Distributed Work in PIM by International Teams

Experience Report on the PIM Project: Live Recording of the Presentation at the ANTEROS Forum

Banner Motul

User Report by Motul - International Lubricant Manufacturer

Motul is known for their expertise on the topic of lubricants and have locations worldwide spanning over 160 countries in total. Their product range is implemented in many different sectors, from passengers cars, motorcycles and commercial vehicles to power sports and even industrial production equipment.

How ANTEROS is used at Motul

Motul uses ANTEROS as a central data hub for product data and images. ERP master data from SAP and safety data from Quick FDS are imported into the ANTEROS PIM system via two separate interfaces. Building on the imported data, Motul employees add further product data and images. Here, the employees appreciate the simple and efficient data maintenance provided by ANTEROS, which also allows them to associate products with specific vehicles. They also benefit from the fact that ANTEROS integrates a media and translation database alongside the PIM in order to maintain product data, translations, images, documents and videos in a single system. The resulting enhanced data is not only used by Motul, but is also made available to customers, partners and various platforms. To achieve this, data is transferred via ANTEROS interfaces to the CMS used for Motul websites, to Intershop for the Motul online store, and in Excel and TecDoc format for dealer exports. Furthermore, Motul can use ANTEROS to generate print catalogs and data sheets fully integrated and automatically and to use a media portal to simplify the download of images and documents for their partners and customers.

ANTEROS in the Motul IT landscape

International Data Maintenance

Challenges for Motul's International Data Maintenance

If, like Motul, you want to supply the worldwide market with products, you often have to differentiate between global and local products. Therefore, the products in the PIM are structured into different assortments, so-called publications, and translated into different languages. In order to distribute lubricants, Motul must be able to issue additional approvals for the use of the products in specific vehicles, as each lubricant is only suitable and approved for certain vehicles or equipment.

International data maintenance

Which Products are Maintained Where?

As a global company, Motul needs to maintain a clear structure in its product data in order to keep track of large product volumes. Therefore, the maintenance of data was clearly differentiated between global and local products. Global or corporate products are maintained at the headquarters in Paris, while market-specific products are managed locally in the corresponding business units, for example for Germany.

User Roles and Rights in International Data Maintenance

ANTEROS gives the administrator of the application the possibility to divide the users into different groups with different rights. The role assignment determines how much each user is allowed to see, change and delete. Motul has created six different user roles for their international data maintenance:

 
  • PIM Admin
    The administrator of the system is not only responsible for the user administration, but also for the maintenance of the master data structure. They create the category tree and are allowed to create new parameter definitions.
  • Marketing Corporate und BU
    As far as marketing is concerned, Motul distinguishes between two different user groups: one for the company headquarters (Corporate) and one for the country subsidiaries (Business Unit).
    Marketing Corporate users can create categories, images and texts for the globally distributed products in the master language. Users of the Marketing Business Unit role are only allowed to modify their own country assortment with data and images.
 		  
  • Technical Data Manager Corporate und BU
    Motul also differentiates between the corporate and the business unit view for the maintenance of technical data. Corporate defines technical data for the products, including manufacturer, approvals and technical standards. The Business Unit only allows the technical data of the products belonging to the unit to be added.
  • Translator
    The stand-alone role of the translator allows text translations to be carried out flexibly in different departments. With the ANTEROS translation aid, the rights of the translator can be restricted to the extent that only translations for specified languages can be created and other languages and cross-language data is not available for editing.
 

 

Beside the assignment of user roles, the rights of individual users can be further restricted with ANTEROS. For example, it can be specified that not every user may use all products when creating a publication. The rules used for this are much more complex than the initial idea that global data is maintained by headquarters and local data by the relevant business unit. For this purpose, Motul has been managing who is allowed to use which products in SAP at the sales organization for some time. To avoid having to maintain these rules multiple times and to minimize the risk of conflicting data, these rules are transferred from SAP to ANTEROS via an interface and are thus also taken into account in the PIM system.

Data Maintenance of Marketing and Technical Data

Marketing staff maintain marketing texts and images in ANTEROS as marketing data, they group products into categories and enter unique selling points. In some cases, market- and language-specific distinctions are made.

 

Technical data is separated into the two brands MOTUL and MOTULTECH. Furthermore, relations are used to define exactly which product is approved for which vehicle by which manufacturer.  To this end, separate object types for manufacturers, vehicles and releases as well as relations and parameters are defined in ANTEROS. This makes it easy to identify which product has which clearance in Motul's PIM, and also whether it is a clearance from the manufacturer or a recommendation from Motul.

Marketing data maintenance

Workflow to Data Sheet

A special feature of the ANTEROS system by INCONY is the possibility to work with workflows, with which the user can configure their own processes in the PIM system. For this purpose, individual work steps are systematized in workflow states and state transitions and authorizations and actions can be controlled individually. ANTEROS lets users create their own workflows in a graphical editor and transfer them to the PIM system. One of these individual processes, for creating data sheets, looks as follows at Motul:

 
  • 1. New or changed products are imported into ANTEROS with their master data via SAP interface.
  • 2. Data and files are added to the products in ANTEROS by Marketing and Technical Data Managers.
  • 3. Product data is checked by the Technical Data Manager. If they do not find any errors or inaccuracies, they can issue a release.
 		  
  • 4. The ANTEROS.print module automatically generates the technical data sheet and links it as a PDF to the associated product family.
  • 5. Further interfaces transfer the data, images and data sheets of the released product family to the store and the website.
 
All styled for Motul

“With ANTEROS as the PIM technology leader, we can maintain our complex product data across many countries very easily and in a well-structured manner. The responsibilities of the different employees are clearly regulated via user roles, rights and workflows. We save a lot of time with ANTEROS and at the same time have significantly increased data quality and significantly reduced the complaint rate. Exports can be created with little effort, print documents are 100% automated. This means we can reach our customers more quickly with more information, giving us a competitive edge.”

Motul
Mark Grunert,
Head of Marketing at Motul

Use of the PIM Data

Media Portal

Motul built a media portal with the help of ANTEROS.mp, in which Motul employees as well as authorized customers and partners can easily access files. Motul's media portal is a collection of images, generated data sheets and other documents that are available for download. Most notable is the feature that allows images to be downloaded in multiple formats, including “print”, “web-large”, “web-medium” and “web-small”. In addition, files from external systems are also integrated. For example, safety data sheets are integrated via URL.

 

Motul also benefits from the ANTEROS function that allows files to be searched conveniently via the category tree without having to separately sort images or documents into categories. This is because ANTEROS uses the information from the products assigned to the files to do this, and can conduct searches implicitly using this knowledge.

 

Motul also offers an Excel export in their media portal, with which users only receive changed data from changed products and is therefore primarily relevant for dealers as a change service.

Websites and Online Shops

Motul's web pages display a lot of product data and images in multiple languages. All images, texts and translations come exclusively from ANTEROS. For this purpose, ANTEROS was connected to Motul's CMS and the data is transferred to the CMS via ANTEROS REST interface. This interface updates all new and changed data and images nightly.

 

Motul's online store is based on the Intershop store software and is fed with data from SAP and ANTEROS. Data from the ANTEROS PIM system is transferred to Intershop once every evening via the XML interface.

Use of PIM Data

Dealer Exports

Motul currently offer their dealers exports in TecDoc and Excel format and can export this data fully automatically from their ANTEROS PIM system. With the standard TecDoc export from ANTEROS, product data from Motul in the associated TAF format is uploaded to the TecDoc servers. The transferred data is used by workshops and dealers. Some dealers and sales platforms use Excel exports, which Motul themselves can easily adapt to the data requirements of the respective partners via the profile editor in ANTEROS.

Benefits for Motul, their Partners and Customers

Motul use ANTEROS to implement their international maintenance of product data, images and documents, where processes are controlled by workflows, roles and rights. Collaboration via ANTEROS interfaces with multiple source and target systems enables the data maintained in the PIM system to be used for online stores, websites, print catalogs and exports.

Benefits for Motul

  • Maintenance of product data very efficient and simple for employees
  • Steps are guided by workflows in a targeted manner
  • High data quality and, at the same time, significant time savings in data maintenance, since with ANTEROS data only needs to be maintained once in a single location and can still be used multiple times
 

Benefits for Partners and Customers

  • Motul can offer the same data and images for international customers in all countries.
  • The improved data quality leads to more customer satisfaction and fewer complaints as the data has increased in reliability.
  • The time spent by customers is also reduced as they can now more easily access up-to-date data sheets and the images facilitate sales and marketing.
 

Motul's Conclusion on ANTEROS and INCONY

ANTEROS comes with standard functions that make it possible to maintain Motul's complex data model, including manufacturers and releases, without major adjustments. In addition, standard ANTEROS functions allow efficient data maintenance, such as product families, inheritance, default values, the assignment of user roles and rights, and workflows. Finally, Motul benefits from the export options available in ANTEROS, the fully automatic generation of data sheets and catalogs, and the media portal.

 

Motul also valued the competent consulting services provided by the INCONY team during the project, which impressed with a reliable, friendly and service-oriented demeanor.

Maintain Product Data Efficiently in International Companies with the ANTEROS PIM System - Try it out for Yourself!

With INCONY's PIM system, you can distribute data maintenance across international teams, control usage via roles, rights and workflows, and specifically check and improve the quality of your data via your own quality reports and quality gates in the dashboard. The centrally maintained data can be exported to customers and partners in various ways, and existing data and systems can be integrated via flexible interfaces and import formats. In addition, data sheets or catalogs can be generated at the push of a button - even in any excerpts - your customers will be amazed!

 

Has the Motul customer presentation on efficient data maintenance in distributed international teams with ANTEROS convinced you? Then request your free software demo now or find out more about this technology-leading software on our website!

Free demoMore about ANTEROS