Media Portal for an Efficient Image Search

User Report by Schwaiger - Developers and Manufacturers of Products for Radio, Television and More

Schwaiger develop, manufacture and market receiver and transmission technology products for radio, television and data via satellite, terrestrial and broadband cable, including accessories for telecommunications, audio, video and computers since 1946. Schwaiger has been part of VOXX International Corporation since 2009 and serves a wide variety of sales regions and channels within Europe with more than 150 employees.

Implementation of ANTEROS at Schwaiger - a Brief Overview

Schwaiger uses ANTEROS in all areas of data maintenance and output. Thus, data sheets and print catalogs can be generated in an optimized way at the push of a button and the online store is always kept up to date via connector. Schwaiger also decided to use the ANTEROS media portal due to the fact that the departments were devoting more and more time to searching out product images for partners, distributors, publishers, etc. and converting them into the desired formats.

Use of ANTEROS at Schwaiger
Schwaiger use ANTEROS for central data maintenance of products, images and documents, for translation into 6 foreign languages, have interfaces to their ERP and online store, generate data sheets and catalogs 100% automatically and offer their partners images and documents for easy download in the media portal.

Reasons for the Media Portal

Schwaiger had previously stored images and documents on internal drives for their own employees. In addition, for web and print purposes, the images were prepared manually in both RGB and CMYK color spaces. This meant a lot of image conversion work. Moreover, this meant that the same images were stored in the drives more than once, which made searching for images more time-consuming, and mistakes were bound to happen if not all variants of the image were changed when one version was modified.

 

The folder structure that had been maintained on the drive was then transferred 1:1 to an external web server, where there was no search function and you had to click through individual folders in search of an image. In order to grant interested parties access to this web server, they had to install an FTP program beforehand, which not only cost time, but was also not permitted with everyone.

Requirements for the New ANTEROS Media Portal

Before Schwaiger began implementing the project with INCONY, they set the following expectations for the ANTEROS-based media portal.

 

 

In contrast to how images were previously stored in FTP folders, the new portal was to work for all media requests and, above all, be simple to use, allowing both major customers and the press to search for images quickly and easily and download them in the appropriate format. For this purpose, all relevant files needed to be maintained in a central location, and access and user management became essential, for example, to regulate which images the press could see and use. In addition, this image material should easily meet the requirements of different media (web, print, ...). For this purpose, optimal search functions were to be created, for example, to search for product images according to product characteristics such as EAN, article number or product category. Finally, the portal was to be accessible to users 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.)

 

All of these requirements were met by their new ANTEROS media portal.

ANTEROS media portal created for Schwaiger

“With the ANTEROS media portal, sales and partners can independently search for and download images with just a few clicks. To do this, the images do not have to be specially tagged with categories or item numbers; ANTEROS pulls this data from our PIM product data. This saves us a lot of work and we can specifically specify who should see which images.”

Schwaiger
Jana Schenker, Schwaiger

Elements and Features in the ANTEROS Media Portal

Registration and Access to the Portal

After a one-time registration, authorized partners and employees have full access to the portal files relevant to them. This allows them to search for and download images at any time and eliminates the need for lengthy support from Schwaiger. The administration of users, including, for example, blocking and unlocking them, is carried out solely by Schwaiger employees.

User Management

Users of the media portal are managed in the ANTEROS PIM system, just like the product data, so that all data maintenance is handled in one central location. Consequently, the user data entered during registration is stored in the PIM directly and can be maintained or even expanded here by Schwaiger employees. They can also block and unblock user access via the "user status" attribute. In addition to completely blocking a user, they can also assign rights only to specific product categories, so that the user can only access these and no other categories.

User management for Schwaiger in ANTEROS

Variations of the Image Search

Schwaiger's media portal provides various options when searching for a specific image.

 

 
  • Image search via simple category browsing
    Similar to what you are used to from online stores, you can also narrow down your search step by step from the main categories to subcategories etc. in the media portal via a category tree. The user can directly see the images or documents that are assigned to the respective selected category. It should be emphasized that Schwaiger does not have to sort the images or documents into the search trees, but that the assignment is already known to ANTEROS via Schwaiger's PIM data: if you assign an image/document to a product and a category to the product, then the media portal can use this information network and the user can restrict the images via product categories. This saves Schwaiger an enormous amount of time. Other media databases still require keywording or categorizing the images for this purpose, which is completely eliminated by the PIM data in ANTEROS.
 		  
  • Image search via search term
    Perhaps the most classic type of search is that the user enters a search term and then receives a list of all the images associated with the search term. Schwaiger can also benefit from their PIM data and do not have to assign keywords to the images for the media portal. Still, users of the Schwaiger media portal can search for the images using product attributes, such as item number or EAN.
  • Image search via advanced search
    The ANTEROS-based media portal additionally offers the possibility to limit the list of images by different filters, such as image type or resolution.
 

Easy Download

If the user wants to download a single image from the portal, different sizes can be selected to meet each user's needs. The options are named in such a way that they can be understood by those who are not graphic designers: 1) Small image - for Internet 2) Large image - for Internet, 3) Small image - for print media, 4) Large image - for print media.
It should be emphasized here that the files are saved with the article number and additional EAN code during download.

Image download from Schwaiger

Collection Folder

Multiple images can be added to the folder one after the other by clicking on the collection folder icon and can thus be collected and later downloaded in bundled form. The media portal uses a self-explanatory system and symbols to make things as easy as possible for the user. The images contained in the collection folder itself are displayed clearly and with all the important details, and the user then has the option of preparing all the images in the folder for download, thereby downloading a large volume of data with just one click. In addition, images can be removed from the collection folder again and the number of images in the collection folder is displayed on the media portal interface.

Online Seminar: Product Information Management (PIM)

As a result of digitization, product data is becoming increasingly important. Drive growth through high-quality product data. PIM software can help you maintain product data significantly more efficiently, achieve high data quality, and output the centrally maintained data to other channels (print, web, app, and exports).

Register free

Advantages for Customers and for Schwaiger

Advantages for Customers

Customers using Schwaiger's ANTEROS-based media portal save significant time through convenient and, above all, fast searches for images via the article number and EAN code. In addition, the collection folder and the selection options for the various sizes make the download process much easier. Finally, the new appealing design conveys a positive image to the customer.

Advantages for Schwaiger

Schwaiger see the reduction of their own workload as a crucial factor, as all images are now only maintained once centrally in ANTEROS. No additional categorization or keywording of the images is necessary, as this is implicitly derived by ANTEROS from the associated product, saving them a lot of time when it cones to maintaining the data. 

The Media Database can be Used Independently or Integrated with the PIM Module to Link Products with Product Images

 

If you use the integrated PIM and MAM modules of ANTEROS, then you can automatically search for the images, videos and documents by category without having to store your own keywords or categories for the files. A clear efficiency advantage over other image database systems!

Use ANTEROS for efficient management of images, videos and documents in one central place.

Free demo