Task
At Emil Löffelhardt, knowledge management had long been unstructured and time-consuming: documentation was created by hand, without standardized templates, and stored in various locations—such as on local drives or in separate, disparate repositories. There was no central, unified access to the content—what is known as a “single point of content.” The existing process was complicated and involved a great deal of effort with little sustainability.
Against this backdrop, Emil Löffelhardt set out to establish a structured, standardized, and company-wide knowledge management system—as part of the targeted preparations for the transition to SAP S/4HANA planned for 2027.
Parameters
- Industry: Electrical Wholesale
- Project duration: Since June 2024
- Project Title: Knowledge Management
- Number of authors: 20
- Number of end users: 650
- Applications: SAP R/3, Microsoft 365
- Planned applications starting in late 2027: SAP S/4HANA, HR and Training Portal
Solution & Result
When selecting the right tool, Emil Löffelhardt prioritized high SAP compatibility above all else, combined with a streamlined infrastructure and straightforward implementation. datango met these requirements, which is why the company opted for the complete datango Performance Suite—consisting of Creator, Collaborator, and Live!. The project kicked off in June 2024.
Even before the actual content creation began, the author teams strategically prepared for the project: Together, they developed a training plan and held a strategy day to ensure that all participants were on the same page. In terms of content, the initial focus was on SAP R/3 and Microsoft to build a solid knowledge base while simultaneously and gradually preparing the authoring teams for future SAP S/4HANA content with datango.
Content creation itself takes place within the respective departments: The administration team is responsible for content related to Microsoft Teams and Outlook, while trained authors from the SAP department create the corresponding SAP content.
In April 2025, the MediaCenter officially went live and has since served as the central access point for all documentation. In February 2026, another important step followed with the rollout of datango Live!: Since then, the content has also been available to employees directly within their respective work contexts.
AI @ datango
As the volume of SAP documentation grew, greater emphasis was placed on the efficient creation of the corresponding descriptions. Initially, these were written largely by hand—a task that became noticeably more time-consuming as the knowledge base expanded.
When datango introduced SmartDescribe, an AI tool for automated description generation, Emil Löffelhardt tested the solution and quickly recognized its practical benefits. Since then, descriptions for the documentation have been generated in a topic-specific and AI-supported manner. The time-consuming manual drafting process is eliminated, significantly speeding up the entire creation process. Equally important to Emil Löffelhardt was the consistency that SmartDescribe ensures in description generation. Since the underlying prompt can be customized, sufficient flexibility was maintained.
For Emil Löffelhardt, using SmartDescribe means, above all, a noticeable time savings on a task that comes up regularly in knowledge management.
Emil Löffelhardt also sees further potential for the use of AI in knowledge management in the future—for example, in the automatic generation of keywords, smarter content search, or the integration of in-house AI into datango Live!. At datango, such customer-focused enhancements are fundamentally part of the collaborative process: New customer requirements are incorporated into the continuous development of the solutions.
Customer Short Profile
Emil Löffelhardt GmbH & Co. KG is one of the leading electrical equipment wholesalers in southern Germany. Founded in Stuttgart in 1906, this family-owned business is now run by the fourth generation and operates 21 locations in Baden-Württemberg and northern Bavaria.
As a full-range supplier, Emil Löffelhardt combines 120 years of experience with a clear focus on the future and innovation. The company offers customers in the skilled trades, specialty retail, industry, and the public sector a comprehensive range of services—from electrical products to personalized consulting and process-oriented services, all the way through to complete project management.
TOP 3 PROJECT SUCCESS FACTORS
- Time and Cost Savings in Content Creation
- Unified Knowledge Management with a Centralized Single Point of Content
- Present processes in a consistent manner across the entire company and make them easy to teach
Customer Feedback
“datango enables us to create documentation efficiently using a great interactive learning approach. The AI integration with datango SmartDescribe makes the final step of content delivery noticeably easier for us. Descriptions can be created much faster. For us, this means, above all, significant time savings and less manual effort in our day-to-day work.”
Lukas Wunsch, IT Operations System Administrator
Contact
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