Datawerf, a digitization program supported by Digitalzh (the South Holland European Digital Innovation Hub) and designed specifically for maritime entrepreneurs, has successfully completed the first assignment of the new season for and with Windeck Shipfloors. The marine flooring specialist had two experts on hand for six weeks to take the online marketing strategy and content for its online webshop to the next level. The cost is 66% borne by Datawerf, which also encourages other maritime entrepreneurs to take advantage of the program.
Datawerf: maritime digitization and subsidy
Focusing specifically on the maritime and manufacturing industries, Datawerf aims to help entrepreneurs leverage data and digitalization to provide solutions to questions of employee retention, stable revenue streams and performance management.
That’s what Windeck Shipfloors had been working on for a year. Dominique Nieuwpoort, Digital Liaison Maritime & Port at Digitalzh: The program was a perfect fit for Windeck Shipfloors’ ambitions. We are on a mission to help maritime SMEs in particular with a successful digital transformation. We do that by supporting them in developing and implementing digital innovations, and then we look at all aspects — not just technology, but strategy, marketing and organization — with a budget to help realize their plans. Entrepreneurs receive support from selected experts for six weeks, two days a week for a fixed fee; two-thirds of which the company gets back from us.
Windeck Shipfloors
Dominique: To take Windeck Shipfloors’ webshop – the only one in this niche market – to the next level, we selected two experts: Jan-Hein Reeringh of The Maritime Marketer and his strategic partner Marià “lle Meijwes of Threequarters.
Danny Voerman, founder and Managing Director of Windeck Shipfloors (and sister company Prolance Marine Flooring): “At an entrepreneur day of the Municipality of Schiedam, I came into contact with Chiel Verbrugge, Coordinator Program Ports. He drew our attention to Datawerf. From the very first conversation with Dominique, I became convinced that this could be a useful project for us in terms of content, process and investment. And it proved to be. During the lockdowns we were confronted with changing international price differences and the efficiency in the sales process. Staff shortages played a role anyway. In addition, we saw concrete opportunities to only deliver our floors to some customers, not also install them. This gave rise to the idea of starting a webshop.
Grant
Danny: The fact that this is a subsidized track made it possible for us to take this step. As an SME, you often don’t know where to turn or exactly what certain subsidies are for. So we were very happy that Chiel and Dominique came up with a clear story and that we got most of the investment back.
Colleague Nery Moreira Garcia, Sales Manager at both Windeck Shipfloors and Prolance Marine Flooring, adds: To serve customers better and faster with ordering marine floors and everything that goes with it in terms of auxiliary and maintenance materials, we have built a webshop. In it, customers can easily and quickly order floors and parts. On our side, this provides an efficiency gain in the sales process, because customers get to a deal faster. The webshop is technically sound, but could be used even more in practice. The demand for products is there, but the target group still has to get used to the way of ordering that we have in mind. The marketing specialists that Datawerf presented to us helped us on our way, both on a strategic level and with practical tips and tools, such as social prospecting.
Danny: We now have a plan that includes everything. Priorities, channels, media, actions, etc.; a strategy that covers all phases of the customer journey and which we are now continuing to develop ourselves with our marketing agency and web builder. With The Maritime Marketer we have brought experts to the table who actually know what they are talking about in terms of content and are also strategically strong. It is nice to work with people who have knowledge of the market you are in. In the maritime sector this is often a problem, but not with the experts of Datawerf. They quickly picked up the missing knowledge from us and by interviewing our clients, we ourselves also received interesting additional insights that we are now implementing in our commercial process.
The Datawerf program is open to maritime SMEs and currently has room to help more companies. Dominique: If you have a digital issue, whether it is technical or commercial, Datawerf has the people and resources to solve your problem. Datawerf is ready to help maritime companies make this transformation.