Frauscher US Is Taking Changes in Stride – A New Chapter Brings New Opportunities

I moved to the US in 2019 for personal reasons and was given the opportunity to transition to Frauscher US. Initially the idea was to support the local team with the experience I had gained in Austria, and to become a conduit between the local market and headquarters in addressing project requirements. Over time I was entrusted with expanding responsibilities, first leading the engineering team and eventually taking on the Sales, BD and Operations lead functions as well.

My experience at Frauscher so far puts me in a position to understand the advantages of our technology and services, but more importantly the ability to tie that together with our customers’ needs and expectations. Serving our customers well is what it’s ultimately all about, and my years of experience here have put me in a position to lead my team to continue providing top-notch customer service.

Frauscher becoming part of the Wabtec family undoubtedly presents a huge opportunity for us, especially in North America. While many in the industry today know Frauscher, everyone knows Wabtec! Being a part of this larger whole allows us to provide our customers with the white-glove service they have come to expect from Frauscher, while also gaining access to a much larger portfolio of products and services through the Wabtec group. Through various discussions that have taken place, we are seeing many potential areas where coordinating future efforts with our Wabtec colleagues can pay dividends in terms of broadening our full product and service offering. Wabtec has a high level of knowledge and experience related to the market and regulatory environment, and a large portfolio of projects that we are now able to draw from in addition to our own.

Every first comes with a set of unknowns, and this was no different. The main issue that took some getting used to was that for the first time we would not be hosting our own booth, which we had been doing since our first Railway Interchange in 2015. Our concerns were unfounded however, since we were able to easily collaborate with our Wabtec colleagues and could see from the start that we were all working toward the common goal of a successful exhibition. Personally, I was concerned that our customers might not be able to find us since the Wabtec booth was in the RSI section, not RSSI where Frauscher normally exhibits. Fortunately, this turned out to be a non-issue as many of our customers and contacts already had Wabtec on their list of booths to visit. The booth location was great, which facilitated a consistent high level of traffic. These factors allowed us to have many meaningful spontaneous conversations as well as scheduled sit-down meetings at the exhibition.

Of course, they were curious - we heard the question “How are things going with Wabtec?” asked many times! From the time the sale of Frauscher to Wabtec was announced last summer, we have assured our customers that their day-to-day dealings with us would not change. Our customers have become accustomed to the quality of our products, attentive and efficient support, and responsive customer service. I believe that during Railway Interchange we were able to emphasize the fact that Wabtec also views these characteristics to be important, and that they were an important factor in wanting to acquire Frauscher. All in all, customer reaction was overwhelmingly positive!

As I take on my new role at Frauscher US, I’m excited and optimistic about the future. We have grown and prospered over the past decade on our own, but the opportunity for continued and exponential growth has presented itself since we’ve become a Wabtec company. My team and I can’t wait to see what the future holds and look forward to the next decade of growth and success!