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Customer spotlight story: Fluidra

case study, video

How the agility of inriver's data model became the cornerstone of the multinational manufacturer's growth.

There are over 17 million swimming pools in the world.

In the crystal clear waters of the pool and wellness industry, Fluidra stands as a powerful manufacturing leader, making waves across the global stage. A multi-brand business active in over 47 countries with more than 7,000 employees, Fluidra is listed on the EMA 35 stock trading market.

Fluidra is a global market leader in the designing, manufacturing, and distribution of all components required for the construction, refurbishment, improvement, and maintenance of residential and commercial pools since its creation in 1969. They currently provide products and services to 5 million pools worldwide with an aftermarket business, i.e. refurbishments and maintenance, accounting for 70% of total sales. In France alone they service 1.5 million residential ground pools and 1.2 million in Spain. They needed a robust PIM solution to support their entire product journey from R&D through to after-sales.

Fluidra’s initial product data management database was inflexible and unable to align with the company’s rapid expansion strategies. This hindered cross-functional teams’ ability to collaborate seamlessly on shared product data. Furthermore, since the legacy system lacked integration with ERP systems, employees had no choice but to manage manual data entry, leading to error-prone processes and compliance concerns.

Committed to excellence in both B2B and B2C strategies, Fluidra recognized the pressing need for a shift in managing its extensive and complex product data and technical information across its over 200,000 SKUs.

Fluidra in numbers:

  • 18 brands
  • 200,000 SKUs
  • 47 countries
  • €2.2 billion in global sales
  • €11.5 billion in industry value
  • 7,000 employees
  • 20+ ERP systems

watch: Fluidra in the spotlight

Carolina De Rubertis Albarellos, PIM Manager at Fluidra, and Maria Dolores, B2B Platform Manager at Fluidra discuss the challenges Fluidra faced and how the inriver PIM has transformed the company.

In the video, Carolina and Maria discuss how Fluidra chose the inriver PIM solution for its comprehensive suite of industry-leading solutions for product data governance within a single software platform, including:

  1. The agility of inriver’s data model: Tailored to Fluidra’s expansion and branding strategies, which empowered Fluidra to swiftly launch new e-commerce sites and manage complex product information customized to each market’s needs.
  2. The seamless connection with numerous ERP systems to ensure smooth data flow: The inriver PIM solution cleanly integrates with other platforms and applications within the Fluidra tech stack, automating product management and delivering real-time collaboration across the company.
  3. The reliable, trustworthy, and compliant single source of truth for product data: Readily usable for catalogs and e-commerce webstores, all tailored to address the unique requirements and regulations of diverse markets.
  4. The streamlined management, tracking, and reporting of technical product data and documentation: Provides robust product governance and ensures that Fluidra’s products meet the regulations and technical requirements across the different markets.

The inriver PIM solution has become the foundation of Fluidra’s growth, enabling the business to expand into new markets, reach customers effectively, and establish robust product data governance across the entire product journey. With the inriver PIM solution as their ally, Fluidra not only surmounted previous challenges but also cemented its position as a leader in the pool and wellness industry.

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Fluidra’s implementation journey

Fluidra owns the entire length of the product journey from R&D to maintenance, aftersales and spare parts. More than 220 Fluidra engineers around the world research new ways to make pool and spa components easier to use, easier to install, easy to service, reliable, and have a more sustainable carbon footprint. With 1,400 active patents, the company is a leader in the design and development of connected products that provide deep insights into product performance, development, and analytics.

With so many professional clients counting on quick delivery of products and reliable technical service support, Fluidra needed to revisit what was formerly a highly manual approach to collecting, managing, and distributing product data, and technical information and manuals. Carolina De Rubertis Albarellos, PIM Product Owner at Fluidra discusses their PIM journey with inriver.

the challenge

Fluidra is a brand manufacturer primarily selling to B2B professional customers. Quick and reliable delivery of their products is critical to a positive customer experience. Before implementing the inriver PIM solution, the company was juggling multiple databases enriched by various people from different areas of the business.

We were manually creating each SKU in our previous databases because we didn’t have any connection with any ERP. And PIM has allowed us to reduce manual maintenance by connecting with the different ERPs that we have in the company.

Carolina De Rubertis Albarellos, PIM Product Owner at Fluidra

The focus on innovation within Fluidra’s R&D department means continual product updates and the design of new products. Engineers need quick access to compliance data and certificate guidance to speed up time to market. The production team also needs a more streamlined method for accessing all the necessary product and technical data for each product. In the pool industry, data has to be correct, or nobody goes swimming – or worse yet, pools fail to meet critical safety regulations.

the solution

The inriver PIM solution has given Fluidra a clear overview of all product information across their 160 branch offices and production centers – from R&D through to aftersales, maintenance, and spare parts.

Fluidra customer spotlight story with inriver and Ctac

In addition to using PIM for their global brand websites and B2B e-commerce, their factories now have a repository for inputting technical information necessary for product manuals, technical data sheets, and safety documentation.

The ability to customize products to customer needs has been optimized. And the marketing department has a dedicated PIM team to help them better use the system to ensure consistent handling, distribution, and communication of product information.

Across the company, the inriver PIM has automated data cleaning and removal of duplicate data from the system. All Fluidra employees can now easily download a variety of product information files, including Excel sheets, technical manuals or information, product descriptions and features, and compliance data.

Another key benefit is the ability to digitally search a database of thousands of products and see which ones are pending, which certificates are about to expire, and what products can be sold in which countries due to different compliance regulations. Branch office staff also have an instant view of the spare parts inventory.

After-sales, maintenance, and spare parts data have been integrated directly within the new PIM system so the company also knows exactly what they have in stock and where. Providing customers with reliable and updated product and technical information has also resulted in fewer returns.

The biggest achievements are the speed that PIM has provided us to put the products on the market on our different websites, as well as the good feedback we have from our customers for having a more robust product catalogue in our e-commerce websites.”

Carolina De Rubertis Albarellos, PIM Product Owner at Fluidra

the implementation

Implementation partner Ctac brought in knowledge and many best practices from their previous experience of inriver implementations.

They optimized the ways of working and helped Fluidra roll out global brand websites and B2B e-commerce. The integration with Magento is a good example: a generic, configurable setup of the Magento integrations enabled Fluidra to get every website and country live themselves.

The implementation took one year in total. During that time, Ctac consultants worked closely with the Fluidra implementation and development team to promote synchronization at every stage of the process.

However, the implementation period did not impact Fluidra’s growth ambitions. According to Carolina, Fluidra was able to open new e-commerce channels throughout that time – while the PIM was being developed. This meant the company did not lose any momentum. In fact, Fluidra actually gained momentum during the implementation by opening new lanes of opportunity.

the results

With the inriver implementation complete, Fluidra can experience the benefits of having a flexible data model. As Carolina notes, this flexibility allows the company to configure the data model to match workflow. She says she has also had great feedback about other capabilities such as distribution and syndication.

With innovation at the heart of Fluidra’s corporate values, another result of implementing the inriver PIM is better collaboration between departments. “Before having a common database, everyone worked at their own pace on their own things. Now we can focus our efforts on key priorities as a company – such as coordinating product information and marketing efforts across borders,” she explains. “It also means that with many eyes on the same data, you catch mistakes much faster.”

Having a centralized product information database with additional capabilities has enabled Fluidra to launch eight new stores in eight different countries, and open new e-commerce websites. According to Carolina, none of this would have been possible without the inriver PIM solution.

We can now access product images, technical features, and update manuals much faster and easier – shortening handling times for customer requests for documentation. The inriver team has helped guide us through this process.

Carolina De Rubertis Albarellos, PIM Product Owner at Fluidra

the future

With the aim of onboarding sustainability across business management, Fluidra has developed its second ESG Plan “Responsibility Blueprint 2020-2026” defining the core lines to work on around Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG) issues.

The inriver PIM solution allows the company to track its environmental footprint moving forward. This is one of Fluidra’s objectives once they have completed a company user review of the inriver PIM – making sure everything is in place to ensure long-term use and success across the company.

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