Project Karhof

Karhof has been active in the bodywork construction industry since 1938 and has grown into one of the largest bodywork companies in the Netherlands, with branches in Purmerend and Nieuw-Vennep. Karhof is part of the Combigroup body builders. Karhof has been using Quootz’s software for the past two years.

Quootz visited Gert-Jan Karhof and spoke with him about his experiences with Merkato. Along with his cousin, Gert-Jan has followed in his grandfather’s footsteps as the general manager of the family business. Gert-Jan was personally responsible for the implementation of the configurator.

“When I received an email two years ago explaining Merkato, I was very excited. We had been using another system to make our quotes for ten years, but our system was becoming outdated and we were having more and more problems with it. We were looking for flexibility, and Quootz could offer us that. Quootz was able to easily read the data from my old system. They demonstrated this to us during the first meeting in such a convincing and simple way that it also convinced me to purchase the software. I didn’t look at other providers,” says Gert-Jan.

“Merkato can be linked to your work preparation and such, but that was not my primary objective. The flexibility appealed to me and this was the reason why I initially bought Merkato. Flexibility is built into the system and this makes it accessible. The input of product knowledge can be done with minimal training by the company itself and the information can be easily and quickly maintained. You absolutely do not need to be a programmer to work with Merkato. Our old system that we used before purchasing Merkato had too many options which made it cluttered. In Merkato, the information is much better organized, and thus user-friendly.

We have many options in our products that do not go together. The strength of Merkato is that the system makes conflicting configurations impossible. As a result, no incorrect orders enter the company anymore and this saves us a lot of time. The orders are then easier to produce. This logic and intelligence were not in our old system.”

“I received good personal help from Quootz with the input, I can’t complain about that, but I actually should have scheduled someone free for it.”

“Unfortunately, the implementation of the configurator was delayed for me. The initial input went very quickly and easily, but because our old system was still working and I had other work to do, I did not give enough priority to completing the implementation. I received good personal help from Quootz with the input, I can’t complain about that and that’s certainly not where my delay came from. But after purchasing Merkato, you need to be able to give it enough attention. I really should have scheduled someone to be free for some time.

The implementation is now finished and ready to use. I hope that we will increasingly work with it within the company, this will save a tremendous amount of time with our other work. Now customers still call us and we work it out, but my ideal scenario is that our dealers log in to Merkato themselves, assemble the desired product, and thus we no longer need to make the quotes. Merkato already offers all the possibilities for this, it’s just a matter of rolling it out.”

“Merkato is a beautiful system and I continue to be amazed by its flexibility. Whenever I couldn’t achieve something in the software, every problem was always quickly resolved. That is probably thanks to the programmers, who have somehow set up the system to be extremely flexible.

Merkato is, in my view, very user-friendly, web-based, accessible, modern, and keeping up with the times. It is also easy to import old data from Excel or from our old system.

Additionally, Quootz is just a fun and dedicated group to work with. I highly recommend it.”