Managing a Global PIM/DAM/PRINT Platform for the Saint-Gobain Group
Stéphane Gaudelette
Since 2017, Saint-Gobain has been using priint:suite as a global print automation platform, allowing the group to propose to their different business units , countries and brands, part of the group to automate different types of print materials.
Saint-Gobain today produces three types of publications with priint:suite:
- Product datasheets, which allows them to explain all the technical specifications of their products
- System descriptions, somewhat of a compilation of datasheets that allows them to explain that particular products are part of walls, insulation etc.
- Product catalogs (varying from 50 and 300 pages) distributed to clients and resellers of Saint-Gobain products
This is used for all types of products manufactured and distributed by Saint-Gobain, whether it is insulation drywall panels, cements, or other types of products.
“It’s my first participation to priint:day and I am very happy to be here and to be part of this event. It’s very interesting to meet people from other companies and other industries also involved in product management and print automation. It’s quite interesting to exchange ideas and tips on how to improve our communication in 2025 and beyond.”
Stéphane Gaudelette
It is somewhat complex to identify how many pages exactly are created via the priint:suite because some customers (brands, countries, etc.) have the capability to generate their own pages and publications autonomously. That said, it is estimated that between 12,000 and 15,000 pages are generated per year via the platform.
To achieve the goal of effectively proposing a global publishing platform, Saint-Gobain decided to implement, with the help of the priint group team, a global core print project. This core project is a project zero, a default project to be used by all brands and all countries. All new requests must be implemented in the core project, therefore making sure that all changes are available to all other brands and business units.
Page templates created in Adobe InDesign tend to be created centrally, by the design team located in Paris, France. Countries and brands have some liberties in requesting some custom design choices, but these changes must also fit into the company’s global communication strategies. This also means that specific country requests may at times be refused if they do not match the global communication objectives.
Product data at Saint-Gobain is managed today with STIBO STEP; this is a recent choice for the group. In the past, Saint-Gobain used the Riversand PIM (from 2016 to 2022), then migrated their product data to STIBO in 2022 as they wanted to modernize and simplify their product information management solution. Something interesting to note with their PIM migration project: One of the strong prerequisites was to ensure that priint:suite should be compatible with their new PIM and that the print project should be easily migrated.
Saint-Gobain went through a rather long complex RFI/RFP PIM selection phase, at which time the priint team was often requested to ensure that priint:suite and the print project could be migrated to the different PIM systems.
The STIBO STEP system allows Saint-Gobain to manage all product information, including graphics, schematics, tables, pictograms and everything used on the web and print publications. The product teams at Saint-Gobain are responsible daily to not only create new products, but to also enrich existing products with new data. All this data is streamlined and cleaned up to be made available to the priint:suite solution.
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