Brady GmbH, Seton Division - Development print and web publishing database
Ralph Uhl,
Media Manager at SETON
Increasing cost pressure and the request of making better use of the existing resources - these were the compelling reasons for Seton in 2002 to create a database combining the enterprise resource planning system, the catalogue production and the online shop.
Up to that point, every modification that occurred during the production process of a new catalogue had to be added both in the intra-system and in the online shop, which meant a huge expense, three times the work-load and a large potential error source.
At that time, we worked intensively on this subject, because we wanted to find out which kind of database could meet our requirements.
Despite of our detailed research, we could only find solutions which were not optimised for catalogue production.
During these studies, we were already in contact with Libro (Jouve Germany today) and Libro came to us with the topic of “catalogue database creation”.
It quickly emerged that Libro, with its know-how in catalogue production, could provide us with just the solution we were looking for.
After about six months of intensive collaboration, we managed to combine all the data into a single database.
The first production of the catalogue from the database was very exciting. It worked out very well, and only small improvements were found to be necessary.
Even the transmission to our internal system and our online shop was not problematic.
Since then, we have been producing all our catalogues from the database, and we are most satisfied. Our modifications are entered only once in the database, and then transferred directly all media – now it is no longer necessary to do it three times.
The decision for the database solution was the right one. Had we not decided to do so, today we would have great difficulties in keeping pace with the increasing cost pressure.
In conclusion, an example showing the effectiveness of the database:
Previously, we required about 2 months to make all the alterations in the online shop. Today, verification controls only take 50% of the time.
