GERBERIT STREAMLINES ITS WORLDWIDE DATA MANAGEMENT

Leading Sanitary Outfitter Uses Stibo Systems For Product Information Management

Hamburg, Germany, 25 April 2012 - Stibo Systems, the Strategic Information Management Technology and Solutions CompanyTM today announced that the Geberit Group, the European market leader in sanitary engineering, would like to further optimize the management of its master data for more than 50 language variants. The STEP master data platform by Stibo Systems gives this global player the opportunity to manage its product information, including relations such as hierarchies and inheritances, processes and workflows. This enables Geberit to expand on its international positioning and reduce its time to market.

For companies in the sanitary industry, an international presence poses a particular obstacle. Nearly every country has its own legal regulations and standards. In addition, cultural differences in consumer tastes and habits in bathroom fittings also differ. The Geberit Group chose the Stibo Systems platform to help simplify the management of more than 26,000 products in approximately 51 language variants. The Stibo Systems technology even allows Geberit to manage product information that is stored in an unstructured format, such as descriptive texts, operating instructions and multimedia data. In addition, Geberit will be able to use this strategic information for local websites, catalogues, brochures and flyers. By partnering with Stibo Systems, the company will also be able to manage product lines and the product lifecycle.

Until now, Geberit"s master data had been maintained in various SAP systems with all of the images in a separate image database. Gallus Römer, Head of Sales & Marketing Applications Corporate Information Services at Geberit, explains: "In SAP the data was predominantly maintained on an article basis. This method didn't allow us to manage any hierarchies or inheritances within article groups or country product ranges. With Stibo Systems we will be able to map the various relations, processes and workflows to the individual master data." Manfred Heckt, Managing Director of Stibo Systems Germany, explains: "These data structures demand extensive consistency checks. In order to achieve fluid data processes, all master data has to be sent from a reliable central source along different channels."

About Geberit Group
Geberit has been working in cross-media publishing for more than 13 years and is one of the leading industrial firms in Switzerland. Continuous business process optimisation has been a firm strategic cornerstone of the company's corporate philosophy for many years. This includes IT processes, which are not only complex because of the company's global presence but also are of strategic importance to the Group. Information on the Geberit Group can be found at www.geberit.com.