Governed assets, smooth processes, solid brand. This is FITT

It all started when

In 2019, the global scale and relentless growth of FITT made the opportunities for development of what had hitherto been digital asset management increasingly evident.

The search for the most up-to-date version of a piece of content yielded slow and uncertain outcomes, as thousands of pieces of content were scattered among the various divisions and named without shared rules.

As a consequence, sharing assets to B2B partners and publishing them on online sales channels was cumbersome, also due to the continuous manual updating of the product catalogue.

An environment prone to frequent delays and manual errors, as well as the risk of a weakened brand image, due to an unstructured digital asset management approach.

Thus, the Group is looking for a digital platform to streamline the teams’ operations, giving them control of any digital asset:

Why THRON?

• the possibility of defining a taxonomy, a single language for managing assets, shared by each division
• the certainty of accessing the most up-to-date version of assets and data
• the rapid and instantaneous sharing of all content
• the automatic optimisation of quality and size of an image according to the channel
• direct delivery that updates each web channel in real time.

A single secure and integrable platform

“The adoption of DAM was the first step that will be followed by that of PIM; all with the aim of centralising information heritage, strictly in a single platform”.

Cristiano SimonettoChief Information Officer

The management of the FITT Group’s information systems is based on a multidimensional approach, which acts in respect and appreciation of the Group’s historicity, the depth and breadth of the catalogue, the specificities of the business units (Garden, Building and Industrial) and the foreign divisions.

In particular, the digitisation of the Digital Asset Management flow – as will soon be the case for the Product Information Management flow – was gradual.

The implementation of THRON was started in the marketing area (main producer of images, videos and catalogues), and was then extended to the Customer Service (keeper of relations with our commercial partners) and R&D (author of data sheets) teams. THRON’s security and integrability have thrown the ‘IT’ doors wide open for widespread governance across all the Group’s departments.

One language for the whole Group

“True silos of content and information had formed within each team, inaccessible to the rest of the group without the manual intervention of those who had created them”.

Matteo de FranceschiDigital Project Manager

At FITT, digital assets and product data express the ability to flow water and air from thousands of civil, professional and industrial solutions to the world.

Website, catalogues and brochures for retail, e-commerce and B2B and B2C marketplace. Whatever the destination, photos, videos and datasheets must be found, shared and distributed in an agile manner.

The extraordinary complexity of divisions, languages and continents – as well as an assortment subject to high rotation and updates – makes it indispensable to control the information assets from a single digital reference point.

Before THRON, FITT’s content was named without shared logic and resided within digital spaces accessible only by members of a team or part of a team.

“To find an asset, you had to do two things: ask the right person and wait for them to find it. With the huge and time-consuming wastage that this entailed”.

From this realisation came – in Matteo and his team – the spark to digitally innovate digital asset management with a digital ecosystem approach.

“As FITT has been developing solutions for the transport of fluids and gases for over 50 years, so THRON enables the circulation of media streams”.

Sofia RossatoCustomer Care Specialist & Online Sales Assistant

According to Sofia Rossato, a support figure to Matteo in the digitisation of the Group, there are three features of THRON that have contributed to the success of the digital project.

“The naming convention, taxonomies based on product categories and approval workflows were three strategic elements, because they introduced working methods shared by everyone.

In other words, FITT now has a common vocabulary and rules with which to name, classify and approve content.

With THRON PLATFORM Matteo and Sofia have:

• broken down information silos within which lurked content useful to all
• enabled on-the-fly access to data and assets, organised in structured spaces with a unique taxonomy
• eliminated the time spent by marketing and R&D to approve and share content.

The Brand gains in solidity

“With THRON I am confident that each of the more than 30,000 digital assets in circulation best represents FITT’s brand identity”.

Mario SartoriBrand Manager Building Division

Before THRON, to find a digital asset you needed to know who had created it, send them an email or chat message and hope there were no more up-to-date versions around.

A context that – as you moved further away from headquarters – slowed down workflows with partners and favoured the use of content that was misaligned with brand choices, at the risk of jeopardising consistency.

“Until yesterday it took up to 60 minutes to access a piece of content: today it takes only 5 minutes“.

With THRON PLATFORM Mario and his colleagues can rely:

• on re-use: the most up-to-date assets are organised in folders that are always shared and accessible
• on a centralised, agile and constant flow of content to and from the outside world
• on global divisions, B2C channels and B2B partners expressing the brand consistently.

Marketplace updated in real time

“A revolution that is as simple as it is powerful: product sheets are finally updated automatically and in real time”.

Eleonora SartoriOnline Sales & Customer Care Assistant

Hundreds of products, subject to continuous updates.

Before THRON, Eleonora would log into the back-end of each marketplace and upload digital assets of new products and those to be updated by hand. A monotonous and time-consuming task.

With the introduction of the single platform, media content is centralised and each is published and updated in real time in any channel.

THRON’s delivery, in fact, generates a unique link and – once the asset is updated in the platform – you can always be sure that the latest asset is distributed to each channel automatically.

“All I have to do is upload the new version of the visual to the platform and that’s it: the cards for that product update on all the marketplaces where it is present“.

With THRON Digital Assets, Eleonora has:

• recovered the time she previously spent on pure operations
• automated the delivery of digital assets from an omnichannel perspective.

Total control of each digital assets

“THRON’s real-time editor was a breakthrough: attributes such as image quality and size are dynamically optimised without endless manual conversion”.

Carlo BuginiChef de Projets Digital – FITT MC SAM

Retrieving a render, a set shot or a still life of a specific product – a seemingly trivial task that was, however, time-consuming for Carlo.

For him, who is responsible for updating product databases and communicating with B2B partners, THRON was instrumental in reducing the task.

In particular, the automatic association between a single product code (and its associated data) and all the multimedia content representing it has been invaluable.

“I simply enter the SKU code into the platform and retrieve all the multimedia content representing it. In addition, THRON’s Real Time Editor automatically optimises the attributes of each file depending on whether it is intended for printed catalogues or e-commerce“.

“The turnover and experience of our B2B customers also depend on the speed of sharing product sheets”.

Laetitia HartogProduct Manager Watering System – FITT France S.A.S.

There are over 800 product SKUs in the Munich division alone, which undergo daily data and digital asset reviews, depicting the item while in use or within the packaging in which it is sold.

These assets are essential to the work of FITT’s B2B customers, who flood the Customer Service team with requests for specific images and information, which in turn bounce back to Laetitia.

It was exhausting manual work and subject to misalignment, especially considering the very high variability of the catalogue, in terms of new entries, releases and updates.

“Before THRON we used e-mail and WeTransfer to share worksheets made with Word or Power Point. Today, product sheets in PDF – destined for the digital or physical stores of B2B customers – are automatically populated based on the product codes we enter into them“.

With THRON PLATFORM Carlo and Laetitia have:

• made the conversions of jpeg, webp and png into different formats, qualities and sizes automatic
• automated the enrichment of product sheets for B2B and B2C channels
• accelerated external sharing, improving the B2B stakeholder experience.

A customer experience-oriented IT stack

And now the next destination is the DAM+PIM dialogue.

“The adoption of THRON Digital Assets was only the first step towards building the Group’s digital ecosystem. Soon we will enrich it with THRON PIM, which will enable a continuous data flow from the SAP ERP and a constant and integrated update of websites, e-commerce, marketplaces and catalogues“.

Thus, Matteo de Franceschi, coordinator of a project whose ultimate goal is the continuous improvement of the customer experience: internal, B2B and B2C.