Miko uses digital twin to introduce “coffee-as-a-service”

As a B2B company, Miko supplies high-quality roasts and coffee machines to hundreds of professional customers across Europe. In enhancing these machines with smart IoT hardware and a digital twin, Miko ensures that its customers can now enjoy “pay-per-use” coffee, proactive service and more.

Miko coffee as a service digital twin

Making coffee into a digital business

As a coffee company, Miko delivers high-quality coffee machines to its customers – companies, catering businesses and more – all over Europe. Its added value? The powerful combination of its great roasts and machines and its extensive services, from telesales, technical and marketing support to barista training courses and a range of complimentary products. So, optimising its “coffee-as-a-service” model was a top priority. Miko wanted to make coffee service the best it could possibly be and the best way to do that was to fully opt for the digital route.

Miko’s digital twin offers the company – and its customers – several benefits:

  • Proactive customer service
  • Increased operational service at a lower cost
  • Transparent invoicing via a pay-per-use model
  • Real-time insights on customer and machine data

Empowering customer service

Originally, coffee machine registration and invoicing was based on manual meter readings taken by Miko’s sales or services personnel. Defects, however, were usually spotted by the customer, which put customer service into a reactive role. They wanted to change that by empowering its customer service team, leading to happier customers.

By extending its machines with smart, in-house engineered IoT hardware, the customers now enjoy “pay per use” coffee: they receive invoices based on their real consumption and can check their consumption and machine status in real time through Miko’s customer portal.

Awards

This case made us a finalist for the 2020 SAP Pinnacle award in the category of “Best SAP-Qualified Partner-Packaged Solutions,” and a recipient of the Partner Excellence Award in EMEA-North for Q1 2020. Very proud of these achievements, which are a sign of outstanding performance, dedication and our customer-centric approach.

How the digital twin works

The secret behind the new offering is a digital twin developed by Flexso Digital: a virtual replica of each Miko coffee machine exists in the cloud. SAP Internet of Things powered by SAP BTP, the virtual twin allows for remote, real-time monitoring. If a technical issue is detected, a service notification can be sent to SAP ERP, which triggers service processes.

A customer portal provides full transparency when it comes to coffee consumption, machine status and billing. The setup is fully integrated with SAP ERP for automated billing, consumption-based (pay-per-use) invoicing contracts and more.

Finally, Flexso Digital developed a mobile app for Miko’s service personnel. This allows them to digitise tasks that cannot be done remotely via IoT, such as filter replacement, certain cash collection processes and replenishment of ingredients.

The power of a digital twin

The benefits? Miko can now detect machine incidents and take action proactively before the customer experiences any issues. Manual meter readings have become obsolete, and on-site visits by technical staff now only happen when absolutely necessary, decreasing the overall cost of service for the customer.

Interested in harnessing the power of digital twinning? Discover Flexso Digital’s IoT-connected Digital Twin Accelerator.

Miko digital twin sap

About Miko
At present, Miko owns and manages coffee service subsidiaries in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Australia, and recorded a consolidated turnover of 210 million EUR. Coffee service currently represents 53% of the company’s consolidated turnover.

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Written by

Dries Van Vaerenbergh

Dries van Vaerenbergh