Faster, better reporting for Duravit AG

Specifying a sales goal is the easy part. Making it happen — well, that’s something else altogether. 

Duravit AG, the Germany-based manufacturer of ceramic bathroom fittings and furniture, is known throughout the world for the quality of its products. But ambitious growth requires more than a stellar reputation. “End customers buy our products because they love the innovative designs and the quality; but distributors such as wholesalers and e-commerce shops need up-to-date, accurate information about every aspect of our products,” says Christoph Fleig, Lead Data Engineer at Duravit. 

The previous product information management (PIM) system involved too many time-consuming manual processes. As Fleig recalls, “Trying to find the right database tables, storing all the product images, dealing with multiple formats and file types — it was really slowing us down.” 

“This requires speed in the product information management system,” he continues. “We knew that if we were to achieve our ambitious growth targets, we’d have to modernize and automate our PIM.” 

Enter Talend Cloud 

To get the speed they were looking for, Duravit would have to go cloud-first. Thanks to Talend’s cloud-based solution, the company was able to integrate, accelerate, and automate data ETL (extract, transform, load), and speed up the updating process between the existing ERP system and the PIM. “With Talend, we can now efficiently provide detailed and accurate product data to our e-commerce customers and wholesalers,” claims Fleig.

For an even bigger boost to the speed and agility of the PIM system, Duravit partnered with AWS for cloud-based storage, Snowflake for its cloud-based data platform, and Elasticsearch to provide a fast search and analytics engine. “Together, these products have given us a very fast, flexible solution that addresses our immediate use case and can scale as we grow,” Fleig reports. 

Partnering for success 

Without Talend’s world-class support team, migration to the cloud could have been a real headache. But Duravit didn’t have to worry about those challenges. “The move from on-premises systems to the cloud can be complicated, and Talend helped streamline that process for us,” says Fleig. 

Even better, the Talend User Group gives Fleig and the team access to local sessions and conferences. “It is very helpful for us to compare notes with some of the bigger companies that are also using Talend. We get new insights not only into how they solved challenges, but also how they’re using Talend in other use cases and other business processes.” 

Faster reporting for stronger sales 

Today, the modernized PIM system is directly tied to the company’s ability to achieve its defined sales goals. “It used to take a month of manual work to create a report,” Fleig says. “Now it takes a click and an hour. We don't have any manual work to do, and the report is ready with accurate information right away.” 

Talend helps Fleig’s team keep on top of requests from internal product managers and account teams. “Our product managers have a lot of requirements around data quality, and our sales teams want more and better data analysis,” he says. “Today we can address their needs much more quickly and reliably.” 

That’s a welcome upgrade to the company’s data-hungry constituents. “The sales teams are very surprised at how quickly we are now able to provide data for customers, and we can customize the reporting for our various subsidiaries — whether they're in Spain or Poland or the UK. It’s just not a struggle to produce detailed reports anymore. And that translates to stronger sales, because our customers get the information they need, when they need it.” 

Overall, Fleig is impressed by Talend’s ability to automate and accelerate key tasks. “Without Talend, we couldn’t do what we’re currently doing. Talend is critical in helping us achieve our goals.”