Customer Success Story : Symach
Increasing productivity in machine building: How Ridder iQ helps SYMACH scale without extra admin staff
With Ridder iQ, SYMACH significantly increases productivity in purchasing, sales and administration. The company can keep up with rapidly growing production volumes without hiring additional administrative staff — thanks to smart workflows, integrations and real-time data.
About SYMACH
Their story
SYMACH, based in the Netherlands, builds palletising and bag-filling machines for agri-food, industrial and chemical manufacturers worldwide.
The company delivers modular and customised solutions: machines with different widths and lengths, adapted to local regulations and certifications in many countries. The core design remains the same, but each installation is tailored to the customer’s application, capacity and requirements.
“Thanks to the increased productivity Ridder iQ enables, we can manage our rapidly growing production without having to hire additional administrative staff.”
The Challenges
SYMACH has grown fast: in just eight years, the workforce has tripled. Yet purchasing, sales, invoicing and other administrative tasks were still handled by the same number of admin employees. That put pressure on the organisation and made further scaling risky.
The company needed:
- An ERP system that was user-friendly, so teams could adopt it quickly
- Higher productivity in administrative processes without adding headcount
- Tighter integration between engineering (PDM), purchasing and service
- Less manual work and fewer errors from re-entering data
“By setting up our own workflows, we significantly increase productivity. Many tasks are now automated, such as checking entered data, which saves a lot of time and helps us reduce labour costs.”
How Ridder iQ helps
A user-friendly system with powerful workflows
SYMACH chose Ridder iQ because it’s easy for employees to work with and offers strong workflow capabilities.
By setting up their own workflows in Ridder iQ, SYMACH:
- Automates many recurring tasks
- Automatically checks entered data to avoid errors
- Saves significant time in purchasing, sales and invoicing
- Reduces labour costs while handling more orders and projects
Seamless integration with PDM
Engineers design machines in SYMACH’s Product Data Management (PDM) system and assign part numbers to all required components — from in-house designed parts to external components such as electric motors. With one click, all that data is transferred into Ridder iQ.
Before Ridder iQ, part numbers had to be entered manually into the ERP system, which was time-consuming and error-prone. Now:
- Part data flows automatically from PDM into Ridder iQ
- The purchasing team has immediate access to accurate information for ordering
- The risk of typing errors and data mismatches is drastically reduced
- Overall efficiency in engineering-to-purchasing processes has improved
“Automating this process has improved efficiency. Plus, thanks to the integration, our purchasing team immediately has access to the information they need to place orders. The system helps boost the productivity of our team”
Service app integration for faster, smarter service
Another key reason SYMACH selected Ridder iQ is the ability to integrate with a service app.
The service app gives technicians, via tablet:
- Real-time access to all relevant customer information
- Insight into previous service history and contact details
- The ability to register used parts directly during service visits
There is no longer a need to hand over service information physically or re-key data after a visit. Everything is recorded once and processed directly in the ERP system.
What made Ridder iQ SYMACH’s top choice?
Proven with partners in the same ecosystem
Many of SYMACH’s partners were already using Ridder iQ, so the team had a clear picture of what implementation and daily use would look like. That gave confidence in both the software and the vendor.
A smooth, low-risk implementation
SYMACH involved at least one employee from each department to ensure that everyone’s needs were addressed. Ridder iQ was rolled out alongside the existing ERP system; both ran in parallel for a period. All new data entered in the old system during that time was migrated to Ridder iQ by ECI.
Ready for product configuration
Looking ahead, SYMACH plans to implement a product configurator so customers can specify machines based on application, available space and required capacity. Ridder iQ integrates well with various configurators, making it an attractive, future-proof solution.
