essential part of planning.
The tool has amazing advantages, explains Martwin de Man, Project Manager at Hager: “All architectural and installation technical facilities had been worked out and clashed in detail. As a result, disruptions on the construction site were hardly an issue. All rail trunking is fitted with millimetre precision!”
Project Manager Frank Vierdag is very happy with the outcome: “Rijnstate Elst is a great example of teamwork where Hager was not just a supplier, but a project partner. From design to realisation.” Just a few hundred metres from Rijnstate Elst, Unica Building Projects Zuid is building a new laboratory. Following the success with Rijnstate, Hager will also engineer and supply various distribution systems and busbar ducts for this project.
Transforming energy performance
Kingfisher, a British retail multinational retailing company which owns French DIY brands Castorama and Brico Dépôt, was looking for an energy monitoring and management tool which operates on a single platform. In 2017, they came across Eficia, a start-up founded by Alric Marc, which was bringing real innovation to the topic.
Sandrine Lefebvre, Kingfisher’s building manager in France, explains that using Eficia’s control systems and associated energy intelligence services allowed for quick and effective improvement of the energy performance of all HVAC systems. She particularly likes the intuitive design of the software and platform which makes them easy to handle.
Working with Eficia has allowed us to reduce our carbon footprint by 29% since 2016 and helped us reach 40% of energy savings since 2010.
Since 2020, all Castorama and Brico Dépôt shops in France have been using Eficia’s intelligent control solution, which also includes the implementation of a bespoke software platform developed by Efcia for the network's employees, and their awareness of and training in the tool.
Sandrine Lefebvre is happy to report that this has contributed directly to the renewal of Kingfisher France's ISO 50001 certification twice in the last six years. Since Eficia has become part of Hager Group in July 2023, Sandrine sometimes misses the early start-up vibe but our global presence will allow her to roll out Eficia’s energy management services across the entire group.