Digitization in the Construction Industry

INCONY provides you with support concerning all aspects of digitization that relate to your product data. INCONY's ANTEROS software helps you maintain your product data very efficiently and even internationally (PIM, MAM), and you can even use this data to create professional online stores, online catalogs, apps, catalogs, data sheets, labels, and much more.

Challenges of Digitization for Construction Suppliers

Product data is becoming increasingly important in the age of digitization. It is already being called the new company gold.

However, for many retailers and manufacturers in the construction industry, product data is still scattered across several "islands": basic product data such as item number, name and price are usually located in the ERP system, other data may be prepared for BIM or ETIM, and some other data and images are only found in files for catalogs, online stores or apps. In addition, customers and partners are increasingly requesting product data in different languages and formats. If your product data is still maintained in multiple systems, you need a lot of time to keep the data up-to-date throughout. Furthermore, errors can occur more quickly during data maintenance if, for example, you revise the data on one island, e.g. the catalog, and forget about it on the other islands.

ANTEROS Supports You with Digitization

The ANTEROS software helps you to maintain your product data including BIM structures as well as product images, documents and videos centrally in one system and to edit it there efficiently. In addition, ANTEROS modules allow you to improve your online presence with professional online stores, online catalogs and apps, and to automatically output catalogs, data sheets and price lists. ANTEROS offers a variety of export formats and interfaces, e.g. to your ERP, CAD or PLM system, to allow you to use the data maintained in the PIM in other systems.

ANTEROS supports the digitization of your product data in the construction industry

What Benefits does ANTEROS Offer the Construction Industry?

Internal Benefits

Significant time savings for your employees when searching for product information
Your entire product range is displayed in full with all the associated data, images and documents
Product data can also be maintained across national borders
Simultaneous management of BIM, ETIM and in-house data structures
Quick compilation and preparation of product data for sales and product management inquiries
Catalogs, data sheets, price lists or labels can be generated fully automatically in your company design
Your online presence can be enhanced by ANTEROS online shops, online catalogs and apps

External Benefits

Complete, consistent and up-to-date source of information for your partners and customers
Utilize cross-selling potentials by providing product links for accessories, spare parts, etc.
Fast and flexible preparation of product data in many formats for inquiries from your partners and customers
Providing BIM data for your customers and partners
User-defined excerpt catalogs can be created by you, your partners or customers without much effort
Convenient search options in your online stores allow customers, dealers and partners to reliably find the right product with a variety of product information and optionally an order function
In addition to online shops, apps can be used to offer your customers additional features such as barcode searches

“In just two years we have developed our PIM system, automated price lists for multiple countries, exported data for Arge and DATANORM and developed our web catalogs using ANTEROS. Tremendous! ANTEROS is very easy to use. INCONY's partnership and customer service really impressed me throughout the process.”

Holger Kleine-Tebbe,
Head of Product Data and Ranges at TECE

How ANTEROS can Help you Specifically

Efficient Product Data Maintenance (PIM/PXM)

Your products can be centrally maintained in one system with all important product information, technical characteristics and product experiences, and they can even be related to each other. Several classifications can be maintained simultaneously. This allows you to build a category tree for BIM exchange and at the same time also create a data structure that is adapted to your company's needs.

Translations

Digitization makes it possible for you to further expand your market internationally. However, in order to do this, you need to provide your product information in the various foreign languages. ANTEROS supports you by collecting all texts in one place, the dictionary. This helps you to immediately identify texts that need to be translated and to translate them efficiently online or via Excel.

Generate Print Documents Fully Automatically

ANTEROS features a sophisticated print engine that allows you to create labels, data sheets and even extensive catalogs 100% automatically, even including tables of contents and indexes. You can also generate excerpt catalogs, e.g. for new products or specific target groups or markets, at the push of a button. Layout and structure of the documents will be adapted to your requirements.

Flexible Integration, Imports and Exports

In order to fill your PIM system with data, product information that has already been created can be imported from other systems and in different formats. The enriched data in the PIM can in turn be exported in formats such as ECLASS, XML, CSV and Excel or transferred via interfaces to other systems such as ERP, CAD, store systems and many more.

Quality Management

You can continuously control the quality of your product data by creating test reports, showing, for example, which products have not yet been assigned to a category or where a description for the online stores is missing. These reports are compiled in a clear manner in the dashboard, so that you can quickly identify and specifically improve the corresponding weak points in the data.

Online Shops with Data from PIM and MAM

For already existing online stores you can easily transfer PIM data via an interface with ANTEROS. Furthermore, with ANTEROS you can also set up professional online stores in your company design, which are completely integrated into the PIM structure.

“We can efficiently manage data in ANTEROS for our wide range of products in 24 languages. Our ERP Infor is connected via XML interface and we export data in Arge and BMEcat format for our distributors using standard ANTEROS exports. Our over 1000-page print catalog is generated 100% automatically from ANTEROS, despite its complex layout. INCONY supports us competently and purposefully, contact partners are easily reachable and offer us fantastic support.”

Roland Kreutzmann,
Head of Digital Media & Service at Oventrop

PIM for Efficient, Centralized Product Data Maintenance

A PIM system (PIM = Product Information Management) allows you to centralize maintenance of your product-relevant data, as all the data is combined in a single database. Here, the technology-leading ANTEROS software can work together with third-party systems, such as your ERP or CAD system, to integrate the information stored there. Once this product data has been transferred to the PIM, it can be enriched with additional information, such as marketing texts, translations, images and product links, among other things. When you bring your product information all together in one system, it becomes increasingly important for you both internally and externally. As a central database, the PIM serves as a uniform knowledge base for all your employees. Externally, ANTEROS is used for customer/dealer exports, online stores, catalogs and more. All these features can be adapted to the needs of your industry and your company, the integration of BIM data and the simultaneous maintenance of multiple data structures are particularly noteworthy.

Important PIM functionalities of ANTEROS for suppliers of the construction industry are listed below:

With ANTEROS, you maintain your product data centrally and efficiently. You can create the data model yourself with your own categories and parameters and add to it at any time. In the construction industry, parameters for technical characteristics can become extensive and complex. ANTEROS offers many helpful functions for this, such as calculable parameters, inheritance and overloading of parameters and even structured parameters.
Your product data can be easily prepared for known BIM structures in ANTEROS. Subsequently, it is possible to export it on a regular basis. In the same way, data of this kind can be imported, whereby it can be automatically mapped to your company data structure.
In order not to lose the overview of responsibilities in data maintenance with division of labor, ANTEROS provides you with a way to define and control the process flows via workflows..

When the amount of product data in a PIM system increases, it becomes more difficult to track the data quality. Therefore ANTEROS offers you the possibility to create quality reports and quality levels and to define dependencies so that no step can be forgotten. The results of the checks are clearly summarized in a dashboard, allowing you to improve your data in a targeted manner.
Using interfaces and export formats, you can flexibly export the PIM data for various purposes. In the export process, you can meet the format requirements of your customers and partners and provide the data in e.g. TAF, XML, BMEcat, CSV, Excel, and many more, or even connect third-party systems to your PIM.
You can also transfer data from suppliers if they have structured their data differently. ANTEROS can handle flexible rules that perform an automatic mapping to your company structure.

By the way: The ANTEROS software excels with very intuitive handling thanks to thorough usability tests.

For more information about the features and benefits of PIM systems, please read our customer case study, our PIM blog post or make an appointment for a free online demo.

User reportPIM blog postPIM demo

Professional Online Stores, Online Catalogs, Customer Portals and Apps

Digitization has further changed customers' shopping behavior and the order process. Products are increasingly being searched for and ordered via online stores, online portals and apps. As a result, web solutions like these are attractive market channels for many companies to offer products to a wide audience.

With ANTEROS.web you can build professional online stores, information portals or web catalogs and benefit from the following advantages:

The web solutions are fully integrated with PIM and display the current, released PIM data. You can use the data not only for the web application, but also for print documents, exports, etc.
Comprehensive search functions: In addition to the classic keyword search, ANTEROS offers an advanced search with category and parameter selection. Furthermore, individual product variants can be configured via characteristic data.
You can utilize cross-selling potentials and display product relations to accessories, spare parts, etc. directly on the product.
The integrated product comparison highlights differences in the product data in color.

ANTEROS offers the possibility to display customer-specific prices, volume prices, availabilities and order history for online stores and apps with an ordering function, which makes it easy to re-order old orders.
Registration: You can control access to your online stores by only allowing authorized customers to access the store or individual functions by logging in.
Use an ERP connection to transfer placed orders directly to the ERP system or display availability directly on the product.
The features of the online solutions can, of course, be adapted to your needs and the visual appearance can be adapted to your corporate design.

If you want to learn more about online stores, we recommend our online shop blog, a case study or book a free software demo to see the product for yourself.

User reportOnline shop blog postSoftware demo

Generate Print Documents and Labels 100% Automatically

The technology-leading print engine from ANTEROS provides you with fully automatic generation of print products of any kind, such as catalogs, price lists, data sheets or labels. It does not matter whether the finished documents are to be printed or displayed digitally. In addition to complete catalogs, excerpt catalogs, e.g. for new products or a customer, can be created at will with just a few clicks. You benefit from the following advantages:

Even catalogs, price lists and data sheets with complex structures can be easily generated in ANTEROS via the web-based interface. Thus, foreign language documents can also be generated without any problems and without the need for post-processing in typesetting systems such as InDesign.
In case you do not need a full catalog, ANTEROS offers the possibility to generate new product or country-specific catalogs. In addition, any excerpts can be generated by individually compiling products in an expert search or collective folder.
The generation of your print documents is more cost-effective, faster and more up-to-date.

Catalog content is 100% automated during generation. This applies not only to product pages, but also to entire tables of contents and keyword indexes or to product overviews with aggregated information.
The print engine accesses the same database as the PIM system. This means that product data and images only have to be maintained once centrally and can subsequently be used not only for print products but also for online stores and exports and more.
The appearance of the print documents is specifically adapted to your corporate design.

Example page of the CTA price list generated with ANTEROS

If you would like more information about ANTEROS.print, make an appointment for a free software demo.

In the print blog post you will find tips for professional product catalogs and price lists.

Print blog postOnline demo

Building Information Modeling (BIM)

Building Information Modeling (BIM) is the basis for digitizing the processes of construction. To this end, all relevant building data is digitally recorded, combined and networked as best as possible. This BIM data is then used for optimized planning, execution and management of buildings.

The aim of BIM is to make the construction project transparent and digital along with the many details, such as CAD drawings, installed components and their position in the building.

With the ANTEROS PIM system, you can centrally maintain your product data and also enter BIM-relevant data (such as drawings or certain characteristic data) to the products. From this central database, you can export BIM data for your customers.

How linking PIM and BIM can benefit you is listed below:

All up-to-date and required data is available at any time for all parties involved.
The exchange of information between those involved in planning is much more efficient.
The data can be continuously adapted and processed throughout the entire life cycle of a construction project.
Overall, the productivity of the planning process is increased in terms of costs, deadlines and quality.

Product information is maintained centrally in the PIM and can be exported to BIM-capable data.
All data is always up-to-date and completely stored in one place in the PIM ("single point of truth").
The digitized structure of BIM data sets requirements for the structure, content and availability of product data that can be monitored and fulfilled by a PIM system.
The combination of BIM and PIM ensures high quality, transparency and uniformity of the product data.

For more information on how PIM and BIM work together and helpful tips for efficient building product management, feel free to read our BIM blog post or requestr a free personalizes software demo.

Free demoBIM blog post

“Even the standard version of ANTEROS allows us to edit and maintain highly complex product data. We are always delighted by the solutions that the INCONY team comes up with for us. This shows that INCONY has a lot of experience with customers from technical industries.”

Marco Lombardo,
Head of Business Processes & Digitalisation at MC-Bauchemie

Many Satisfied ANTEROS Customers from the Construction Industry

More customers

User Report on the ANTEROS Software

Benefit from the experience of other companies!

Easy-to-use PIM
(POLOPLAST)

Professional PIM with key exports and innovative print engine

Workflows for PIM and Print (MC-Bauchemie)

Workfow-controlled product data maintenance and data sheet generation

Price lists generated
(TECE)

Maintain data in PIM and create price lists automatically

Software demo of the ANTEROS PIM system
Try it out and see for yourself!

ANTEROS modules meet all the requirements of the construction industry.

More about ANTEROSFree Demo

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