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+ Growth
  • Expanded global market reach with consistent data
  • Improved customer engagement through enriched content
  • Accelerated product launches across channels
  • Strengthened brand reputation with high-quality information
+ Effiency
  • Centralized data for streamlined management
  • Reduced time-to-market with agile content updates
  • Minimized manual processes with automation
  • Enhanced accuracy with unified product information

"At first glance, we were excited about what was possible - the attribution, inheritance logic and mass processing alone would make a lot of things easier. The user interface was easy to understand and Contentserv's price-performance ratio was also convincing. It was the right decision, also in retrospect. Working with the software works perfectly and we think it's just great! The findability of information has accelerated by 80%."

Markus Trinkl
PIM/MAM-Manager at SONAX GmbH

About SONAX

The SONAX brand stands for the highest quality standards - and has done so since 1950. The company began in 1950 with the extraction of silica and the production of a silver polish. The development of a car polish was the big brand breakthrough in the 1950s. Today, the company covers the needs of many vehicle segments for private customers and professional users: the portfolio includes paint care products, products for manual interior and exterior cleaning of vehicles, car care products for the winter season, for motorhomes and caravans as well as bicycle care products. Special products for commercial vehicle cleaning, for industry and workshops, mechanical car care in car washes as well as cleaning and care products for use in professional vehicle valeting complete the range.

SONAX's core markets are Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The brand is also represented in 110 countries worldwide. With around 400 employees, SONAX GmbH generated a turnover of over 147 million euros in 2023.

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Pain

Beyond spreadsheets: precision in product data management

Like many medium-sized companies, SONAX reached a breaking point with traditional product data management: decades of reliance on Excel, ERP systems, and shared drives no longer served their growing needs. Each new product or update required a slow, manual process across multiple departments, increasing the risk of errors, delays, and inconsistent data across channels. Image files, often in different versions, circulated among employees with no clear indication of which was current. An internal attempt to create a custom PIM system proved too limited, leading SONAX to seek a proven, professional PIM solution. Following a thorough evaluation, they chose Contentserv, supported by implementation partner SDZeCOM, to bring efficiency and precision to their product data management.

However, with a fast-moving ready-to-wear market, the colossal manual entry of different product data (6,000 color references per season, assortment tracking, product feature updates in different languages, etc.) became extremely challenging. Furthermore, primarily using spreadsheets for this purpose was very time-consuming and error-prone. These files quickly became archaic in the context of Lacoste’s digital transformation and they would often contain numerous data entry errors, which resulted in a slow time-to-market that was harmful to sales. Another major challenge involved variable data such as collections, which must be renewed every six months and had to take into account the difference between the Northern and Southern hemispheres.

Therefore Lacoste needed to adopt a tool that would streamline the creation and distribution of its product catalogs on both its merchant and marketplace sites. This made it clear that Product Information Management (PIM) was the right solution to quickly enrich databases, accurately aggregate content, and shorten time-to-market, all while increasing agility and flexibility.

Aim

Precision and efficiency: SONAX centralizes product data for global reach

SONAX aimed to consolidate product data, hazardous substance information, and localization needs into a central, accessible system. Key requirements included real-time search, seamless data exchange with retailers, interfaces with ERP, CMS, and sales platforms, and easy-to-generate product data sheets. With over 200 users onboard, SONAX needed intuitive system performance that required minimal training.

In September 2019, SONAX began working with implementation partner SDZeCOM to design a tailored data model and interface setup, completing a precise data migration by March 2023. Each new product is now created in Contentserv, with manual tasks significantly reduced. SONAX achieved additional milestones in 2023, automating data flow to its company website and supporting Spanish and English sites with future AI translations in mind. Enhanced export interfaces were also implemented for TecDoc, expanding SONAX's reach in key industry platforms.

In addition to these initial objectives, there were two other quantified objectives: the implementation of the PIM solution should make it possible to increase the average value of orders and reduce product returns.

Lacoste evaluated five PIM solutions, and at the end of 2016, they selected Contentserv. Contentserv allows data to be quickly onboarded and adjusted via user-friendly, intuitive interfaces, and for information to be distributed across all sales media. A pioneer in the PIM industry and a leader for 20 years with an international customer portfolio, Contentserv has extensive experience in product information management.

Gain

Efficiency unlocked: Achieving data quality and collaboration

Following a six-month evaluation with SDZeCOM, Contentserv emerged as the top choice for meeting SONAX’s core needs with its exceptional price-performance ratio, user-friendly interface, and flexible data management options.

Now, with Contentserv:

  • All departments collaborate smoothly, creating and distributing product information faster
  • Customer service accesses quality-assured data instantly, reducing delays
  • Images and approvals are managed efficiently with an integrated MAM system
  • Corrections are made centrally and synced across systems instantly

Contentserv has transformed SONAX’s product data management, achieving high data quality, streamlined workflows, and cost-saving efficiencies through future automation.

The Contentserv PIM solution provides great flexibility in data generation, with users managing an impressive amount of data (2,400,000 attributes, 24,000 references, and 172,000 ean/UPC barcodes). Export procedures integrated into the solution speed up the automatic creation and editing of catalogs and web pages, allowing Lacoste to export up to 40,000 items daily. Users can then assemble images, technical attributes, and prices by simply dragging and dropping them onto dynamic models subject to pre-established rules.

Other significant advances include the ease of creating new attributes such as information that allows consumers to refine their choices and maximize their shopping experience. This process used to take several months and now takes only 2 or 3 weeks. Furthermore, as fashion is governed by seasons, it is necessary to reconfigure entire offerings every six months. The Contentserv PIM solution allows Lacoste to maintain the attributes (about 300 per product) of the models that remain on sale, and thus, avoids rebuilding the catalog from scratch.

Why (How) SONAX uses Contentserv

  • PIM to centralize and ensure accurate product data across channels
  • DAM integration for easy access to approved images in the right formats
  • Open Search for instant, quality-assured data access by customer service
  • Automated exports to TecDoc for seamless industry-wide data distribution

However, with a fast-moving ready-to-wear market, the colossal manual entry of different product data (6,000 color references per season, assortment tracking, product feature updates in different languages, etc.) became extremely challenging. Furthermore, primarily using spreadsheets for this purpose was very time-consuming and error-prone. These files quickly became archaic in the context of Lacoste’s digital transformation and they would often contain numerous data entry errors, which resulted in a slow time-to-market that was harmful to sales. Another major challenge involved variable data such as collections, which must be renewed every six months and had to take into account the difference between the Northern and Southern hemispheres.

Therefore Lacoste needed to adopt a tool that would streamline the creation and distribution of its product catalogs on both its merchant and marketplace sites. This made it clear that Product Information Management (PIM) was the right solution to quickly enrich databases, accurately aggregate content, and shorten time-to-market, all while increasing agility and flexibility.

Ready? Here you grow.

Get in touch with one of our Contentserv experts to discover the Product Experience Cloud.