STRASSER Steine digiSTONE

dcupl as Instant PIM and guarantor for Fast Time-to-Market

With digiSTONE, dcupl's partner Netural has developed a digital platform for employees of kitchen studios, furniture stores and joineries who order natural stone kitchen worktops from STRASSER Steine - the market leader in Central Europe - on a daily basis. The process is as simple as ordering in a webshop and saves STRASSER employees valuable time when taking orders.

The Initial Challenge

STRASSER Steine, the leading supplier of natural stone kitchen worktops for kitchens, has recorded very dynamic sales growth in recent years thanks to its product innovations. In order to cope with this impressive growth, the company has invested in production capacity. The tense situation on the labour market has now also led the company to invest in digitalisation and adjustments to order management in order to be able to support growth in this area too. The dcupl partner Netural supported STRASSER Steine in the reorganisation of this process and the acceptance and processing of orders with the help of a modern digital service.

The challenge was to create an intuitive workflow for employees of kitchen studios, furniture stores and joineries for the order creation process for the sometimes complex and multi-variant orders. In the past, these orders were processed in the form of e-mails, PDF forms or telephone calls. Any ambiguities or missing information often led to queries, which in turn caused longer processing times.

The three main factors that illustrate the need for a digital transformation of the ordering process at STRASSER Steine are closely linked to the company's growth and the mix of analogue and digital processes.

• Diverse input formats: The traditional ordering process allowed for different formats and channels, resulting in numerous email correspondences and conversations. This lack of standardisation often resulted in invalid product specifications and numerous queries.
• Manual data entry: Orders had to be manually entered into the ERP system by office staff - a process that was error-prone and time-consuming due to varying order qualities.
• Lack of automation: Automated notification and querying of the order status was not possible, which meant frequent queries and unnecessary effort for both the customer and STRASSER Steine.

The Solution

Netural, dcupl partner and specialist for digital platforms and eBusiness solutions, has designed and implemented a digital ordering process for kitchen worktops that is optimised for users with its user-centred approach. In digiSTONE, as the new dealer platform is called, users are guided through a multi-stage process to enter all information and data relevant to the production of STRASSER stone in the application masks. The intelligent user guidance ensures that all required entries are made and that no incorrect entries are made.

Dealers can choose from more than 30,000 sinks, hobs and extractor fan, which are installed in the respective kitchen worktop.

With the help of dcupl, the product range of STRASSER Steine was made available in the application in the form of a digital product catalogue in the shortest possible time. The intelligent search and filter logic of dcupl ensures that users only select and configure kitchen worktops and properties that can be produced. Similarly, suitable services from STRASSER Steine can be booked during the ordering process.

Frontend First and Dual Speed come into their own here.

As the relationships between products and services were not yet mapped in the ERP at the time of development, they were quickly maintained in Excel and easily integrated into the overall data model using dcupl. In addition to dynamic APIs and services, dcupl can also integrate static data such as Excel or CSV files and Google Spreadsheets as a data resource for business applications. If no system yet exists for certain data, spreadsheets are ideal as uncomplicated maintenance interfaces.

As soon as systems, databases and interfaces are available for maintenance and delivery, dcupl makes it easy to switch from static integration to dynamic, interface-based integration.

All orders are now exchanged dynamically between the dealer platform and the ERP. As a result, statuses are always kept up to date and data and information on kitchen worktops flow smoothly into the production and logistics process. This automated process replaces years of manual transmission of written orders and relieves the burden on STRASSER Steine employees enormously, just as it allows dealers to provide their customers with reliable information on production and delivery status.

In addition, the new, digital mapping of the ordering process naturally provides a great deal of convenience, both for dealers and for STRASSER Steine:

• When ordering, digiSTONE calculates delivery times in real time depending on delivery addresses.
• In the order overview, users can keep an eye on the status of orders and are informed of any changes.
• If production-relevant data is missing, notifications are sent.

All without media discontinuity, much faster and in a role-specific overview of all orders.

The Impact

With digiSTONE, STRASSER Steine has developed a platform together with Netural that significantly improves the service for dealers, demonstrably reduces order processing time and increases the quality of order entry. The company is thus equipped for the future in terms of order acceptance and processing and can continue on its growth path.

dcupl is used in the project as a PIM that brings together all product information relevant to digiSTONE without storing it redundantly and creating unnecessary complexity in data management. With dcupl, all data for the development of the digiSTONE retailer platform could be made available within a few days - and a very ambitious schedule could be met.

The advantages of development with dcupl lie on the one hand in the speed of development and the bridging of systemically unmapped databases (dual speed), and on the other hand in the development tools and the dcupl Console. This offers services for data provision, analysis, modelling, etc. and significantly accelerates the development process.

The time-to-value of dcupl is minimal and the added value in application development is immediately noticeable and measurable at the start of the project.