CLAAS is a globally recognized manufacturer of agricultural machinery, founded in 1913 and headquartered in Germany. Known for its innovation in combine harvesters, tractors, forage harvesters, and balers, the company continues to embrace digital transformation to enhance operations, customer engagement, and partner collaboration.
We spoke with Moritz Bredenkamp, Simon Luebbers, and Oksana Kolomiiets from the Digital Channels department. Their team is responsible for developing and implementing CRM systems for CLAAS’ wholesale organization and global network of dealers and partners.
The Challenge
Before switching to PDF Butler, CLAAS was using a well-known market leader in the document generation space but faced growing limitations:
- Performance Issues: The delays were so noticeable that team members would often step away from their desks while waiting for documents to generate. “We had long response times that hindered efficiency,” they explained.
- Lack of Flexibility: A single template was used across all live markets, increasing complexity and slowing down generation time.
- Hard-to-Maintain Logic: “Most of the business logic was embedded in formulas within the Word templates,” making maintenance, troubleshooting, and new development more difficult.
The Search for a Better Solution
Shortly before the Salesforce World Tour 2023 in Düsseldorf, the team began exploring alternatives on the Salesforce AppExchange. That’s when they discovered PDF Butler and noticed our team was attending the event too.
“We had the chance to meet the PDF Butler team there, and it made a big difference.”
Why PDF Butler?
PDF Butler stood out for two major reasons:
- Improved Performance: “It offers the same functionality as our previous provider, but with much better performance.”
- Simplified Configuration: “The possibility to move business logic from the templates into the PDF Butler setup page has made a huge difference for our dev team.”
Smooth Migration and Implementation
The main part of implementation was completed by the PDF Butler team, especially Nadia, our Customer Success Engineer. It took them just a few days of training and hands-on practice to get started.
They added, “Nadia did a fantastic job and was supportive during the whole process of implementation as well as during the after go-live support.”
How CLAAS Uses PDF Butler
PDF Butler is now used extensively by CLAAS partners and dealer users to generate:
- Quotes
- Commercial Offers
- Contracts
When we asked them what the biggest advantages of PDF Butler are, they answered:
For partner users, the biggest benefit is speed. “Very fast document generation (both Word and PDF) and highly customized,” they said.
For developers, the flexibility is key. “Data sources, structures, and conditions can be configured directly within PDF Butler. That improves development speed and quality and reduces maintenance effort. With the previous vendor, those conditions were inside Word templates, which made debugging harder.”
Measurable Results
- 5x speed boost in document generation
- Fewer incidents and faster resolution
- Improved internal workflows, reducing the need for manual adjustments after document creation
“Usually, partner users generate Word documents so they can make final edits before sending them to customers. With PDF Butler, we’ve been able to reduce the manual work after generation significantly.”
Conclusion
One piece of advice from the CLAAS team is, “Get familiar with PDF Butler using the online documentation. Create templates in your sandbox and try out all common data structures like table rows. And don’t hesitate to contact PDF Butler directly for best practices tailored to your use case.”
