A digital revolution

For nearly 100 years Ideal Standard’s Blue Book catalogue was used to specify commercial bathroom assemblies by architects and specifiers. It is one of the pillars of their business and with over 6000 potential product assemblies, expensive to maintain as a printed catalogue. Since 2010 we’ve overseen their transition to a full digital service model revolutionising their business.

View website
140%

Increase in registrations from previous year

68%

Increase in projects specified from previous year

31%

Increase in traffic

The UK’s Largest
plumbing manufacturer

Like many large manufacturing organisations Ideal Standard face constant efficiency challenges. Prior to this project one of the largest ones was that every commercial sale had to be closely managed by a member of their sales team. In addition the complexity of projects meant that it was almost impossible to accurately plot inventory requirements leading to excess stock and inefficient warehousing.

Fully responsive, multi platform

We took the entire product catalogue online building a fully responsive website driven by a rules based bespoke database that matches up groups of products or ‘assemblies’ depending on the commercial application. For example in the healthcare sector there are specific regulations that dictate the type of plumbing products that must be used.

The website integrates with Ideal Standards SAP product database and their Digital Asset Management System opening up a vast library of resources. This means for example that architects can now pull in CAD drawings of products from the website straight into their plans, making it much easier to specify Ideal Standard products.

 

The clever bit!

We recognised that it was important to engage with customers beyond the catalogue, so working closely with Ideal Standard and their customers we designed and built a project specification application.

This allows architects to create and manage multiple projects online. They can drag in products and assemblies directly from the catalogue and quickly build a shopping list of products with a project budget.

This is an online tool that differentiates Ideal Standard from their competitors on user experience and a mechanism for seeing potential projects long before orders are placed.

Delivering real competitive advantage

The Ideal Spec project has signaled a step change for Ideal Standard in how they conduct business with their commercial customers.

  • Products are specified earlier in the procurement process
  • Time savings in processing customer orders
  • Improved view of sales pipeline

The tool significantly reduces the amount of time that architects spend in specifying their projects. The technology greatly increases our ability to meet the needs of our commercial customers and ultimately helps us to sell more products.
- Tony Rheinberg, Group Marketing Manager

Ready to discuss your project? Let’s talk

Greg Mathews

Greg Mathews

Client Services Director

If you fancy a chat about anything digital, feel free to contact Greg on email or give Greg a call on 0114 279 7779.

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