asecos and crossbase - safe is safe

The name asecos stands for safety and environmental protection when handling hazardous substances and flammable liquids. The Gründau-based company's product range extends from fire-resistant safety cabinets and products for handling hazardous substances to extraction systems and tank systems for storing hazardous substances. With its own national subsidiaries in the Netherlands, France, Spain, England and Italy as well as a global sales network of specialist dealers and partners, asecos ensures proximity to the market.

A customized PIM and cross-media solution was implemented for asecos based on the standard crossbase software. Over 15,000 articles with approx. 50 fields and the product hierarchy per article are continuously imported from abas into the PIM via the bidirectional interface and product information is transferred back to abas.

The product relationships are very complex: an article configuration consists of the empty cabinet, the carcass in a specific color and the interior fittings with a selectable equipment package and other equipment accessories. In order to keep the effort for text maintenance as low as possible in view of the complex product logic, even for translations, text modules are maintained and texts are automatically generated according to product group-specific templates. This includes short descriptions, functional texts, equipment texts and product descriptions.

The integrated image database is used to manage and link product photos, application photos, icons, graphics, drawings and diagrams. Particularly noteworthy are the language-specific Illustrator graphics, which are generated fully automatically on the basis of placeholders and text modules. In order to be able to use articles as standard articles in the catalog or in electronic sales channels, these are referenced in marketing-specific product views. The automation of the multilingual, approximately 600-page product catalog is carried out using Adobe InDesign and crossbase.print on the basis of table templates and layout templates for the pages. Another highlight is the automation of the icon bars via tables and product features as well as the variable configuration tables.