Sonical makes a difference for Duco

This is a real partnership

When Jo Casier of Duco, Ventilation and Sun Control, was looking for a partner to guide the digital transformation, he ended up with Sonical. It turned out to be a successful combination.

“We are a manufacturing company, we live off our products,” says Jo Casier, operational director of ventilation group Duco from Veurne. “We obviously need applications, but we don’t want to work on them or be busy with them all the time, we don’t want to employ programmers. That’s why we were looking for a partner who could help us with that, in a good understanding, where cooperation is very important.”

After a broad search, Duco ended up with Sonical. That is a grouping of Flemish IT companies that join forces to offer a broader service to customers. “It is a new way of working together, where each entity can play to its strengths, and where we can pool expertise to unburden customers,” said Olivier Laloo, managing partner of Sonical. 

Brecht Maricau, IT manager at Duco: ” We want an open, clear and transparent system, so that the possibility of working with other partners remains. We did a broad scan of the market, and that’s how we ended up with Sonical, which is also a big proponent of this open approach. Then we first implemented our accounting system. Meanwhile, we are also adapting other system, such as Modern Workplace for managing documents, and new applications for managing our customer service and sales.”

Tangible Solutions

Duco has grown in recent years to a company with 200 employees. “But we think it’s important to keep our SME spirit,” says Casier. “That small scale is part of us, we want short lines, no heavy structure, and we want to make a difference with our products. But then you need good applications. That’s where Sonical is helping us now.”

One of the reasons Duco chose Sonical was that they were able to talk about concrete problems from the very first contact, with IT specialists who know what they are talking about. “We weren’t sitting across from salespeople who promise something that IT people then can’t deliver. We could talk directly about solutions, on the same level. That was very important to us,” says Maricau.

“We take that approach very consciously,” adds Olivier Laloo. “It’s important to think as early as possible whether things are going to fit together. Then you know whether the collaboration can succeed, whether you can mean something to a company.”

Because both Sonical and Duco really see it as a collaboration, a partnership. “We don’t want anonymous people who come here to install some applications. We want to know who we are working with, personal contact is important. It is also very important to know who to turn to if there is a problem. That makes everything go faster, and everything is clearer. You can do that with Sonical. They help us to make a difference.”

Copyrights by Voka – Ondernemersmagazine [issue 16/2022]