The story of the transformation of the product journey in communication at ASSA ABLOY, a worldwide leader in the security and lock systems, has been both a success and extremely quick in the last few years. Learn how ASSA ABLOY went from traditional product management to a fully digital process.

Just a few years back, ASSA ABLOY, like many other manufac­turers, managed its product information, external communication with customers and resellers in a totally traditional way, working with many Excel worksheets, working with internal and external agencies, with product information stored in a wide variety of locations. Such manual process worked for several years, but as ASSA ABLOY was growing in the UK and internationally, and adding several new brands and subsi­diaries to the group, the quantity of products grew exponentially and eventually managing this product information, became a real challenge. Ensuring that data was valid, making sure that specifications were up-to-date and complete and that no errors slipped into final materials became a real headache.

The critical aspect of quality data

During the pandemic period, a decision was made at ASSA ABLOY to move all possible product data and communication to digital. At this stage it became critical for the group to have quality product data in a centralized manner.

It was equally critical to remove the silos between between online, mobile and print, ensure that product data was standardized and in the highest quality possible and used across the different communication channels for the group.

ASSA ABLOY products are quite technical, the specifications of the products and images used to communicate around the products often change. When this information was managed in separate channels, often managed by separate teams, it was unfortunately common for errors to slip through. With the ultimate goal to centralize and standardize product data as much as possible, it became clear that some efforts were needed to review all product data, to clean up this data and to ensure all needed product data was available centrally.

Centralizing product data into a single source of truth – the Akeneo PIM

In March 2020 ASSA ABLOY started looking for technology to allow them to centralize all their product data, they had an initial look at a few commercial PIM systems available in the market. Very quickly, the Akeneo PIM stood out and became the best choice for the ASSA ABLOY organization.

ASSA ABLOY started the implementation of Akeneo in October  of 2020 and by the end of 2021, they had the bulk of its product data into the Akeneo PIM, ready to be used across channels and by multiple brands in the group.

Implementing the Akeneo PIM took a fair number of efforts, entering valid and up-to-date data and ensuring product data was complete was at times a challenge. This step should never be underestimated by any company going in this direction.

From mobile App to print datasheets

The first project to use product data from the Akeneo PIM was the development and distribution of a mobile App. This new App brought new information and services to customers, as well as to distributors and resellers. It has been a great success for the group.

These used to be created by agencies, requiring many days, sometimes weeks to be ready. Matt decided to search for a more automated method to produce them.

With its product data centralized and available in their Akeneo PIM, it was a natural for ASSA ABLOY to want to generate datasheets driven by Akeneo.  Matt did some research and found the datasheet service from priint Group via the Akeneo App store. It was quite easy to get in contact with the priint team and understand how this could work for ASSA ABLOY. After reviewing a few datasheet layout options, ASSA ABLOY decided to use the datasheet service from the priint Group.

Once the different templates are configured, these are then available directly in Akeneo for the ASSA ABLOY team to generate as often as they need, whenever data is changed in their Akeneo PIM. The datasheets are generated in the Cloud via priint cloud services. The PDF files that are generated are then returned directly to the ASSA ABLOY Akeneo PIM as an Asset in the Akeneo Asset Manager.

To finalize the project, ASSA ABLOY also decided to use the Shared Catalogue module from Akeneo, which adds a self-service portal to the Akeneo server installation. Datasheets are pushed to the Shared Catalogue portal, where ASSA ABLOY resellers and customer can connect to view and download any datasheets required.

A process that is set for the future

The current combination of using the Akeneo PIM to centralize all product data, for every brand of the group, using this data for mobile App, web, ecommerce, print, digital datasheets and more makes this current set-up truly future proof to accompany the ASSA ABLOY group for the challenges they are facing in this highly technological and evolving market. The combination of the Akeneo PIM, the priint cloud services from priint Group, and the quality work performed by the ASSA ABLOY team to enter quality product data in their Akeneo PIM makes this a true success story for the organization.