Commercial vehicle specialist chooses Stibo Systems’ STEP master data management platform

Christian Winkler GmbH based in Stuttgart, has chosen Stibo Systems’ STEP product information management platform (PIM) to centrally master its product data. STEP will support the process simplifying and improving the data quality.

Winkler aims to grow its position as the leading supplier across all its regions by giving customers individual, consistent and fast access to product information. The company offers over 100,000 products including axis, brakes, chassis, electrical, building, motor, tank and hydraulic workshop needs and much more. Using various special catalogs and a web store, Winkler is able to target different customers direct. Each of their catalogs includes several hundred pages and will appear in six languages, including French, Czech and Polish.

Historically Winker stored its product master data in their ERP system, which resulted in maintenance of the data being very time consuming, Winker knew they had to find a better solution. After a selection process with multiple vendors, they chose STEP by Stibo Systems. Bjorn Berger, project manager at Winkler, says: "We have a very complex data model. This is one of Stibo Systems’ core strengths, understanding and supporting our data model, as well as having great powers in the multilingual catalog production."

Product master data can be efficiently captured, edited, enriched, and distributed in a variety of channels both off and online. With STEP there is a better overview of all their product data, allowing Winker to optimize their various business processes. With STEP Winkler will launch its central product database, streamlining and improving the data quality.

STEP will be the basis for supporting various catalog productions as well as supporting their online ordering system and internal electronic catalog. The first catalog produced with STEP will be released next Spring. The company expects significant time savings, since data management and catalog production will now be integrated into one system. Winkler will use the Adobe InDesign plug-in STEP n' design and the new STEP Autopage module to automatically create their catalogs. Large amounts of structured data can be incorporated into a catalog quickly and efficiently. The PIM database will feed the new online store that is planned for next year. To better meet their customer requirements, there are also plans to use STEP to produce non-traditional component lead catalogs, but for brochures that will focus on a particular product, i.e. a truck and all the parts for that particular product.

"Stibo Systems’ STEP solution has equipped us with the ability to respond quickly to our changing and ever expanding customer and market needs. Our reputation as the best commercial vehicle parts distributor will continue to grow”, says Berger. Manfred Heckt, Managing Director of Stibo Systems, Germany, explains: "A new customer like Winkler shows that many processes in the automotive industry can be made even simpler. STEP improves both internal and external processes, so that companies can improve their master data to support their business goals."

About Stibo Systems
Stibo Systems helps companies of all sizes manage master data to improve time to market, enhance partner collaboration, create efficiencies throughout their information supply chain and comply with complex regulatory requirements by providing software solutions to gather, manage, publish and share product information and digital assets. With global operations in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Denmark, India and Singapore, it is part of the privately held Stibo A/S group of companies.

Stibo Systems’ customers include GE, Sony, Siemens, Fujitsu, Sears, Harbor Freight Tools, Premier Farnell, Millipore, Conrad Electronic, RS Components, MSC Industrial Supply Company, Patterson Companies, Thomas Cook, Henry Schein, Figleaves.com and many others.