BAUER and crossbase - the perfect match

BAUER GmbH develops, produces and sells forklift attachments, environmental protection equipment and recycling and waste containers worldwide. Founded in 1966 by Heinz Dieter Bauer, BAUER GmbH is now one of the leading manufacturers in Europe. Qualified employees and the use of state-of-the-art production technologies guarantee products of the highest safety and quality standards. The DIN EN ISO 9001 quality management system, certified since 1993, ensures consistently high quality "made by BAUER".

Based on the crossbase standard software, a customized PIM and cross-media solution with an interface to the ERP system was implemented for BAUER. Over 12,000 articles including product structure, prices and features are maintained in crossbase.

The product type, which groups products and their variants of the same type, plays an important role in marketing-specific communication. A lot of product information is maintained for the product type or product and passed on to the articles. Certain characteristics are also calculated or linked based on formulas.

Product photos, application photos, icons, drawings, certificates and videos are managed in the integrated image database. The graphics converter automatically generates additional image formats. Enumeration texts are automatically generated from reusable document modules. Translation into other languages is carried out by employees in the respective export departments on the basis of a precisely determined translation requirement using Excel files.

The product types are referenced in marketing-specific product views for the corresponding sales channels so that articles can be used as standard articles in the printed catalogs, on the websites or in the online catalogs for specific brands, countries and target groups.

The print media are database-supported and produced fully automatically with InDesign. This concerns the main catalog in four language variants (DE, EN, FR, NL), each with approx. 200 pages, and the price lists in 27 country variants, each with approx. 100 pages. In addition, price lists are produced for internal use with additional data, e.g. article numbers and purchase prices for dealers. These are published annually and consist of product pages with a modular structure and editorial pages with a free layout. The product pages contain approx. 300 tables and are automatically paginated using flow/mixed frame layout templates. The tables for the main articles are given changing table line background colors; the accessory tables are automatically listed directly below the accessories referenced on the main article.

For data provision to trading partners, the data is prepared in Excel or BMEcat format according to customer specifications and provided with the required image files. Over 40 BMEcat catalogs and over 200 catalogs in Excel format are generated automatically and customer-specifically each year.