Moving your family halfway across the world is an exciting, albeit scary challenge. That said, it was a challenge I eagerly accepted when I recently moved from Denmark to Des Moines, Iowa. I relocated to North America to be even closer to our Cimbria dealer network here.
I used to travel to this continent up to six times per year, visiting dealers and attending events. While I enjoyed travelling here, doing so meant losing time on travel that I could be using to help our dealer network serve their customers.
Even when I was working at home in Denmark, time zone differences meant that when my workday was ending, Cimbria dealers and their customers back in North America were often just beginning theirs, especially on the Prairies.
This leads me to the No. 1 myth that people often espouse when it comes to buying European processing equipment. You may have heard that it’s difficult to access service and parts for European equipment in a timely fashion, and when you finally are able to talk to a professional and get parts, you will pay through the nose for it.
If you’ve ever had this experience, it’s likely because you were working with a provider that didn’t understand how to navigate the logistics that affect service for people half a world away from the European continent.
Being a professional service and parts provider for the seed processing sector means paying special attention to the stock of spare parts you have on hand, when that stock should be replenished, and ensuring proper knowledge exchange between staff in Europe and North America, to ensure you keep abreast of what the dealer’s customers require.
We’re fortunate at Cimbria to work with our exclusive Canadian distributor Nexeed to ensure steady, reliable service to Canadian seed processors. The Nexeed team knows what their customers need, and they communicate with me regularly — and I with them — to ensure those needs are fulfilled.
That said, I am not the only one in our organization that supports Nexeed in their day-to-day business. Nexeed has a number of professionals it works with at Cimbria who are spread across multiple facilities in Denmark, Austria and Italy.
I’m simply the North American go-between who ensures Nexeed gets what it needs so it can ensure Canadian seed processors can do business without having to wait for the next European business day to begin.
Getting parts for European-made equipment is not a hassle if you work with the right dealer. Ensuring your provider has boots on North American soil will make all the difference between getting parts fast and wondering when business hours begin across the pond — and it allows us to make the customer’s experience better knowing they have an expert at their side.
