Case Study
More Campaigns – More Turnover
Time-to-Market Shortened and Process Costs Saved
The Debrunner Koenig Group offers an extensive product range focused on construction – with more than 160,000 articles, the enterprise
is the leading Swiss trade partner for construction and building equipment, commerce and industry. For the traditional branches of trade,
providing 20 catalogues and brochures – naturally in three languages – is part of the daily business.
A well-organized, automated process
and an efficient data structure is required to produce this many publications.
Supported and advised by the publishing
specialists, FO-Zürisee, Debrunner Koenig implemented a high-performing PIM
system and InBetween‘s Dynamic Publishing software in 2008. This established the basis for adapting the marketing processes to the ongoing demands
in view of currentness, flexibility and
target group-oriented market presence.
Apart from achieving a high degree of
automation, the decisive factors for in
the software selection process, were
the potential of cross-channel data usage and being able to use various data
sources to create documents.
„Content is King,“ is the Marketing
Department‘s guiding principle at
Debrunner Koenig. What this stands for
is having a well-maintained and up-todate database as the basis for efficiently creating target group-oriented marketing documents across all channels.
Initially, the primary challenge was to
develop awareness at Debrunner‘s 30
subsidiaries of just how important highquality data is. In addition to all the article master data in the ERP, the product
information in the PIM
– in the three languages German, French
and Italian – an address database still
had to be established and integrated.
Since at Debrunner Koenig, different
subsidiaries are responsible for different
business units and product ranges, the
correct addresses, telephone numbers
and contact persons must be listed in
the catalogues and other publications.
This might sound trivial, but in practice
it resulted in a considerable number of errors, delays and complications
for only roughly 300 different telephone and fax
numbers for all main product groups. All files compiled had to invariably first
be sent to the local person
responsible for proofreading, which delayed the
workflow by several days.
Thanks to the address database being connected
to InBetween via a web
service interface, not only
could the responsibility for
all addresses be shifted
to the local responsibles,
but now all the latest data
needed to create new publications can be directly
imported from the database. The error quota is
virtually zero. The generated files are ready for print
after one to three days and
can be entirely created inhouse.
As the old German saying goes, your appetite is
whetted while eating. After approximately 20 catalogues per year with up to
900 pages were successfully converted
to automated generation, the campaign
brochures for time-limited campaigns
on the sales markets were to be more
quickly, simply and especially more
inexpensively generated. Individual
Debrunner Koenig subsidiaries issue
the „Handwerkmarkt“ (Craftsmen Market), a multi-page brochure to advertise
special offers for selected products in a
specific region. The particular challenge
was to proactively involve the local Product Managers both in the selection process of the article to be promoted and in
creating the brochures. Up to now, Product Managers compiled Excel lists and
forwarded them to central Marketing.
The product data were then exported
from the PIM, transferred to a catalogue
template and a graphic designer then
designed the final layout, which was
time-consuming. The new solution was
quickly found: With the InBetween Publi1|
Case Study
cationBuilder, the web-based module
for quick and decentralized
document creation, these brochures
could also be issued in record time.
Product Managers access a template
via the Web. How many articles per
page and in what display is roughly defined on the template. They then drag
their articles out of the PIM system and
drop them into the document via drag
& drop. The brochure is now 90 per-
cent completed, and when finalized, a
HQ-PDF can then be sent to the printer.
The option for switching languages is
already applicable via a switch positioned in the template.
Simultaneously, individual product flyers to be displayed at local stores can
also be automatically generated by nearly 100 percent. On the whole, up to
now the number of publications have
been doubled, and at the same time,
costs were halved. Debrunner Koenig
is no longer dependent on external
agencies and creates all documents
themselves.
Interview:
„More special Promotional Offers to the
Delight of Customers“
As a wholesale trader for products focused on construction, promotional
special sales campaigns is part of the
Debrunner Group‘s daily business.
The input of the decentralized Product
Managers in regard to top sellers and
revenue statistics is just as important
as is rapidly and cost-effectively creating documents for the Shipping Department and local markets at a central location. Birkan Terzi, Director of
Communications Systems at Debrunner König Management AG explains
how implementing a sophisticated
automation process can couple decentralized responsibility to economic reasoning, while additionally increasing
turnover.
Debrunner Koenig has a very broad product
range and many locations within Switzerland. How does this influence marketing?
That is a great challenge, especially
as we have 10 very different product
divisions with just as many different
requirements. This can be particularly complex when creating marketing
materials, because the responsibles
are also spread over a wide area and
we put so much time and effort into
coordination with our central Marketing Communications. Furthermore, in
Switzerland we are naturally dealing
with three national languages. much
time and effort into coordination with
our central Marketing Communications. Furthermore, in Switzerland we
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More Campaigns – More Turnover
are naturally dealing with three national
languages.
What role does the print media play?
To a great extent, our target groups are
craftsmen and construction companies,
who gladly fall back on the good old catalogue, when it comes to choosing the
right articles. As a wholesale trade company, we periodically offer our customers
time-limited campaign products. For these campaigns, we send our customers
brochures and provide brochures to be
displayed at sales markets. We cannot
dispense with this, even though creating
them is more expensive than is a
centrally created catalogue.
In your experience, does it even make sense to also automate the production of brochures where many are creatively involved in
putting them together?
With a web-based automation tool like
InBetween, the product responsibles
can select products themselves. This
makes sense, because they have more
market knowledge for selecting the right
products for a campaign. Since this now
takes place on the basis of a predefined
template in a creative style, we immediately receive a document that‘s 90
percent complete. Only minimum adaptations need to be performed, when
for example, a text is too long. We thereby save the entire agency costs – this
amounts to six-digit savings. We could
furthermore increase the number of
special promotional campaigns, due to
the much shorter creation time, which
provided for more turnover in our markets. And the customers are also happy,
because they now profit even more often
from special offers.
It is most definitely possible to also optimize such a decentralized process,
without having to centralize responsibilities or make concessions for Corporate
Design. You only have to find a healthy
mixture of creative designing and structured presentation of the design.
Project Highlights
bb 12 price lists and product programs are annually produced in two language
Birkan Terzi is the Director of Communication Systems at Debrunner
Koenig Management AG.
In 2005, he began his actual career
entry into database publishing at
Hovalwerk AG. He has been with
DKM since 2009, and today he is
responsible for supervision and
further development of communication systems such as, e.g., PIM,
MAM, CMS, etc.
Terzi continues educating himself in
IT and economics. In his Master‘s
thesis, he carried out in-depth studies on the subject of product data
management and database-supported publishing.
versions via a highly-automated process
bb Common database considerably improves data consistency
bb Upgraded to InBetween ENTERPRISE Plus additionally reduces the original ex-
penditure by 50%
bb All language variants are created with the same process
bb Language variants are generated simply by exchanging data exports
bb All articles are transferred to a PIM system and the data is used for printing
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Case Study
More Campaigns – More Turnover
The Debrunner Koenig Group:
The Debrunner Koenig Holding was founded
in 1988 by merging St. Galler Debrunner
Group with Koenig Group. The DKH companies cover a wide B2B product range for
construction, trade, commerce and industry. Debrunner Acifer is regionally anchored
and as a warehouse material dealer, has a
comprehensive product range on stock and
InBetween Deutschland GmbH
Friedrichstraße 39
D-70174 Stuttgart
Telefon: +49 711 72 23 32-0
Telefax: +49 711 72 23 32-29
E-Mail: [email protected]
Internet: www.inbetween.de
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multifaceted prefabrications. Metall Service
Menziken AG and Koenig Feinstahl AG serve
as flexible service centers and attend to the
national steel and metal market. Debrunner
Koenig Management AG (DKM) is the Management Corporation of the Debrunner Koenig Group. They plan, supervise and coordinate central responsibilities for the Group
active throughout Switzerland, and support
the sales subsidiaries in cultivating the markets.