Industrial Equipment (IE) empowers the different sectors such as engineering, manufacturing, gas, automobile, power, and more by offering highly specialized products (equipment/machinery) and services.
IE is responsible for lifting the other industry vertices across the globe. With the augmentation of other industries, the Industrial Equipment sector grows too as a lot of opportunities open up for the Industrial Equipment companies.
But, to grab the opportunities and respond to the market needs effectively, IE companies need to excel in
- Creating an excellent customer experience
- Adopting globalization
- Streamlining and automating data management processes
- Making data-driven business decisions
- Strategizing sales and marketing efforts
- Expanding the product and service range constantly
In the process of achieving the aforementioned objectives, Industrial Equipment companies can’t stick with their conventional practices. To stay competitive, you need to take the help of the advanced digital platform that contributes to your business growth and addresses your various pain points.
If you are an Industrial Equipment company, then this post is a must-read piece for you. You can get a profound understanding of why a digital platform is so important for your Industrial Equipment business.
Let’s have a look at the points covered in this write-up.
Table of content
- Business nature of Industry Equipment companies
- Challenges faced by Industrial Equipment companies
- What is a Digital Platform?
- 6 types of solutions Industrial Equipment companies can build using Digital Platform
- Widely used features of Digital Platform that Industrial Equipment companies should consider
- Benefits of Digital Platform to Industrial Equipment companies
- 3 Exciting Use Cases of Industrial Equipment Manufacturing Businesses
Business nature of Industry Equipment companies
Industrial Equipment companies manufacture and sell small and heavy machinery equipment to resellers or other companies.
Products
IE manufacturing companies deal with various types of equipment including breakers, dump trucks, off-highway dumpers, vibratory compactors, cranes, wheel loaders, graders, scrapers, backhoe loaders, motor graders, asphalt wet/drum plants, forklifts, rope shovels, pavers, bulldozers, tippers, and the list goes on.
Services
The services mainly involve equipment consultation, designing, and engineering of tailored equipment. They offer repair and maintenance services both for equipment.
Challenges faced by Industrial Equipment companies
Undoubtedly, many scopes are out there in the IE sector. But, there are plenty of challenges too that IE companies are facing in their day-to-day operations.
Let’s see what types of challenges the Industrial equipment companies are dealing with at different levels.
Company level challenges of Industrial Equipment companies
Change request management
You must be receiving a lot of change request management from the customers. Especially, when you have designed and manufactured certain equipment for particular companies.
The most common process for change request management involves generating the receipt, recording the change, and implementing the changes.
Most of the Industrial Equipment companies are dealing with the engineering change requests manually. It becomes confusing and complex as the number of change requests increases. You cannot bifurcate which requests are addressed and which are under process.
For the effective management of change requests, you need to establish a structured flow. It helps you streamline the change request management process and attend to each request more accurately and efficiently. Also, you need to take care that all the requests are tackled quickly.
Accurate quotation management
Better revenue and profit are the bottom line for the survival of any business. And, it starts with a quotation.
With an incorrect quotation and pricing, you either don’t make a profit as you haven’t considered all the required elements or you will lose the customers for charging the wrong price.
Make sure your sales team has access to all details related to the pricing so they can provide the correct estimation or quotation to the customers.
Effective product management
There are different types of Industrial Equipment companies available in the market. Some are producing and selling 10-15 products while others are dealing with thousands of equipment. Almost all of them are using the ERP system or spreadsheet for managing the product data.
This could work if you have a limited number of products to deal with. But, when you manage thousands of products with their hundreds of attributes, it becomes extremely difficult to store, manage, syndicate, aggregate, and find certain product information when needed.
Finding a platform that appeals to your audience
Analyze your digital presence thoroughly.
Most of the resellers or organizations browse the internet for selecting partners for equipment trading. If you are not having a powerful online presence and poor visibility on the search engines, then you are losing a great deal of business.
Without an online platform, you might be earning money from local clientele but it won’t help you to penetrate the global business landscape.
Thus, if you don’t have a digital platform, focus on building one.
If you already have an online platform, then you need to check its effectiveness amongst your target audience by analyzing
- What impact will the potential customers get while they visit your website?
- Is it updated?
- Is it mobile-friendly?
- Is it difficult to navigate through your solution?
- Do you have the right social media strategy to promote your brand and engage the target audience?
- Are you considering Google Ads and other digital media options?
Make sure you have a robust online platform to communicate and sell your offerings to the customers.
Growing pressure in marketplaces
To enable customers with more value, you need to identify their pain points and address them by producing and offering them the right set of equipment.
The marketplaces that are specifically selling industrial equipment are highly competitive. So, you need to make sure you are selling the most trending and relevant equipment with the correct product information display. You can also utilize the media asset capability of the marketplace to display the product pictures, videos, usage documentation, etc.
All these media assets trigger the challenges of your customers and connect them with your brand.
Additionally, whether it’s about responding to the changing government administration or complying with the new safety standards, there are always some external factors that affect the Industrial Equipment domain.
Global expansion
Every business intends to expand from a street to an area to a city to a state to a country to the globe.
As your business expands in different countries, you need to consider a multilingual platform. It allows you to present your website in the native language of the country and customers you are planning to target.
If you do not present the information in the native language of the target audience, the chances are higher they won’t engage with your brand, and your conversion rate decreases.
Are you facing any other challenges in your Industrial Equipment organization? We would love to help you by providing a custom digital solution.
Department level challenges of Industrial Equipment companies
Different departments of the Industrial Equipment companies are facing challenges related to varied processes and activities. Let’s have a look into it.
Top Management
Top management does not need each detail of each department and process. What they require is efforts, time, and money invested in certain activities and the results gained out of them.
Basically, they need a strategic overview of business data that helps them to understand the efficiency and inefficiency in the business and make the right strategic decisions.
Challenges that top management of the Industrial equipment companies faces involves
- Centralized management of different organizational data (suppliers, retailers, customers, employees, accounts, etc.)
- Attain faster time-to-market of the equipment
- Achieve faster turn-around time of the order processing
- Creating and delivering extraordinary customer experience
- Creating a single source of truth for all equipment with a consolidated and aggregated view
Sales & Marketing Department
The marketing department of an Industrial Equipment organization has to take various actions to increase brand awareness, engage the prospects and convert them into customers.
The sales team needs to sell the products/services to them by providing correct pricing.
The challenges of the sales and marketing team of your organization consist of
- Offering discounts to certain customers
- Slower time-to-market of equipment catalog as the data is scattered across the disconnected systems
- Keep updating equipment quantity
- Needed to perform repetitive tasks manually while creating a custom quotation for each customer
- Sharing updated technical specification of equipment
- Determining pricing based on the customer segment
- Enabling customers with all product variants or options in an interactive way
- Managing promotions for the specific customer segment
- Sharing and managing in-stock quantities of each equipment
Operational Department
The operational team of an Industrial Equipment Company deals with the challenges like
- Gathering and aggregating different data from suppliers
- In the absence of a centralized system, it becomes challenging to create quotation of distributors and dealers on-time
- Effective management of thousands of equipment along with its hundreds of attributes
- Continuous updating of product catalogs due to higher product churn rate
- Sharing updated product pricing information across the company
Information Technology (IT) Department
The job of the IT department is the most crucial one as they are responsible for the effective and secure management of data. They face challenges like
- Data cleaning a data merging
- Integrating existing enterprise systems and different third party application
- Enable different departments of the organization with the relevant and required data
- Management of database and disparate systems
- Product data enrichment due to lack of system interface
- Inability to generate MIS reports on a regular basis
- Data duplication across different data silos
- Update/aggregate the dealer/supplier data in a single system
Does your internal team face any other issues that are not covered in the above list? We would love to listen to you.
What is a Digital Platform?
The digital platform is a technology-enabled business model that helps Industrial Equipment companies to drive value for the organization by allowing the exchange of information between different independent user groups.
Industrial Equipment companies streamline their various business processes through a digital platform. There are different types of digital platforms available in the market. Some of them are ready to use and some allow for custom development as per your specific business needs.
Industrial Equipment organizations can leverage the digital platform for product data management, media asset management, customer data management, content management, eCommerce activity management, managing the data of different business entities (such as suppliers, vendors, employees, accounting, etc.), and more.
Do you want to dig deep into the Digital Platform? Read What is a Digital Platform? Everything You Need to Know about Digital Platforms.
6 types of solutions Industrial Equipment companies can build using Digital Platform
There are numerous digital platforms available in the markets. Choose the right one that meets your specific business requirements and allows you to build award-winning digital solutions.
Let’s understand the highly popular and widely used digital solutions.
Product Information Management (PIM)
Product Information Management allows Industrial Equipment organizations to manage all their products in a single location. It allows you to collect, store, manage, aggregate, enrich, consolidate, syndicate, and distribute the product information across different sales and marketing channels.
With Product Information Management, you can seamlessly harmonize your sales, marketing, and technical product information for varied departments. Integrating PIM with your existing enterprise systems or third-party applications, you can manage data effectively across all your systems.
Core features of Product Information Management (PIM)
Basic features
- Product Data Modeling
- Product Data Management
- Data Quality Management
- Workflow Management
- Digital Asset Management
- Omnichannel Publishing
- Apps and Data Integration
Enterprise-class features
- Product Experience Portal
- Product Data Syndication
- Marketplace Integration
- Product Feed Management
- Enterprise Translation Management
- Microsoft/Adobe Integration
- Enterprise Print Publishing
Extended feature set of Product Information Management (PIM)
| Basic Features of Product Information Management (PIM) | Enterprise-class Features of Product Information Management (PIM) |
|---|---|
Product Data Modeling
| Product Experience Portal
|
Data Management
| Product Data Syndication
|
Data Quality Management
| Marketplace
|
Workflow Management
| Product Feed Management
|
Digital Asset Management
| Enterprise Translation Management
|
Omnichannel Publishing
| Microsoft/Adobe Integration
|
Apps and Data Integration
| Enterprise Print Publishing
|
Challenges that Industrial Equipment companies Can Address through Product Information Management (PIM)
- Slower time-to-market of products and product catalogs due to disconnected systems and scattered data of products
- Access to the single source of truth for all product information
- Creating extraordinary product experiences
- Management of product data across disparate systems and database
- Product data cleaning and data merging
- Product data duplication across the different data silos
- Integration with your existing enterprise systems and third-party application
- Product data enrichment due to lack of system interface
- Collecting and aggregating product data from suppliers
- Consistent product catalog updating due to higher churn rate
- Effective management of thousands of products along with hundreds of attributes
- The growing pressure of marketplaces
- Providing relevant & required product data to the other departments of the organization (Sales, Marketing, Operations, and more)
- Enabling customers with all the product options or variants in an interactive way
- Sharing the updated technical specifications of products
Capabilities of Product Information Management (PIM) that are leveraged by Industrial Equipment companies
- Product information enrichment
- Eliminate data duplication in the different silos
- Sharing and managing in-stock quantities of products
- Integrate third-party systems
- Update the product quantity constantly
- Manage all the product information with digital assets in a logical structure and a centralized repository
- Manage thousands of products along with their hundreds of attributes
- Perform data merging and data cleaning
- Effective product information management in the database and disparate systems
- Enable the different departments with the relevant and requirements product information
Do you want to build a Product Information Management solution for the effective and centralized management of your Industrial Equipment products?
Digital Asset Management (DAM)
Management of the media assets is one of the biggest issues for Industrial Equipment companies. These organizations have to manage the media files such as images, videos, audios, 3D files, animations, graphics, documentation, presentations, excel sheets, and more.
Digital Asset Management allows you to store, manage, and aggregate your digital assets in a centralized location. You can also distribute your assets across multiple customer touchpoints.
With feature-rich Digital Asset Management, you can improve customer experience by distributing relevant, resized, and reformatted media files that look perfect on all your preferred output channels.
Industrial Equipment companies can store, manage, and consolidate any number of digital assets within the DAM.
Core features of Digital Asset Management (DAM)
Basic features
- File Management
- Metadata Management
- Image & Video Conversation
- Works with any file type
- Workflow Management
- Digital Asset Delivery
Enterprise-class features
- Asset Experience Portal
- Microsoft and Adobe Integration
- Direct Edit
- Enterprise Print Publishing
- Enterprise Metadata
Extended feature set of Digital Asset Management (DAM)
| Basic Features of Digital Asset Management (DAM) | Enterprise-class Features of Digital Asset Management (DAM) |
|---|---|
File Management
| Asset Experience Portal
|
Metadata Management
| Microsoft and Adobe Integration
|
Image and Video Conversion
| Direct Edit
|
Works with any file type
| Enterprise Print Publishing
|
Workflow Management
| Enterprise Metadata
|
Digital Asset Delivery
| Microsoft/Adobe Integration
|
Challenges that Industrial Equipment Companies Can Address through Digital Asset Management (DAM)
- Creating an aggregated single source of truth for all digital assets
- Managing all the digital assets in a centralized repository
- Management of digital assets in disparate systems and database
- Digital asset data duplication
- Digital asset data cleansing and merging
- Integration of different systems where digital assets are stored and managed
- Providing relevant & required digital asset data to the internal departments of the organization (Sales, Marketing, Operations, and more) and external users (suppliers, customers, etc.)
- Digital Asset enrichment due to lack of system interfaces
- Effective management of millions of your digital data in a single location
Capabilities of Digital Asset Management (DAM) that are leveraged by Industrial Equipment companies
- Easy and consistent correction as well as metadata management of digital assets
- As all your media assets are stored in a single platform you do not need to deal with the scattered data available across all your disconnected systems
- DAM manages all types of metadata including
- Process metadata (project, status, approver, etc.)
- Technical metadata (glossary, database, etc.)
- Administrative metadata (geographic parameters, licensing details, date created, expiration date, etc.)
- Descriptive metadata (file type, keywords, title, etc.)
- Resize the image in an appropriate format for the different output channels
- Leverage automatic product image editing, tagging, versioning, scheduling, face recognition, VR/360 images
- Centralized management of metadata that consists of asset-specific clarification
- Structured management of digital assets with a grid interface for easy and fast access to the data
- Supports 220+ different media file formats such as PNG, JPEG, GIF, vector, PDFs, bitmap, Office documents, many different video codecs, and more.
- To create metadata in your preferred language, DAM provides multilingual support
- Store and manage the digital asset metadata in a structured way
- Automated image and videos resizing and formatting
- Change request management
Digital Experience Platform (DXP) /Content Management System (CMS)
Personalization is the key ingredient to leverage success in this competitive world. But, it’s harder to achieve.
Implementation of Digital Experience Platform (DXP) allows Industrial Equipment companies to create and deliver customized experiences to each buyer across multiple customer touchpoints. You can create, manage, deliver, and optimize the contextual digital experiences continuously with the help of robust customer data management and analytics.
Through the DXP, you can enable your customers to access all product options and varieties in an interactive way.
Core features of Digital Experience Platform (DXP)
- Web Content Management
- Multi-channel Delivery
- Personalization and Analytics
- Print Publishing
- Integrated PIM Module
Extended feature set of Digital Experience Platform (DXP)
- Web Content Management
- WYSIWYG and Usability
- Multi-lingual
- Multi-site Management
- Personalization
- Content Commerce
- SEO and Marketing Toolbox
- Mobile-Friendly, and more…
- Multi-channel Delivery
- Multi-channel Publishing
- Mobile Marketing
- Print Publishing
- Marketing Automation
- Content-as-a-Service
- Commerce Integration, and more…
- Personalization and Analytics
- Behavioral Targeting
- User Profiling & Data Collecting
- Analytics Integration
- Big Data Analytics, and more…
- Print-Publishing (Web2Print)
- Compatible with your Workflow
- Adobe InDesign Integration, and more…
- Integrated PIM modules
- Data Modeling
- Data Management
- Data Quality Management
- Workflow Management
- Digital Asset Management
- Omni-channel Publishing
- Apps and Data Integration, and more…
Challenges that Industrial Equipment companies can address through Digital Experience Platform (DXP)
- Create and deliver extraordinary and personalized customer experiences
- Centralized management of all your content
- Global expansion
- Managing promotions for specific customer segments
- Providing discounts to specific customers
- Enrichment of website content
- Keep updating promotions and discounts as per the changing business requirements
Capabilities of Digital Experience Platform (DXP) that are leveraged by Industrial Equipment companies
- Distribute high-quality data across the different output channels
- Manage commerce, communication, and content under a single roof
- Manage millions of digital assets, pages, and products that are edited by hundreds of editors and visited by millions of users in a month
- Connect the Digital Experience Platform with any of your existing enterprise systems and third-party application
- Create and deliver personalized content to the customers
Do you want to create and deliver the personalized experiences to your customers by harnessing the potential of the Digital Experience Platform?
Digital Commerce Platform
These days, selling the products offline won’t help you taste the immense success when your rivals are embracing the potential of the digital world. You have to consider the online platform as well. You can either develop your own eCommerce platform or sell the products through popular marketplaces.
The digital platform enables Industrial Equipment companies with a Digital Commerce Platform that allows you to build feature-rich B2B, B2C, and B2B2C portals and connect with intended target groups. The more customers you gain the more revenue you generate.
Along with eCommerce, the Digital Commerce solution also allows you to create and deliver highly personalized shopping experiences to the buyers. By choosing a component-based digital framework like Pimcore, you can reduce product time-to-market and increase your sales.
B2B Portals
Business to Business has complex business models. It enables Industrial Equipment companies with
- Secured checkout process
- Management of complex product and pricing structures
- Product reviews
- Currencies
- Multiple catalogs
- Price lists
Moreover, the Digital Commerce solution allows the IE organizations to leverage flexible promotion, multiple frontend apps, and more as per your specific business needs.
B2C Portals
Leveraging the Digital Platform, you can also develop a powerful and customer-centric eCommerce solution. The B2C solution allows you to interact with your target audience and engage them by delivering highly personalized experiences in a real-time omnichannel environment.
Core features of Digital Commerce Platform
- B2B & B2C eCommerce Framework
- Customer Experience Management
- PIM for eCommerce
Extended feature set of Digital Commerce Platform
- B2B & B2C eCommerce Framework
- Framework Driven Approach
- Digital Storefront
- Product Search and Filtering
- Price Calculation and Availability
- Shopping Cart
- Product Promotions
- Checkout process
- Order Management, and more…
- Customer Experience Management
- CMS Integration
- Content Commerce
- Personalization
- Multichannel Support, and more…
- PIM for eCommerce
- Data Management
- Configure/Price/Quote tools (CPQ), and more…
Challenges that Industrial Equipment companies can address through Digital Commerce Platform
- Enabling customers with all the product options or variants in an interactive way
- Required to perform a lot of manual work to create custom quotations
- Defining pricing based on customer segments
- Delay in creating quotations for dealers and distributors in the absence of a centralized system
- Sharing updated pricing information across the organization
- Attaining faster turnaround time of the order processing
Capabilities of Digital Commerce Platform that are leveraged by Industrial Equipment companies
- Determine product pricing based on the customer segment
- Share the updated pricing information across the company
- Manage promotions for the particular customer segment
- Update the product catalog regularly to reduce the product churn rate
- Offer discounts to specific customers
- Improve time to market of product catalog as the digital platform manages product and customer data in a centralized repository. Due to seamless integration, all the different systems are connected to the Digital Platforms
- Generate custom quotation quickly with minimal manual efforts
Master Data Management (MDM)
Master Data Management is the solution that allows Industrial Equipment organizations to manage all types of data such as products, customers, employees, human resources, sales, marketing, dealers, vendors, accounts, etc. in a single repository.
It allows you to create and add custom fields in your different data. Thus, if you are not able to find certain fields and modules in your PIM, DAM, DXP, Digital Commerce, and CDP, then you can harness the potential of Master Data Management to determine your set of fields and modules.
Along with managing the different data, the MDM allows you to manage all the different elements of master data that consist of data validation, hierarchy, structure, and versioning along with attributes, translation, documentation, descriptions, and other related data.
Core features of Master Data Management (MDM)
Basic features
- Data Modeling
- Product Data Management
- Data Quality Management
- Workflow Management
- Digital Asset Management
- Omnichannel Publishing
- Apps and Data Integration
Enterprise-class features
- Product Experience Portal
- Product Data Syndication
- Marketplace Integration
- Product Feed Management
- Enterprise Translation Management
- Microsoft/Adobe Integration
- Enterprise print Publishing
Extended set of features of Master Data Management (MDM)
| Basic Features of Master Data Management (MDM) | Enterprise-class Features of Master Data Management (MDM) |
|---|---|
Data Modeling
| Product Experience Portal
|
Data Management
| Data Syndication
|
Data Quality Management
| Marketplace
|
Workflow Management
| Product Feed Management
|
Digital Asset Management
| Enterprise Translation Management
|
Omnichannel Publishing
| Microsoft/Adobe Integration
|
Apps and Data Integration
| Enterprise Print Publishing
|
Challenges that Industrial Equipment companies can address through Master Data Management (MDM)
- Collect and aggregate different data from suppliers
- Generate MIS reports on time
- Update/aggregate dealer/supplier data in a single platform
- Integrate different third party systems
- Effective management of millions of data securely
- Scattered data across various systems
- Data cleansing and data merging
- Data duplication across different data silos
- Providing relevant & required data to the other departments of the organization (Sales, Marketing, Operations, and more) and external users (customers, suppliers, etc.)
Capabilities of Master Data Management (MDM) that are leveraged by Industrial Equipment companies
- Enrich the master data record across any of the data domain
- Extremely flexible data models effectively handle the most complex data
- Easily manage your millions of records with thousands of attributes
- Determine the custom fields and models to add extra information about the different business data of your business
- Manage all the additional information with greater efficiency and security
- Single source of truth of all organization information
Customer Data Platform (CDP)
Customer Data Platform manages all your customer information in a centralized platform. It collects, stores, manages, and aggregates customer information and provides you a 360-degree view of each customer.
By collecting customer information from the different customer touchpoints, the Customer Data Platform enables the Industrial Equipment companies with a consistent and unified view of all the related data.
Core features of Customer Data Platform (CDP)
- Customer Data Integration
- Profile Unification
- Customer Data Modeling
- Real-time Personalization
- Automation
Extended feature set Customer Data Platform (CDP)
- Customer Data Integration
- Connect with any Customer Data
- CSV Import/Export
- Marketing Automation, and more…
- Profile Unification
- Search for Customers
- Duplicates Index
- Duplicated View, and more…
- Customer Data Modeling
- Class Definition
- Data Management
- Geographical Fields, and more…
- Real-time Personalization
- Personalization Engine
- Personalization Emails/Newsletters
- Personalized Mobile Push Notifications, and more…
- Automation
- Trigger
- Condition
- Action, and more…
Challenges that Industrial Equipment companies can address through Customer Data Platform (CDP)
- Creating an outstanding customer experience
- Define customer segments to define pricing, discounts, and promotions
- Customer data duplication across the different silos
- Customer data merging and data cleaning
- Scattered customer data across the systems
- Integrating existing enterprise systems and third-party applications
- Aggregate/update customer data in the single system
- Customer data enrichment
Capabilities of Customer Data Platform (CDP) that are leveraged by Industrial Equipment companies
- Store, manage and aggregate each and every customer data from multiple offline or online sources in real-time
- Customer data modeling allows Industrial Equipment companies to manage the customer data in a classified and structured way along with all the needed attributes
- Connect the CDP with multiple devices to determine unique customers and avoid data duplication
- With the help of customer data management tools, IE companies can predefine the rules and automate any actions linked to the customer data
- Enabling you with customer segmentation and on-site behavioral targeting, CDP allows you to create personalized customer experiences through real-time explicit and implicit
Do you think your Industrial Equipment organization needs a digital platform that involves any, many, or all types of business solutions listed above?
Widely used features of Digital Platform for Industrial Equipment companies
Multi-lingual support
When Industrial Equipment companies want to expand their business out of their geographical boundaries, it becomes difficult for them to get customers’ attention in the new region.
One way to grab customer attention is by providing them the product or service information in their native language through different online and offline mediums. This makes it easy for the brands to penetrate the new market and engage with the target audience as well.
With DXP, it becomes a piece of cake for the companies to present the content in the preferred language. A platform like Pimcore supports multiple languages so the IE companies can expand their business across every corner of the world. It allows you to translate any of your websites into different languages.
Cloud-based platform
Most Industrial Equipment companies look for cloud-based digital platforms that enable them with extreme flexibility and scalability.
The biggest plus point for considering a cloud-based digital platform is your team can access the data at any point in time from anywhere across the globe. All they need is internet connectivity.
Many of the cloud-based digital platforms are available in the market that enables a future-proof environment for your solution.
Web2Print
Industrial Equipment companies need to create marketing material and product catalogs on an ongoing basis. Not only that, they need to take a printout of marketing collaterals and product catalogs to share with the customers whenever needed.
There are some advanced digital platforms like Pimcore that allow you to store and manage the digital copy of different marketing material and product catalog as well as take the print out of it from the same solution by embracing Web2Print capabilities.
Product data model
Product data modeling is the most essential feature for Industrial Equipment companies that have a large range of products to offer. The more products you have, the more product information you need to manage for websites, catalogs, marketplaces, etc.
Product data modeling allows you to manage the product data in a structured and organized way. It also manages hundreds of product attributes in a centralized repository seamlessly.
Responsive website development
With the help of Digital Experience Platform (DXP), Industrial Equipment Organizations can design and develop responsive, stable, and high-performing websites and online catalogs according to the requirement and usage habits of your target audience.
By creating responsive websites, you can reach out to a wider customer base as it offers device compatibility. It means your website looks perfect in different screen sizes regardless of desktop, laptop, tablet, or smartphone. So you can grab the attention of all the device users.
The website or online catalog contains all the required information about the products that help customers to make instant buying decisions.
White Labeled Solution
Almost every Industrial Equipment organization has a bunch of resellers and partners. If you want to develop a white-label solution for your dealers or other partners, then the feature-rich digital platform allows you to design and develop such solutions.
By implementing the preferred company logo, standard language, and contact information, your resellers or partners can use the functionality of your online catalog to sell your products under their branding.
Product cataloging
This is the must-have feature of any product-driven organization so that it is essential for Industrial Equipment companies too. Using digital platforms like Pimcore, you can create the online product catalog effectively and quickly with minimal effort and human intervention.
Levering the PIM solution, companies can add new product groups into the online catalogs within a very short time.
eCommerce solution development
Industrial Equipment companies can build end-to-end eCommerce web and mobile solutions using a digital platform like Pimcore.
Customers can select the products, add them to the cart, and make a purchase using the eCommerce web or mobile solution.
The eCommerce solutions contain capabilities of simplified order processing, add multiple shopping carts, create different product groups, define customer-specific pricing, online order placement, and more.
QR code/Barcode scanning
This is a mobile-specific feature. Almost every Industrial Equipment company has its warehouse to manage stock of their different products. Most of the companies manually enter all the article numbers in the solution. But with a mobile app, it becomes quite easier.
As we have discussed every product has a unique article number. You need to display that number through a barcode or QR code. Your warehouse team can scan the barcode or QR code with the help of a mobile app. Later on, they can send the product numbers to the eCommerce team or they can directly upload the products in the shopping app.
Thus, the life of the warehouse team becomes way easier and the data entry of article numbers becomes error-free.
Integration with different systems
Almost all the digital platforms available in the market allow you to integrate different systems with your digital solution. Some of them support the limited number of software while others support almost all your existing enterprise systems and any of the third-party applications or software you are using for different purposes.
For example; you are managing pricing structure for each customer, complete customer information, sales data, marketing data, procurement information, and more in your ERP system. ERP can send all this data to the digital solution developed using the leading digital platform. The solution sends orders and offers data to ERP. Not only that, you can send the data to other systems such as customer systems, payment providers, mail providers, and more.
If you consider a digital platform like Pimcore, you can set up unidirectional or bi-directional data flow to keep all the enterprise systems, third-party applications, and digital solutions up-to-date with updated data.
Multi-domain data management
While selecting a digital platform, you need to make sure that it allows you to manage different types of data related to products, customers, digital assets, eCommerce, sales, marketing, employees, procurement, and more.
Multi-domain data management helps you to store, manage, aggregate, syndicate, and consolidate all your business data. It makes sure all your team members have access to the updated data.
Easier and faster data search
Almost all the digital platforms offer advanced search and filter options to find the required data quickly. But, to make the data searchable, it is very essential to store the data with proper metadata.
Order management
The order management enables the Industrial Equipment companies with an overview of previous and present orders. It contains all the orders placed by your customers regardless of any platform such as telephone, webshop, mobile app, EDI, or fax. You can see all your orders under Order Management.
You can also check the status of all your orders and take the required actions as needed. If the customers need to place the order of the spare parts again then it can be done with just a few clicks.
Managing individual order data
With the help of digital platforms, Industrial Equipment companies can store and manage the orders and article numbers in the shopping cart along with useful notes. All the orders have individual numbers and the customers can get an overview of their orders in the online store. This helps a lot in generating the receipt and verifying the invoices.
Do you want to build a robust digital platform that involves these feature sets? We would help you implement custom features as per your specific business needs.
Benefits of Digital Platform for Industrial Equipment Companies
Quicker integration of any system/application
Advanced digital platforms allow Industrial Equipment companies to integrate the data of webshop or online catalog or eCommerce stores with their customers’ (resellers, suppliers, etc.) systems.
The companies can leverage seamless data flows across the webshop and customer systems in an automated way that allows them to avoid the tedious tasks of manual data entry in different systems.
While your competitors spend weeks integrating customers’ systems with their webshop, digital platform implementation allows your team to perform the same task within minutes. They just do a few clicks and copy and paste efforts.
Reduction in manual efforts
Due to the seamless integration facility, IE organizations can easily distribute the data in different enterprise systems, digital solutions, or third-party applications as per their specific requirements. This eliminates all the efforts of manual data entry across the different systems.
Moreover, manual entry of product identification numbers and other details can be eliminated by developing a mobile app. You can simply cover all the information in a barcode and QR code, take a print of the code, and emboss them on each product. This one-time effort makes the lives of your employees way easier when they are counting, searching, or distributing the products.
Effective order management
There are digital platforms available in the market that support multiple shopping cart systems. It allows Industrial Equipment companies to create multiple shopping carts at the same time for varied product groups. When the customers place an order, your team receives a notification about the placed order through an e-mail.
Excellent customer experience
With the help of digital platforms, Industrial Equipment companies can design, develop, and implement varied digital solutions such as websites, eCommerce stores, mobile apps, enterprise applications, and more.
You can be sure of having a stable, responsive, scalable, and high-performing digital solution with an engaging user interface and the right set of features and functionality.
Moreover, beyond providing a robust digital presence, it makes sure the digital solution appeals to your target audience and meets their expectations.
Simplified operation processes
Most of the operations of the Industrial Equipment companies are related to products. The more products you have, the more complex the data structure you need to manage. Implementation of a cutting-edge Product Information Management solution not only simplifies your operational processes but also enables you with a single point of access to all your product data.
A PIM platform with an intuitive user interface is easier to adopt by your users. Moreover, it becomes easy for you to add a new product group to your online catalog quickly.
Leverage global business expansion
The Digital Experience Platform supports multiple languages and currencies. So, you can expand your business in other countries and regions. You can represent your website, mobile app, eCommerce store, marketing collaterals, documentation, etc. in the different regional languages.
This helps you not only to expand your customer base but also increase the number of resellers in each region.
Print process optimization
To increase brand awareness, offline marketing and promotions are equally important as online.
Considering a digital platform that allows you to manage and use the data only in online mode increases a lot of tasks for your team when they need to use some digital assets or product catalog offline.
Go with the digital platform that supports the Web2Print feature. It allows you to take print of any of your digital catalog or any other document. To get a print of your intended file, all you need is to connect your printer with the system and press a few clicks to transform your digital copy into a physical one.
Do you want to avail all these benefits for your Industrial Equipment organization?
3 Exciting Use Cases of Digital Platform for Industrial Equipment Companies
Credencys works with Pimcore, a leading and widely popular digital platform. We excel in developing next-generation digital solutions by using the different frameworks offered by Pimcore. Here, we are going to share the 3 use cases from Pimcore.
It helps you to understand the exceptional capabilities of Pimcore in the context of your Industrial Equipment business.
Ludwig MeisterImage
Image Credit: Pimcore
Platform: Web
Solution Type: eCommerce Solution
Client: Ludwig Meister is a Germany based company. It is a renowned brand for distributing power transmission, fluid and tooling products, and bearing. They mainly deal with B2B customers. They also provide a comprehensive range of services for its technical buyers and resellers.
Business Requirement:
- The challenge for the brand was to connect their existing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Procurements, and other enterprise systems with the webshop in order to achieve seamless and easy access to a wide variety of products (over 2.5 million SKUs)
- They wanted to implement
- Tailored pricing per customers
- Customer-related assortment backend powered by strong search functionality
- Personalized offering for each customer
Solution:
A robust B2B/B2C eCommerce solution is developed using Pimcore. The client utilized the open-source structure, tremendous flexibility, and great website features in the solution development. Moreover, the solution is capable of handling many products along with webshop and website within one system.
Along with the excellent feature set, Pimcore enables the client with flexible integration opportunities too. It helps clients to create and deliver engaging user experiences as well as fast and lean launch.
The solution successfully handles product data, customer data, media files, order data, pricing information, and more.
The client used to manage the pricing structure for each customer, relevant product data, customer data, and other information in the ERP system. They wanted to integrate the Website with the ERP system so the webshop can send and offer data to ERP systems. ERP system is also integrated with other applications such as customer systems, payment gateways, email service providers, and others.
The new eCommerce solution contains the features like advanced search, order management, individual order data management, and more.
Result:
The different customer systems are managed through a self-service tool. The customers of Ludwig Meister can handle such systems by themselves.
The rivalry of the client used to take weeks and months in order to integrate their webshop with customer systems. Ludwig Meister can utilize the sled developed tools and integrate the webshop with customer systems in a matter of minutes with a few clicks and copy and paste efforts.
MEFA
Image Credit: Pimcore
Platform: web and mobile
Solution Type: B2B eCommerce shop and scanning app
Client: MEFA is the market leader in producing and selling mounting systems for air-conditioning, ventilation, sanitary, and heating technology. They also hold a powerful establishment in plant construction and engineering across Europe for over 70 years.
Business Requirements:
- The client was using a website with a complicated navigation structure with several filters to manage the products.
- They had a complex ordering process.
- When used to prepare the product data manually for different media platforms such as an online shop, price list, and catalog. It was a time-consuming and error-prone task.
Solution:
B2B shop
The B2B store is developed using the Pimcore platform. The solution involves
- Product Information Management (PIM)
- Digital Asset Management (DAM)
- Customer Data Platform (CDP)
- Web2Print
- Omnichannel publishing
- Fast Algolia search
- MEFAscan app
MEFAscan app
- It is an intuitive and user-friendly mobile app that supports multiple languages such as German and English.
- MEFA customers (resellers, retailers, etc.) can scan the EAN numbers by scanning the articles via barcode labels. The customers can add the articles without putting any manual effort into entering all the products along with the article numbers.
- The app also helps the client in simplifying the ordering process as it is connected with the B2B responsive shop through which the order is placed.
- The app contains multiple shopping cart systems that allow MEFA to create several shopping carts for varied product groups.
- The MEFA customers can see the customer-specific pricing and place the order by login in to their accounts through their email address and password.
- New MEFA customers can register by adding their complete details.
- MEFA customers can send the articles that they have saved in the MEFAscan app shopping cart through email.
Results:
The production employees of MEFA customers who work in warehouses and need MEFA products can take the benefit of through the MEFAscan app. They can quickly scan all the articles and add them to the shopping cart using the app. It eliminates the mundane task of manually adding all the article numbers and saves a lot of time for the employees.
- To see the customer-specific pricing, the MEFA customers need to login through the B2B shop.
- Numerous shopping carts can be created through the multiple shopping cart system. The app sends a message to the MEFA customers for placing an order through an email.
- The shopping cart data is stored in Pimcore to ensure the security of the data.
Rohde AG
Image Credit: Pimcore
Platform: Web
Solution Type: Website
Client: Rohde AG is a leading brand that supplies a wide variety of industrial handles and surface technology to industrial companies. Established in 1925, the company has a team of 135 employees and is having an annual turnover of 15M euros.
Business Requirements:
Requirement 1: Data model development
The client is having a wide range of products so they have to deal with a large amount of product information every day and maintain the data for the website and online catalog. For simplified, easier, and effective product information management, the client wanted to build a data model for their new website and online catalog.
By developing a data model, the client wanted to ensure the proper structure, order, and clarity of product data. They also wanted to have easy and centralized maintenance of all product information including each product attribute.
While digging deep into Rohde AG’s database, the following requirements were identified.
- Only a few products have identical properties.
- Data model ensures efficient and effective maintenance of different product information.
- The data model should allow editors to maintain selective technical attributes for each product in a tabular form.
- Each table needs a different number of rows and columns.
Requirement 2: Website development
The client wanted to develop a new website that has the below-listed set of requirements.
- An intuitive interface of the website requires the easy configuration of the tables to generate accurate output as per the changing requirements.
- They wanted to expand their business out of their regional boundaries so they need to develop a website that should be translatable into 13 different languages.
- The website should be responsive to ensure the optimal presentation of content on different screen resolution
Requirement 3: White-labeled solution
Rohde AG wanted a white-labeled solution for its dealers who sell Rohde products across the globe.
Solution:
Website design & development
A website and online shop are developed using Pimcore. The website and online shop support multiple languages as well as display and maintain very heterogeneous article data.
The wireframes of all the important page types were created with the help of Rohde AG. While creating the design of the website, the user experience was taken care of and made sure that the navigation and flow match with the user behavior and habits.
Data model creation
- A flexible data model is defined and implemented based on analysis of Rohde AG’s database and their business needs.
- All the product information is migrated from MS-SQL to Pimcore objects and a classification store.
- To ensure the data quality, data and model errors were identified and corrected.
Table generator
A table generator is created to ensure the effective presentation of all the product variants in a tabular form in a responsive online catalog and website. With the help of table generators, the Rohde team can easily maintain their high complexity product data.
Online Catalog
The heart of the new website is the online catalog. It answers all the product-related questions of the customers, provides model data for download, and offers a contact option that involves a form for requesting samples.
White-labeled solution
To enable the Rohde AG with the white-labeled solution, the objects for the global sales partners were created and configured in Pimcore. The corresponding company can add their logo, contact details, and standard languages and utilize the functionality of Rohde AG’s online catalog to sell the products under their own branding.
Results:
- A high-performing, stable, and responsive website is created by embracing the potential of Pimcore. It meets the expectation of the target audience.
- Implementation of Product Information Management creates a single source of truth for all product information and streamlines operational processes.
- The intuitive user interface of the website is widely accepted by business users. They can easily add the new product groups to the online catalog within a short period.
- Rohde AG customers can order seamless industrial handles through the forms easily. The same form helps the clients in creating new business contacts.
Do you think any of the above-listed use cases are resembling with your business challenges or objectives? Or are you facing different kinds of problems?
In a nutshell
Credencys has hands-on experience in working with the Pimcore technology. We have successfully, developed and implemented the product digital solution to varied businesses from different industry domains.
The tailored digital solutions help the clients streamlines and automate the various data-driven business processes as well as generate the new revenue stream.
Do you want to stay ahead in the competition by developing a cutting-edge digital solution? Book a free 30 minutes consultation with our experts to discuss the challenges and objectives of your Industrial Equipment business.
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