Olga Krejci believes in the possibilities of IoT. “The technology is there, we just have to make it ours.”

When customers can buy industrial pumps online, it’s essential that AxFlow adds more value to its products. We need to stay competitive. This might mean providing a more proactive pump service or offering other advantages that will make us indispensable to customers in the long term.

“With product information just a click away, we see that customers are today much better informed. Often they’ve come far in their buying process before they’re willing to engage a salesperson,” says Olga Krejci, Marketing and Communications Director at AxFlow.

With the focus on developing the customer offer, Olga and her team had an idea. The office colour printer orders toner by itself, so why shouldn’t AxFlow’s products be able to indicate when they need service and spare parts replacement? Here, they had in mind customers for which the pump is critical and has to work 24/7 every day in industries like pulp and paper, food and pharma. Fitting these pumps with sensors that indicated when something was wrong would avoid unnecessary, stressful and often very costly stoppages. And customers could sleep better at night.

This is both a challenge and a great opportunity if we are to be the fluid handling equipment supplier that fully meets customers’ needs.

Olga and her colleagues developed their idea, entered the AxLab innovation contest – and won. Their effort stirred interest throughout the group and buy-in at the highest level. “It’s time to make existing technology available to our customers. We have thousands of installed pumps that can pump pretty much any liquid, and if we can collect and analyse their operation data we can give even faster, more accurate answers on how they can be used optimally,” Olga says. “And we can fine-tune and secure the flow of our customer’s production even better than we already do. Everyone wins in this.”