Knauf Unified Identity Platform Project
Alexandros Shomper
Knauf Account
The Google Account for the construction industry
From fragmented identities to a unified access platform powering activation across the Knauf ecosystem.
Overview
Unified Identity & Access Platform for 30+ Knauf Apps and Services.
Knauf Account is the single sign-on and customer identity platform powering the entire Knauf digital ecosystem.
About Knauf
Knauf Digital is the innovation arm of Knauf Group (a 15+B global building materials leader with 43,500+ employees, operating in 90+ countries). The unit focuses on developing B2B digital products for the construction industry. The mandate was to scale a portfolio of digital solutions across global markets while driving a user-centric transformation.
Customer Types
Dealer: B2B partners who sell Knauf materials to construction companies and manage order logistics.
Applicator: Contractors, on-site professionals who plan, measure, and execute installations.
Specifier: Architects, planners, and general contractors who define material requirements.
Challenge
A fragmented identity landscape blocking activation and scalability.
For decades, Knauf operated as a federation of brands in and across countries. Fragmented solutions, fragmented data, fragmented accounts.
The Problem
The ecosystem couldn’t scale because identity wasn’t unified.
Users had to remember multiple passwords, re-enter the same data for every country or app, and had no central place to manage teams, roles, or account information. Business suffered:
Fragmented CRM made global sales operations nearly impossible
No single view of customers or companies
No way to provide personalized pricing or content
No cross-app retention loops
The Goal
Build a unified access platform that becomes the gateway to the entire Knauf ecosystem — and the foundation for cross-product growth.
The Knauf Account had to:
Replace all legacy accounts
Provide frictionless onboarding
Give teams the ability to manage users and permissions
Connect to CRM as a single source of truth
Enable personalized pricing, content, and experience
Enable personalized pricing, content, and experience
A platform designed not for one product but for every product Knauf will ever build.
Research
Understanding identity through ecosystems, not screens
Identity isn’t a UI problem, it's an ecosystem problem.
We conducted deep research across markets, brands, and teams to understand how access flows affected onboarding, retention, and sales.
Cross-country stakeholder interviews (Brands, Sales, CRM) • Technical audits of all legacy access systems • UX research with applicators, contractors, architects • CRM data analysis
Key Insights
One customer had up to 5–12 accounts. Different countries, different apps, different portals.
Onboarding dropped at the “create account” step across apps. Access friction blocked activation everywhere.
No team-level management meant zero visibility for enterprise clients. Admins couldn’t control access or roles.
Pricing, content, and permissions were misaligned. Users got the wrong prices, wrong content, or wrong access.
CRM data was fragmented and incomplete. Sales teams couldn’t trust customer information.
PMF Hypothesis
If Knauf customers can access all tools with one account, and if that account becomes the single source of truth, then activation will increase across all apps, CRM data will improve, and support workload will drop significantly.
Solution
Designing the identity platform powering the Knauf ecosystem
We approached the Knauf Account as a platform, not a feature, with foundations that support decades of future products.
Scope decisions Desktop-first; compatibility with new Knauf Apps vs legacy apps has priority; Localization is key
SSO One account for all products.
Team management Give customers a team workspace with role & permission settings for each app.
Personalization Provide customers personalized experiences and data.
Key Feature 1: One Account for All Knauf
The core of the platform: One login. One profile. One company. One identity.
Single sign-on (SSO) across all Knauf apps
Consolidation of dozens of legacy accounts. Migration path for old country-based systems. Stronger authentication + enterprise-grade security
Unified customer and company profiles
Centralize all data, access, and service offerings on company and user level.
Impact
Customers now had one Knauf Account (instead dozens) for everything Knauf.
50% improved account activation across all connected apps
30% reduced support requests
"We used to manage ten different Knauf accounts across countries. Now it’s one login, and suddenly everything works the way it should."
Key Feature 2: Team Management & Permissions
A foundational capability for enterprise clients. A shared single source of truth, and the foundation for team collabiration on our platform.
Create and manage teams
Create teams based on function, project, and location.
Invite users or approve join requests
Customers can invite team mates during onboarding or when creating projects, and manage join requests from their team mates.
Define roles & permissions per app
Projects can have very sensistive data. Our customers can define clear roles and persmissions on what the team mates can do, and what they can see. On project level, location level, and app level.
Impact
This turned Knauf Account into an enterprise-grade IAM (Identity and Access Management) layer.
45% reduced team onboarding time
2X higher cross-app activation
"Onboarding new colleagues went from days of emails to five minutes. It feels like we finally have a modern enterprise system."
Key Feature 3: Personalized Experiences & Pricing
With a unified identity, personalization becomes possible. Prices and data are not just different from country to country. But also from customer to customer. Before, we were not able to provide prices because of this, now we can show everyone their exact, personalized prices.
Customer type → tailored experience
The experience for every user is tailored to their customer type (specifier, applicator, dealer), so we can provide each user value asap.
Country → localized content
Not just marketing content. Products, construction requirements, regulations are very different in each country. This depends on the customers location, but also on the projects location.
Company → personalized pricing
Every customer negotiates different prices for different products or product categories; sometimes for each project. This can change every year. The Knauf account now enables us to show every customer the exact price for their project.
Impact
This powered activation loops across the ecosystem — users see “their Knauf,” not a generic interface.”
3X Better CRM data → better personalization
20% less service calls
"For the first time, prices, content, and data are consistent across countries and apps. This makes everything so much easier and faster!"
Results
A unified platform enabling ecosystem growth
Knauf Account became the identity backbone for all digital products at Knauf.
A foundation that unlocked personalization, efficiency, and scalability across markets and brands.
MetricΔ
Activation across apps ↓20%
Support tickets ↓ drastically -2h/week
Team onboarding time ↓ drastically +30%
CRM data accuracy ↑+25%
Cross-app usage ↑9
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Posted Mar 20, 2026
Unified Identity & Access Platform for 30+ Knauf Apps and Services. The single sign-on & customer identity platform powering the Knauf digital ecosystem.
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