Fully supported multi-channel strategy
“Perfion will be the single source of all product information for Harken worldwide. Perfion is a really easy and flexible PIM System. It enables us to produce and update product information easily, allowing Marketing to concentrate on corporate design and branding, Sales to locally produce on-the-fly pricelists, catalogs and flyers with special assortments and prices from Microsoft Dynamics AX.” Rich Gearheart, IT Manager, Harken, Inc.
Harken has a multi-channel strategy where product data is published both in catalogues and websites in more than 10 languages worldwide.
Challenge
Their challenge was they had no central global source for product information. All information was stored locally for each single catalogue and each single website in all the different regions around the world. Therefore it was an almost impossible task to produce new content and keep all existing content up-to-date.
Harken’s ambition was to launch a multi lingual, dynamic and flexible website driven by up-to-date content from “one source of truth for all product information”. The information should launch instantaneously when the content providers produce it, no matter if it is product oriented and written by a product manager or sales oriented and produced by sales and marketing.
All content providers must be able to contribute and publish locally, but in a controlled manner using templates with corporate branding.
Solution & Benefits
With Perfion, Harken has found their single source of truth for all product information and images.
Fully integrated with Harken’s ERP system, Perfion makes it simple to supply the corporate website with product data, marketing text and images. With its easy and high-performance xml-based API, Perfion will furthermore be able to enhance Harken’s website with even more types of information anytime.
Because of the dynamic integration between Perfion and InDesign, Harken can use Perfion to produce their catalogues in all the different languages. Directly inside their InDesign application, Harken is able to access the data and images via an easy-to-use Plug-In. Each time product data, text or an image is changed in Perfion, Harken’s InDesign documents are automatically updated with all the changes.
Management of all the language variations of Harken’s catalogues is handled by Perfion, where several language versions can easily be maintained from the same dialog.
About Harken
Harken, Inc. is a leading manufacturer and marketer of quality sailboat hardware and accessories. Harken’s gear has dominated such events as the America's Cup and Olympics. Their blocks, travelers, furling systems and winches can be found aboard everything from the smallest dinghies to the largest megayachts and cruisers.
Headquartered in Wisconsin, Harken manufactures in the USA and Italy. Its network includes offices in 48 countries with group offices located in Australia, New Zealand, The U.S. and a number of European countries.
