CLAAS Boosts Farming Efficiency with Sentinel

Sentinel integrates with the CLAAS backend including SAP

If you drive past a farm anywhere in the world, there is a good chance you will see a CLAAS agricultural machine in the field. CLAAS is a family business founded in 1913 and one of the world’s leading manufacturers of agricultural engineering equipment. The company, with corporate headquarters in Harsewinkel, Germany, is the European market leader in combine harvesters. Globally, CLAAS is also the leader in self-propelled forage harvesters and is renowned as well for its tractors, agricultural balers, and green crop harvesting machines.

The search for a solution to handle software licensing, protection, and monetization for digital solutions led CLAAS to the Thales Sentinel platform in 2019.

CLAAS wasn’t merely looking for a licensing platform to implement on their own. Rather, they wanted a partnership with the licensing platform provider to ensure their technical best practices would align with their business plans.

Sentinel enabled CLAAS to make their agricultural efficiency software itself be distributed efficiently. CLAAS customers are now able to activate and renew time-based licenses directly without the need for a technician or support from their distributors. In doing so, they increase customer satisfaction, in turn growing revenue and reducing churn. By streamlining the licensing process, CLAAS also reduced operational expenses, raising their bottom line. “Our customers look to us for efficient farming software. They therefore appreciate that our software is licensed and distributed with utmost efficiency in a customer-centric way,” notes Ilija Panov, Head of INF-Cloud, Integration & Identities, CLAAS Global IT.