The digital space is constantly changing. And, to keep pace with the immensely expanding digital world, every business needs to adopt a set of digital technologies and digital platforms.

Advanced digital platforms are changing the way businesses operate nearly almost all industries. However, a few of the industries such as industrial equipment are thoroughly transformed through the digital platform implementation.

Digital platforms for Industrial Equipment companies are not merely transforming the way industrial equipment products are sold but also how the companies operate. It contributes significantly in generating greater profit either by reducing the cost or by earning tremendous revenue.

Additionally, the growth of the Industrial Equipment domain is essential as other industries rely on it to meet their equipment demands regularly.

Challenges Faced by the Industrial Equipment Companies

While helping varied brands of different sectors to grow and sustain, the Industrial Equipment companies are dealing with several challenges such as

• Complex business process
• Least effective management of organizational data
• Lack of business insights
• Incapability of understanding the customer behavior
• Lack of proficiency in delivering the personalized experience
• Complicated process for online product selling
• Lack of provisioning for updating the content on the website or B2B or B2C or B2B2C stores as and when required

With the help of a digital platform, it becomes easier for Industrial Equipment companies to deal with such issues efficiently.

Apart from that, the Industrial Equipment companies also deal with several departmental challenges. In an Industrial Equipment company, different teams are facing various technical and functional issues.

Let’s have an overview of different level challenges in an Industrial Equipment company.

Top Management

The top management of the company involves a team of C-level executives, Managing Directors, Directors, and other leadership positions. They do not deal with every single problem of the organizations.

The top management of the Industrial Equipment company is more concerned about having a single source of truth for all the organizational data, faster time-to-market of industrial equipment products, faster turnaround time, delivering personalized customer experiences, centralized management of essential brand assets, and more.

Sales and Marketing Teams

Most of the challenges faced by the sales and marketing team of Industrial Equipment companies are related to cataloging, personalization, and pricing.

If we elaborate on this in detail, the Sales and Marketing teams need quick access to the updated information related to products or services.

Apart from this, these teams need to deal with the problems of managing and sharing in-stock product quantity, creating custom questions for each customer, managing promotions, sharing updated technical details of products, determining the price, updating the product quantity, and more.

Operational Team

In an Industrial Equipment organization, the operational team deals with the challenges related to data collection, data aggregation, data syndication, data consolidation, generating quotations on time for dealers and suppliers, managing thousands of product data with hundreds of attributes of each effectively, sharing pricing updates, and more.

Information Technology (IT) Team

The key job of the IT team is to manage the organizational data by ensuring security and efficiency. As the data is scattered across the different enterprise systems and third-party applications, the IT team is responsible to synchronize all the data and manage it in a centralized location.

Along with these, they also need to deal with the challenges of data enrichment, data duplication, data merging, data cleaning, data aggregation, data update, and more.

When your data is available across different systems, it becomes challenging for them to generate MIS reports on time.

All the organizations who are facing any or many or all these challenges need to analyze these issues. While analyzing the challenges, you will get clarity on the essence of effective data management and can address all the problems.

With the right digital platforms, you can manage all the data in a single location. Beyond that, you can get meaningful business insights that help to make the right business decisions at the right time. Also, it boosts team productivity by streamlining and automating various business processes. Eventually, it ensures the success of your venture.

“What is a digital platform?” If you are not aware of the term “Digital Platform” this is the obvious question.

Let’s have a brief introduction to Digital Platform.

What is a Digital Platform?

The digital platform is a technology model that allows companies to manage their data in a centralized location, understand their business, customer, and market needs, and optimize their business process with the changing market trends.

It works as a centralized repository of your critical business data including product, product attributes, customers, media assets, eCommerce, marketing, content, and more. Along with internal data, robust digital platforms allow companies to manage the data related to other business entities such as distributors, vendors, employees, accounting, etc.

If you are interested in exploring more about the Digital Platform, don’t miss to read What is a Digital Platform? Everything You Need to Know about Digital Platforms.

How a Digital Platform addresses the challenges of Industrial Equipment companies?

There is a wide variety of digital platforms available in the market. They all offer different types of solutions to the brands to streamline the various business processes and make the right and data-driven business decisions.

Product Information Management (PIM)

Industrial Equipment companies usually deal with 5 to 5000 small to large scale equipment products. All these products have 10 to 10000 different attributes. So, the Industrial Equipment organization has to manage such a massive volume of product data.

How do you manage all your product data?

Probably, you are managing product-related information in ERP, excel sheets, PDFs, and other systems manually.

If you are managing the product information through this approach, then I am pretty sure product data management and analysis become challenging for you. Even, when your product data is scattered across different systems, data aggregation and consolidation becomes a headache.

How A Product Information Management (PIM) Solution Helps Industrial Equipment Companies?

Product Information Management solution is inevitable for any product-driven company and so for Industrial Equipment brands. It collects, stores, manages, aggregates, syndicates, consolidates, enriches, and distributes the product information across different output channels from a single platform.

Being a centralized repository of all your product data, it becomes easy for your different departments to access the product data quickly, update the data as and when needed, and share the updated data with internal and external users of the organization.

To learn about Product Information Management in detail, read What is PIM? – An Ultimate Guide for Product Information Management.

Core qualities of a Product Information Management solution

Industrial Equipment companies should implement the Product Information Management (PIM) solution to optimize their product data management processes and practices. PIM allows Industrial Equipment organizations to

• Manage a large number of product data effectively in a single platform
• Determine the data models to manage your product information in a logical and structured way
• Integrate any number of your existing enterprise systems, third party application or software, and database effortlessly
• Provide a consolidated and aggregated view of all your equipment product data
• Update the product quantity on the fly
• Manage and share the available equipment product quantity with all the users
• Zero chances of data duplication
• Perform the processes of data cleaning, data enrichment, and data merging seamlessly
• Allow your varied teams to access and update the product data on the fly

If you have made up your mind to implement a Product Information Management solution for your Industrial Equipment organization, you must read Product Information Management: The Ultimate Buyer’s Guide.

Essential features of a Product Information Management (PIM) solution

All the above-listed capabilities of a PIM solution are thanks to the robust feature set it. Enabling the Industrial Equipment organizations with advanced features, PIM not only manages the product data but also provides better insights about the different products.

Let’s have a quick overview of the core features of the Product Information Management solution.

There are many other essential features of the Product Information Management solution that you should consider. Get better insights through Must Have Features of the Product Information Management System.

Digital Asset Management (DAM)

Almost all the small and mid-sized Industrial Equipment companies manage their media assets in the local computer, intranet, and other specific media management tools or software.

Let me first clear, by the word media assets, here all I mean is the images, videos, documents (PDFs, manuals, user guide, etc.), graphics, marketing, and sales collaterals, and many other types of digital files.

When all these digital assets are available in different systems in a scattered way, you cannot aggregate and consolidate the media assets with other relevant data. In the absence of aggregation capabilities, sharing the digital assets with your internal or external users will become a tedious and time-consuming job.

How a Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution helps Industrial Equipment companies?

Considering Digital Asset Management with outstanding features, you can manage all your critical media assets in a centralized location. It contains many advanced abilities that simplify several image-related tasks.

One of the most tedious tasks related to media assets is to resize the files as per the specific requirements of your intended platforms.

For example; you have used an image in a blog. Now, the same image you want to use for your social media platforms while promoting that particular blog post. Of course, you need to resize the image as per the specific instructions of each platform. DAM allows you to pre-set the size as per your needs and leverage the automated resize of any image.

Moreover, the DAM solution ensures management, consolidation, and aggregation of any amount of digital assets, regardless of any type.

To enrich your understanding of the Digital Asset Management platform, visit An Ultimate Guide to Digital Asset Management (DAM).

There are a lot more abilities you can access by implementing the right Digital Asset Management solution.

Let’s get clarity on the capabilities of Digital Asset Management that are simply amazing.

Core qualities of a Digital Asset Management solution

Implementation of a Digital Asset Management solution ensures the storage and management of all your media assets in a single location in a logical and structured way.

Other essential capabilities of DAM involves:

• Allows to manage 360-degree images, scheduling, versioning, face recognition, image editing, and more
• Supports 220+ file format including PNG, JPEG, SVG, office documents, PDF, bitmap, vector, and many other video codecs
• Consistent and easy metadata management of digital assets
• Effective management of different types of metadata that involves
  • Technical Metadata (grocery, database, etc.)
  • Descriptive Metadata (title, keywords, file type, and more)
  • Administrative Metadata (licensing details, geographical parameters, date created, expiration dates, and more)
  • Process Metadata (project, approver, status, and more)
• Provides multilingual support to create and manage metadata
• Manage metadata in an organized way

Now when you have clarity on DAM and its capabilities, you might be convinced to dig deep into Digital Asset Management from select the right DAM solution for your company.

Read Digital Asset Management (DAM): An Ultimate Buyer’s Guide to ensure you are making the right buying decision.

Essential features of a Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution

To enable the Industrial Equipment companies with the effective management of media assets, Digital Asset Management provides a wide variety of features. Here’re some of the highly essential features that you consider while choosing a DAM solution.

Digital Asset Management Solution Features

After getting a brief overview of the DAM solution, you might be thinking about how to recognize that your Industrial Equipment business needs a DAM solution. Go through 36 Signs That Proves Your Business Needs a Digital Asset Management (DAM) Solution.

If you are witnessing any signs mentioned in the post, it’s high time that you need to implement a DAM to save a lot of time and effort for your team and gain monetary benefits.

Digital Experience Platform (DXP)/ Content Management System (CMS)

Personalization is the key to success these days.

Customer engagement is always a challenge for any business. By proposing a product to your all customers with the same content, you cannot drag their attention. You need to provide them the personalized content that directly triggers their pain points and requirements.

Content personalization is not enough.

You cannot target customers from different regions through one single language. You need to share the content in the native language preferred by your consumers. Then only they can understand your offerings and connect with your brand.

Also, to attain tremendous customer engagement, you need to cover all the customer touchpoints where your target audience is available and active.

How a Digital Experience Platform (DXP) solution helps Industrial Equipment companies?

Digital Experience Platform helps Industrial Equipment companies to deal with their personalization-related requirements seamlessly.

The platform contains the capabilities of customer data management and analytics that allow you to manage, deliver and optimize the contextual experience of your target audience.

By creating personalized customer experiences, you can drive immense customer engagement and conversion.

Additionally, the Digital Experience Platform provides multi-lingual support to help you with regional targeting. Create a customer-facing interface in the native language of your target audience so they can connect with your brands and make timely buying decisions.

Core qualities of a Digital Experience Platform

To create the contextualized content, the Digital Experience Platform contains various capabilities that include

• Manage community, commerce, and content in a single solution
• Integrate your existing enterprise systems and third-party applications with DXP
• Create and deliver personalized and relevant content to the customers
• Distribute and publish high-quality data on varied sales and marketing channels
• Manage any number of pages, media assets, products, etc. from a single platform that is edited by hundreds of editors in a month and visited by tons of visitors
• Allows for multi-channel publishing regardless of digital, print, and social
• Delivering personalized customer experiences in real-time
• Integrated customer data module for marketing automation
• A seamless amalgamation of content and commerce to deliver robust customer experiences

Essential features of a Digital Experience Platform (DXP)

To enable the Industrial Equipment companies with personalization facilities, the Digital Experience Platform offers so many advanced features.

Digital Experience Platform feature set involves

• Web Content Management
• Multi-channel Delivery
• Personalization and Analytics
• Print-Publishing (web2Print)
• Integrated Product Information Management

Harness the full potential of DXP by creating and distributing the content that interests your target audience. It directly impacts our number of customers and conversion ratio.

Master Data Management (MDM)

There are digital platforms that enable you to manage the information related to products, customers, eCommerce, and digital assets. You can organize all these data in a well-defined structure.

What about other types of organizational data?

I mean, you also need to manage additional information such as data related to suppliers, distributors, accounts, employees, and more.

Probably you are managing all this information in other software. So, you need to bear the cost of software implementation and integration.

And, still, your data can be synchronized but it cannot enable you with an easy aggregation, consolidation, and syndication of all business information. To get better business insights, you need to look into all these different business information separately.

How a Master Data Management (MDM) solution helps Industrial Equipment companies?

Opting for the right Master Data Management solution for your Industrial Equipment organization, you can manage all your business data in a single platform, in a structured way. Not only that. You can define different categories and attributes for your business data.

In other words, MDM is the ultimate platform to access and manage your different data including products, content, eCommerce, media assets, customers, suppliers, distributors, vendors, accounting, employees, and more.

It allows you to add any number of information in your way. Yes, you can define your own/custom models to manage the data in MDM.

For example; with a Product Information Management solution, you can manage the product details. But every product has many attributes. MDM allows you to manage hundreds of product attributes by defining a flexible data model. The same could apply to other data as well.

Well, don’t confuse Master Data Management with Product Information Management. They are different from each other. Want to know how? Read PIM vs. MDM: A Detailed Comparison that Leaves You with No Confusion.

Basically, Master Data Management is the single source of truth for all your business data.

As MDM allows you to manage all the data centrally, you can have freedom from storing and managing the data in different systems. And, you need to access one solution to get all critical business insights on the fly.

If you want to learn about the MDM and its benefits in detail, check out What is Master Data Management & How Can It Benefit Your Business?

Core qualities of a Master Data Management solution

Master Data Management is the master record of all your business information. It manages the massive data with assured security and effectiveness.

• Advanced capabilities of Master Data Management includes
• Collect and aggregate a wide variety of data from different business systems
• Update and aggregate all the organizational data in a single solution
• Integrate all your existing enterprise systems and third-party applications with MDM
• Create custom quotations for dealers, suppliers and distributors accurately and quickly
• Attain faster time-to-market of data
• Generate MIS reports on time

MDM enables you with the data hierarchy, data structure, data enrichment, data versioning, and data validation facilities. You can leverage these facilities for documentation, translation, descriptions, attributes, and other data.

All the Industrial Equipment companies do not only deal with product or eCommerce or content or digital assets. They have to manage other business information too.

Master Data Management allows the Industrial Equipment companies to manage the data related to various external and internal resources such as suppliers, vendors, distributors, etc., and human resources, employees, accounting, administration, etc. respectively.

So why invest in different systems or software when you can manage all the data in a single one. Go for MDM and make a smart choice.

Are you excited to know more about MDM and its different aspects? Visit our thought leadership on Master Data Management.

Essential features of a Master Data Management (MDM) solution

To enables the Industrial Equipment companies with the effective management of business data, MDM is backed by amazing features that include

Master Data Management Solution Features

To learn about more features with comprehensive details, read Essential Features of a Robust Master Data Management (MDM) Solution.

If you are impressed with MDM abilities, realize that your Industrial Equipment business needs one, and want to implement the right one, but don’t know which one to pick. Read 11 Best Master Data Management Tools You Should Consider.

Digital Commerce Platform

Online business is not only an option in this highly competitive time. It’s a necessity. An online store drives more opportunities in terms of generating business in comparison to a physical store. Investment required in establishing a physical store is quite higher than creating and running an online store.

In the absence of an eCommerce platform, it becomes difficult for you to reach out to a large customer base and market and sell your wide variety of products and services.

Well, online commerce is a popular and widely adopted approach in this competitive era. Every business is promoting and selling its products through either its own eCommerce store or leading marketplaces.

Thus, it won’t be easy for an Industrial Equipment company to pave the path of success just by establishing an eCommerce portal. They need to go the extra mile too to stand out of the industry crowd.

How a Digital Commerce Platform helps Industrial Equipment companies?

With the help of the Digital Commerce Platform, Industrial Equipment brands can do much more beyond just promoting and selling the products.

It allows you to create and deliver personalized shopping experiences for the target audience and helps you drive immense customer engagement and conversion. Additionally, consider a feature-rich Digital Commerce Platform for your Industrial Equipment business, you can attain all your sales and revenue-related targets.

Embracing the potential of the Digital Commerce Platform, Industrial Equipment companies can develop different eCommerce portals as per their business nature and needs.

Business to Customer (B2C)

In the B2C business model, the Industrial Equipment companies are directly selling to the consumers through an eCommerce store or marketplace. Usually, the required quantity of the products is limited per customer. Also, it has less complex pricing and product structure.

Business to Business (B2B)

In this model, the Industrial Equipment companies are selling the products to wholesalers or retailers, or other companies. Mostly, they receive orders in bulk. Industrial Equipment organizations with B2B models need to deal with complex product and pricing structures.

Business to Business to Customer (B2B2C)

As this model involves multiple stakeholders, it is quite complicated. It allows the Industrial Equipment companies to sell the products to the wholesaler, retailers, and other companies as well as the consumers too.

A B2B2C digital commerce solution has highly complicated pricing and product structure as Industrial Equipment needs to address the varied requirements of two different target audiences.

Developing a Digital Commerce Platform, you can have a cost-effective platform to connect with your multiple stockholders. Apart from that, Industrial Equipment companies can leverage reduced product time-to-market, increased sales, and improved revenue.

Core qualities of a Digital Commerce Platform

While developing a Digital Commerce Platform for your B2C, B2B, and B2B2C business, every business has different requirements as well as some common set of needs. To address different requirements of the different businesses, the Digital Commerce Platform contains a wide range of capabilities.

Capabilities of B2C solutions

• Create and deliver extremely personalized customer experiences across the different customer touchpoints in a real-time omnichannel environment.

Capabilities of B2B solutions

• Create and manage multiple catalogs
• Allows to manage complex product and pricing structure
• Manage multiple currencies
• Provides multi-lingual support
• Manage price lists and reviews of all products
• Highly secured checkout process
• Manage promotions with extreme flexibility
• Manage multiple front-end apps, and more…

Capabilities of B2B2C solutions

• A mixture of B2B and B2C capabilities

Common capabilities of B2C, B2B, and B2B2C solutions

• Digital Commerce Platform allows Industrial Equipment companies to run promotions and sell products
• Allows to update product catalogs as and when needed to reduce product churn rate
• Enable buyers with the customer-specific checkout process
• Offer discounts to specific customers
• The component-driven structure allows the development of highly flexible and scalable B2C, B2B, and B2B2C eCommerce solutions
• Define specific pricing for different customer segments
• Leverage content and commerce to create and deliver personalized experiences for the customers by sending them relevant and contextual messages
• Create customized quotation for each customer with the least human intervention
• Access to the advanced features and functionality such as price calculation, checkout processes, shopping cart management, product filtering, and more.
• Manage end-to-end order processing through the order management module
• Update the product pricing and share the updated pricing data across the company, and more…

Essential features of a Digital Commerce Platform

All the above-listed capabilities are due to the advanced features offered by the Digital Platform solution.

To address varied requirements of the Industry Equipment companies and their different types of customer base, the Digital Commerce platform offers the right mixture of commerce, content, and Product Information Management.

So, the feature set of Digital Commerce Platform is divided into three categories as listed below.

Digital Commerce Platform Features

Customer Data Platform (CDP)

Personalization is an essential aspect of success. But, do you think without knowing your customers you can achieve real personalization?

Certainly, that’s impossible.

You need to track your customer behavior across the different sales and marketing channels and analyze the data to identify their preferences. After that, you will be able to sell what they are looking for or interested in.

Now you might have a question: how to design your personalization strategy?

Well, you can harness the potential of Customer Data Platform to define the right personalization strategy for each of your customers.

How a Customer Data Platform (CDP) helps Industrial Equipment companies?

Customer Data Platform is the solution that allows you to manage all information about your customer in a centralized location.

Industrial Equipment companies can collect, manage, and aggregate customer activities across the varied touchpoints using the Customer Data Platform. It also enables you with a unified view of all customer-related data. In other words, CDP provides a 360-degree view of each customer.

When you have all the data about your customer including their region, preferences, demographics, customer targeting becomes easier for you. Providing the customer preferences, CDP not only drives immense customer engagement but also increases the conversion rate.

Enabling you with exclusive insights about your customer, CDP allows you to define customer segments and design the personalization strategy for promotions, discounts, offers, and more.

By implementing the right Customer Data Platform solution, Industrial Equipment companies can efficiently deal with customer-related problems and marketing-associated challenges efficiency.

Core qualities of a Customer Data Platform

Customer Data Platform allows the Industrial Equipment companies to learn each detail about their customers. The core capabilities of the CDP consists of

• Manage the customer data in a well-organized and structured way
• Leverage customer data classification and attribute management using the Customer Data Modeling of CDP
• Connect multiple devices using the Customer Data Platform to identify the unique customers and remove the possibilities of customer data duplication
• Collect, store, manage and aggregate each customer information from an online solution or offline platforms (first-party apps or third party systems) in real-time
• CDP provides customer segmentation and on-site behavioral targeting to create and deliver contextualized customer experiences by providing real-time implicate and explicate
• Customer Management Framework automates all actions associated with the customers, based on the predefined rules

Essential features of a Customer Data Platform (CDP) solution

To enable the Industrial Equipment companies with effective segmentation, targeting, and personalization, Customer Data Platform provides a wide variety of features including

• Customer Data Integration
• Profile Unification
• Customer Data Modeling
• Real-time Personalization
• Automation

I guess now you have information about all the possible digital solutions that you can build using the leading Digital Platforms.

You might be in a dilemma about what if I need one or two solutions and not all.

Let’s talk about that.

What if I do not need all the digital solutions and just some of them?

It is not mandatory for any Industrial Equipment company to implement all the solutions together.

Every business has different needs and challenges. To deal with these issues and requirements, they need a specific solution(s). From the above list, you have the freedom to select any or many or all the digital solutions as per your specific business needs.

For example; you need to develop an online store to promote and sell your products. In such a case, you need to consider Product Information Management, Digital Experience Platform, and Digital Commerce platform.

The rest of the solutions you can consider are based on your needs.

For instance; you can manage the product-related media assets in PIM too. But, the implementation of Digital Asset Management allows you to manage the media assets in a far better way than PIM.

These solutions support each other to perform your various processes seamlessly. However, you can choose the number of solutions you want.

At Credencys, we have a team of certified developers who build and implement an advanced Digital Platform that contains all these solutions. We also hold expertise in developing and implementing the custom solution considering your selected solutions.

Thus, you don’t need to build a digital platform using all the six types of solutions listed here. You have the flexibility to choose as per your business requirements.

Benefits that Industrial Equipment Companies can expect from Digital Platform

Faster product time-to-market

Industrial Equipment companies can attain this benefit through the Product Information Management solution.

PIM allows brands to collect, store, manage, enrich, aggregate, syndicate, consolidate and distribute the product information across different sales and marketing channels from a single location.

Through an automated and streamlined process of product data management, PIM helps companies improve product time-to-market.

When the Industrial Equipment companies manage the unique information about their equipment, they can use the Master Data Management components along with PIM.

PIM ensures to deliver consistent customer experience across the multiple output channels. It also extends or improves the product assortment.

Leveraging PIM and MDM capabilities, Industrial Equipment brands can make new product onboarding easier, automated, and quicker.

Single source of truth for all your data

Whether you use any of the above-listed solutions separately or use them with other solutions, they all enable you with this benefit. They all provide you a single source of truth for all your data related to their specific categories.

Let’s see how.

Product Information Management (PIM) – you can access every data related to your wide variety of products. It provides an aggregated view of all product information. You can easily consolidate one product with others.

Digital Asset Management (DAM) – It’s a single source of truth for all your media assets such as images, videos, documents, animations, graphics, illustrators, and more. You can store, and manage any number of media assets in the DAM. You can seamlessly consolidate the media assets with the relevant products and departments.

Master Data Management (MDM) – You can add any number of data related to any functional process in the MDM. It enables you with a centralized repository of all your critical business data. You can consolidate any data with the other relevant data as per your requirement.

Digital Experience Platform (DXP) – Manage all your content through Digital Experience Platform regardless of your website, eStore, marketplace, etc. You can manage the content of your multiple websites as well.

For example; you have a website. And you want to target multiple regions. Digital Experience Platform allows you to develop and implement different websites for different regions with their regional languages and manage all these websites through a single platform.

Moreover, you can manage personalization activities for all the online platforms using DXP.

Allowing you to create and manage content in a centralized repository, DXP saves a lot of time and effort of your team for managing the different presence.

Digital Commerce Platform – It is a centralized location to store, manage and track all your eCommerce-related data. It aggregates and consolidates your B2B, B2C, and B2B2C business data. You can check the details on the fly.

Customer Data Platform (CDP) – For effective personalization, you must know your customers. Customer Data Platform helps Industrial Equipment companies in collecting and analyzing all the customer information. You can define the client segmentation.

Later on, for different customers, you can define suitable pricing, offers, discounts, and more.

Also, by tracking the customer behavior across all your digital platforms, you can get insights into their preferences. Based on their preferences, you can define a personalization strategy for each of your customers.

Enriched customer experience

To deliver a compelling customer experience, Industrial Equipment companies can utilize the Digital Experience Platform. It enables you with the flexibility to update and change the content as per the changing market needs.

Leverage web analytics and intelligence of DXP for data collection, user profiling, behavioral targeting, and more. Using web analytics, you can track and analyze your customer journey and understand their requirements.

Once you know about your customers, it becomes easier to create and deliver personalized shopping experiences by suggesting them to the products or services they are interested in. When the customer comes across something that they are looking for, they make the buying decisions instantly.

Design and deliver engaging customer journeys and personalized shopping experience by leveraging the right mixture for context, content, and commerce by implementing the right Digital Experience Platform.

Faster turnaround time

Consideration of Digital Platform automates many of the data-driven activities of your organization. It saves a lot of time and effort for your different teams such as production, sales, marketing, etc.

For example; a digital platform allows you to automate and streamlines the entire eCommerce process that starts with generating quotations and ends with the secured checkout process.

Select a digital platform smartly so you can access all the advanced capabilities of it.

Better team collaboration

Implementing a reliable digital platform, you manage all your organization data in a centralized repository and share the data across the organization. Your different teams can access the updated business data.

As all the teams can access the same information, there are fewer chances of communication gaps amongst the teams and eventually, you can improve the cross-team collaboration. When your sales, marketing, production, accounting, and other departments have correct collaboration, they together deliver the best customer experience.

Make the data-driven strategic decisions

All the data is available to your respective teams. With the proper and detailed analysis of each data, you can get insights into the varied business aspects.

Moreover, by implementing advanced digital platforms you cannot have access to the raw data. The solution enables you with consolidated, aggregated, and meaningful data that enables you with a complete overview of the overall business.

When you have clarity on varied business aspects, you can make the right business decision faster.

Integration with third-party systems

The modern age digital platforms not only enable you with the structured management of data but also allows you to integrate any of your existing enterprise systems and third-party software or application with the digital platform.

Every organization has established a set of systems such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Project Management, Customer Relation Management (CRM), sales tools, marketing-related solution, Human Resource Management solutions, Accounting software, graphic design software, and more.

You can integrate all your software with the digital platforms and set the bidirectional data flow amongst all the systems. It allows you to access the updated data across all the systems at any point in time.

Cost-effectiveness

Different types of digital platforms are available in the market. You need to choose from the options like on-premise, open-source, and hybrid digital platforms. But, the highly cost-effective one is open-source digital platforms. Such platforms are available for implementation at zero licensing cost.

In open source solutions, all you need to pay is for customization and implementation of a digital platform as per your specific business requirements.

As we have already discussed, you need to consider all the solutions and all the features listed here. You need to build and implement the solutions that you need.

Improved conversion ratio

To boost the customer conversion ratio, you need not use only one digital solution listed here. It’s the overall impact of the right set of digital solutions. Every digital solution contributes to increasing customer conversion from one or another way by increasing customer engagement with your different online portals.

For example; you have developed a digital platform using product information management. It allows you to not only collect and manage the product information but also enrich, aggregate, consolidate, syndicate, and distribute data across the different channels by making them compatible with different digital platforms.

It allows Industrial Equipment companies to sell and promote their products across different platforms such as marketplace, web, social media, eCommerce store, mobile, in-store, and more to create and deliver a consistent and seamless omnichannel experience.

Offering a consistent customer experience, Industrial Equipment organizations can earn the customer trust. When you add the flavor of personalization, it’s like icing on the cake. It reduces the decision-making time of the customers and increases the number of conversions.

Why is Pimcore the best choice to build digital solutions for Industrial Equipment companies?

Considering a Digital Platform like Pimcore, you can build a comprehensive solution that allows you to build all the above types of solutions under a single platform.

Yes, you heard it right.

Pimcore is the most trusted Digital Platform among others. It offers Product Information Management, Digital Asset Management, Master Data Management, Customer Data Platform, Digital Commerce Platform, and Digital Experience Platform under a single solution.

It enables Industrial Equipment companies to build advanced digital solutions that meet all the organizational goals and changing marketing needs.

We have a team of certified Pimcore developers who have developed and implemented digital solutions successfully for different industry domains. To learn about our competencies, you can read case studies of Kenmare and IronList.

Conclusion

So, are you ready to skyrocket your Industrial Equipment business by implementing the right digital platform?

I guess after knowing how the different types of digital solutions contribute to your business growth and success, you have got clarity on what benefits you can avail out of these solutions. Thus, your answer will be positive.

If you are aware of your business requirements and challenges that you can address using varied digital solutions, you can connect with our certified developer who offers end-to-end Pimcore development services to build and implement the custom solution that addresses your business needs.

Book a 30 minutes free consultation with Credencys experts to discuss

• Your Industrial Equipment business challenges or requirements
• How does the implementation of digital platforms make a difference to your existing business?
• Which solution(s) you should consider addressing your precise requirements or challenges?

Leverage our proven experience in developing cutting-edge digital solutions for varied industry domains. We have worked with all sizes of organizations from startups to multinational companies and delivered them the robust digital solution that helps them to attain their ultimate business goals.

We suggest you the right set of solutions and features to build a perfect digital platform for your organization. It helps you reduce overhead costs by streamlining and automating your various business resources as well as increase the revenue by delivering wonderful customer experiences.

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.

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

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)

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

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)

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

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)

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

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.

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.

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.

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.