Prinzhorn Group
            

With 7,000 employees in 15 countries, the Prinzhorn Group is a European market leader in the packaging, paper and recycling industry. It was founded in 1853 and posts an annual turnover of 1.60 billion €. The family-owned and managed company has its headquarters in Vienna, Austria, and is structured in three divisions: Dunapack Packaging (corrugated packaging solutions), Hamburger Containerboard (production of containerboard) and Hamburger Recycling Group (collection and trading of secondary raw materials).

Dynamic is a word that describes the Prinzhorn Group. In 2015, the company adopted the Grow2030 vision along with the goal of doubling in size, and has actively pursued this objective ever since. Today Prinzhorn is Europe’s third-largest company in the packaging, paper and recycling industry and is maintaining its course toward business transformation.

There is no question that this rapid growth strategy brings together many different systems that need to be integrated to ensure a fluid flow of data. This poses a major challenge for the company’s IT—and is an ideal challenge for Software AG’s B2B integration platform, webMethods.

Seeking an integration platform for many different systems

“As part of our growth strategy, it was already clear back in 2011 that Prinzhorn needed a suitable and flexible IT solution to be able to integrate new facilities and systems quickly,” explained Cornelia Grasser from the Prinzhorn Group. To boost the transforming company’s operational performance, all the apps, devices and systems needed to be linked to create a fluid flow of data for the entire group—a central point of dataflow. Furthermore, this data pool had to allow fast adaptation at any time because new systems were being added regularly, up to ten a year.

“After we decided to look for an integration platform in 2013, Software AG came out on top with webMethods ahead of competitors like Microsoft® and TIBCO®,” added Grasser. webMethods’ key advantages are its speed and flexibility in integrating the different systems from Prinzhorn’s three divisions, some of which are difficult to integrate. Specifically, it was about the IT connection to operational processes as well as the SAP® finance system. The first integration was done in 2014, and many more have followed since then. Just to give an approximate idea of the number of integration projects: The IT department estimates the number of rollouts at 13 for the year 2019, with varying numbers of interfaces ranging up to 40 with an SAP rollout.

Face to face and onsite, working hard: Professional Services & Prinzhorn

The success of the integration projects rests on webMethods’ capabilities, but also flourishes because of the collaboration between Prinzhorn’s teams and Software AG’s Professional Services consultants. Software AG Austria’s experts deliver onsite support for Prinzhorn’s employees in Austria with the help of their consultant colleagues from Germany and Bulgaria. “Even though Prinzhorn Holding and its IT landscape are growing very quickly, we continue to value the direct, personal contact and collaboration—and we consider it critical for our success,” states Grasser. In this context, time and personnel resources have been difficult, something that both Prinzhorn and Software AG have had to deal with.

The team is proud of their shared successes and integrations, and would like to expand their positive collaboration over the long term to create more living connections. The primary objective is the ability to offer customers new products and services. To support this objective, webMethods created the common data pool and therefore laid the foundation for the Prinzhorn Group’s digital future.

Ready for business transformation

With the open and independent webMethods Integration solution, Prinzhorn Holding feels “ready for the future.” webMethods enables the company to integrate existing systems into a rapidly changing IT landscape, while also connecting additional external systems.

With an eye toward these new values, products and services, the team from Prinzhorn wants to focus on the needed technical solutions, e.g., self-service, APIs, machine learning, IoT, dynamic apps, streaming analytics and robotic process automation. Software AG supports Prinzhorn Holding in these efforts as a valued partner, delivering innovative power and constant product development.