Anne Lueck
Grohe optimizes pricelist creation
The starting point
GROHE is the world’s leading supplier of sanitary fittings. As a leading global brand for innovative sanitary products, its brand values have been technology, quality, design and sustainability for many decades. The marketing team in Dusseldorf needed to create its price list more reliably and efficiently. They came to us to further optimize their process, which was already automated. Specifically, they wanted to more quickly visualize structural changes and significantly speed up the overall process.
The media IT specialists at Laudert were tasked with implementing a database publishing solution on the basis of priint:suite. To make this possible, they needed to integrate SAP Hybris, the central system for maintaining product information at GROHE.
Unique solutions for country-specific requirements
In addition to the retailer catalog, GROHE produces approximately 25 comprehensive pricelists each year. These are available in around 20 languages, including those with unusual scripts, such as Cyrillic. The country-specific product variations pose an additional challenge.
To prepare the relevant product information, data from the product management system is shared with SAP Hybris via an interface, along with product images or technical illustrations from CELUM. To create a pricelist from this data, the priint:suite plugin was used to export the data to the InDesign layout program.
Templates, page layouts and placeholders were then defined, making the automatic creation in InDesign possible. These define the way the finished pages will look and specify exactly which data should be automatically placed in which location. The layout program then needs to access the data source in order to fill the templates with data. This is done via a web service. If different layouts are required, multiple templates can be created for a single print medium.
Flexible database publishing with dynamic templates
Layout and display of the product data in the InDesign document is based on dynamic template processing. Several factors are critical when processing the templates for the GROHE pricelists. Along with the number and size of the images and the length of the product descriptions, the space required for the recommendation of similar products are key. Product range rules ensure that only products that are suitable for the specific country are selected from each product line.
All elements of the product presentation in the InDesign layout — images, text, codes and prices — are permanently linked to the product information from the SAP Hybris system via the priint:suite placeholders. This is the big advantage of database publishing: it allows data for individual products or entire product lines to be updated immediately before the project goes to print. Once the system is in place, GROHE employees can create individual pricelists for product lines all on their own.
Our focus is always on the customer
Successfully setting up the database publishing process was just the beginning of the successful partnership between Laudert and GROHE. GROHE now puts not only its media IT, but also its pre-press processes in the hands of the specialist from the Münsterland. Laudert’s repro and retouching specialists ensure that GROHE’s print media are nothing short of perfect. The full-service customer care is based on a customer-centric attitude and, most of all, open and honest communication.
With the help of perfectly paired software, the newly implemented database publishing process, and the unique combination of expertise in IT and media production, GROHE was able to make long-term improvements to the speed and efficiency of its print production process.
