Honingcraft distributes the finest steel products and components used for manufacturing hydraulic cylinders, including honed tube, chrome bar and cylinder kits. The company owns and operates highly-specialised surface finishing and electroplating technology which adds value to commodity materials during the component manufacturing process. This includes boring, deep hole drilling, honing and precision internal and external grinding, to name a few.
DIGITAL INNOVATION
The company constantly focuses its time and energy on innovation and has fully embraced the fourth industrial revolution by conceptualising and implementing a digital transformation strategy, embarking on a three-phase plan to transform the business. The goal was simple: make the company easier to manage while maintaining and eventually improving profitability.
Honingcraft brought Xponent digital marketing agency on board in 2018. The engineering industry typically focuses on a sales-centric approach, so introducing digital marketing as a leading strategy was a contrarian idea at the time. Using a content marketing strategy meant initial gains were slow and no significant benefit was evident for the first 12 months of the project. Gerhard Pretorius, CTO of Xponent Marketing Agency, says: “As with many things, we experienced improvement gradually, then suddenly. We started out by monitoring all the communication channels and consolidating the communication channels that were already in place. Using this data, we could determine which channels were benefiting the company most.”
NO DOWNTIME
In 2019 Honingcraft continued its digital transformation journey, upgrading its physical infrastructure by commissioning a dedicated fibre connection with ADSL and wireless backup systems to ensure redundant connectivity. The communications networks on site were improved and renewable solar energy solutions were rolled out to keep ICT running at all times. This upgrade made it possible for Honingcraft to move its administrative operations to the cloud. Downtime to attend to customers’ needs is virtually non-existent at this point.
