Knick always puts the icing on the cake
At the beginning of November, Florian Koppe from the Nord-East Germany sales team introduced himself. Today, Anika Piecuszek talks about her day-to-day work as an industrial clerk in the sales department and why she chose Knick:
“Knick always puts the icing on the cake”
As a commercial employee, I have been responsible since October 2016 for order processing over delivery date agreements to invoicing in sales. I came across Knick as an employer, because I wanted to change my career after working as a clerk in the car industry for over 7 years. A job ad from Knick appealed to me instantly. I wanted to have the advantages unique to smaller companies which Knick offers as a family business. Also, the commute from the surrounding area to Zehlendorf is pleasant for me. In addition, the job responsibilities sounded very interesting. I have always been technically affine which is playing into my hands at Knick, being a technology company.
Especially interesting are special requests for complex applications of customers, which we consider in projects and which I supervise from a commercial point of view. In general, Knick sets the icing on the cake for all their activities. For example, when it comes to products and development, the customer immediately notices when they are dealing with a Knick product because the handling is particularly comfortable. Also, the training process at Knick was great. Since Florian Koppe and I started at the same time, we were trained together and got to know all areas, departments and products extensively.
“Employee needs are given priority”
I handle the sales area Nord-East Germany and set key accounts full-time, together with Florian Koppe as sales engineer and Eckhard Tiedge in field service. Originally, my goal was to work part-time, but Knick offered me an attractive full-time position, which I then decided to take. In this context, I would like to mention that the needs of employees are addressed here very much. During my first year at Knick, I was asked if I would like to reduce my hours accordingly. Since I am satisfied with my full-time job, I have decided against it.
My typical working day starts with the flexi time between 6 and 9. I like to enjoy my coffee at home in the morning before I go to work even though I could also fetch a cup of coffee in the office. The flexitime is great for me as a mom, but also the colleagues without children appreciate the flexible working hours very much.
When the computer is up, I start working. The orders are available on the server as a PDF document and I enter them into the management system after a technical check. The coordination with our production control and the procurement is very important to confirm the orders to our customers and to be able to answer the telephone inquiries to our prices and delivery times.
After-sales also plays an important role at Knick. From time to time it may be that the customer has a technical problem. Florian Koppe supports me in the technical examination and clarification before I handle the process commercially with the customer. The aim is to keep costs for the customer as low as possible.
Since this year, we also work completely paperless in sales. While this is a challenge, we receive a lot of support from our IT department to map the documents in our document management system. As a result, we no longer have to go to an archive, but can retrieve archived orders easily from the workplace.
“I can always ask the colleagues who have gained their experience over decades”
Self-organization and coordination is very important for me in my day-to-day work. Especially because we as a sales team and even more as the North-East Germany team work closely together and coordinate our work with each other. We are a well-mixed team and it is an advantage that I can always ask the colleagues who have gathered their experience over “decades”.
As sales office, we also like to spend the lunch break together. The way to the stores at the Teltower Damm, a shopping street at Zehlendorf, or to the next canteen is not far and on the way, we can enjoy the birds singing.
