Intro

The VTH Verband Technischer Handel e.V. is a central partner for the industry that actively supports its members in the digital transformation.

By acting with foresight and developing concrete, implementable strategies, the VTH helps its members to master the challenges of digitalization. The association’s innovative collaboration with entitys.io is unique and enables it to provide its members with specific tools.

One result of this cooperation is the VTH eData pool, which has been successfully established on the market.

The Challenge

Between digitalization and cost pressure: technical trade in transition

Advancing digitalization, the increasing internationalization of markets and structural changes in the industry are putting pressure on technical retailers to reduce their overheads and simultaneously digitalize business processes across companies.

The industry is increasingly demanding specific description and output formats, which also affects the quality of product information.

Ensuring high data quality and the efficient management of this information posed a considerable challenge.

Solution

VTH eData Pool: A central platform for high-quality product master data

In order to support VTH members in meeting this challenge, IFCC GmbH (former company name) developed IFCC.DataManager, a comprehensive MDM application that is specially tailored to the needs of the technical trade. The VTH-eData-Pool, a sharing platform for the central provision of product master data, is a key component of this modular system.

Using the VTH eData Pool gives dealers and manufacturers direct access to up-to-date, high-quality product master data. Central data management not only ensures a significant increase in efficiency, but also enables noticeable cost savings in master data management for all participants.

Results

With the VTH eData pool, participants benefit from classified master data that can be transferred to platforms and internal applications such as ERP systems and online stores without additional processing.

This has reduced the manual effort required for data preparation by an average of 80%, while at the same time significantly increasing the flexibility of data processing.

This enables VTH members to serve their customers quickly and individually and to position themselves successfully in the digital market environment.