Customer portal for automated processing of production files

DUO Display is a company specializing in the production of stands and large format printing, particularly for signage. As an industrialist, the added value of DUO Display is to offer modular, durable stands, whose visuals can be renewed. The customer will be able to replace the packaging he will use in the first place, as his product range or marketing message evolves. DUO Display only sells through a network of certified resellers and is not directly involved with the end customer who uses the stand. The company operates in broad geographical areas in Europe, North Africa, Canada, and the United States.

Business Needs

As part of its digital transformation, DUO Display was looking for a customer portal solution for managing and monitoring production. Entirely dedicated to its customers, the Platform considers the characteristics of large format production. Indeed, this format is conditioned not only by the size of the visuals but also by specific control phases related to the specificity of sublimation printing.

This specificity allowing the customer to renew the dressing of the stand according to his needs, quickly generated production issues, especially regarding the processing of the file that must be printed after being sent and approved by customers.

In a lack of a Marketing Production Platform, DUO Display was subject to very time-consuming processes, especially in terms of the integration of visuals intended to dress these stands.

Pimcore Solution

Faced with this context, we deployed our Production Portal module, resulting from the integration of Pimcore as an MDM and the production automation engine DALIM TWIST. At this point, Pimcore's capabilities are implemented to handle all the visuals that make up a processed batch. When an order is done by a reseller, SAP (DUO Display’s ERP) automatically sends it to the XPO Center (DUO Display’s Portal). This will be accompanied by a sum of information relating to the end customer, the technical information, the delivery, the products ordered, or the contributors to this project. Indeed, a project can have several stakeholders. For example, the reseller places the order, the graphic designer delivers the visual and the valid customer. All project stakeholders can jointly access the DUO Display Platform to manage and monitor the project in question. One of the special business functions is BAT (Ready To Printing - Bon à Tirer), applied here to large format production. The integration between Pimcore's Motorized Production Portal and DALIM TWIST has revealed a feature that allows the visualization of the dressed stand, in collaboration with the customer, combined with visual samples to validate the compliance of the visual. This way of working makes it possible to combine large format visual constraints and online validation through a specific and adapted user experience.

We have created a Pimcore web front dedicated to the use of DUO Display and its resellers. The challenge was to offer a user experience for professionals and focused on visual management, production feeds, and print-to-print automation, all in a collaborative way.

Implemented in 2014, the Platform has continued to evolve. First, at the production level of the DALIM TWIST engine to process more and more files, in correlation with the increase in the number of files to be produced ... But also by expanding the functionalities of the Portal, to respond to changes in the range of products, or to improve the management and monitoring of production.

DUO Display is now planning a new phase of evolution for the XPO center to expand the business functions offered to its customers and employees. After using Pimcore as the engine of the Production Platform, it will also be used as a PIM for the promotion of the product range on the website but also via the catalogs produced by DUO Display.

Thus, all the capabilities of Pimcore were exploited throughout the project, with the migration of Pimcore 4 to Pimcore 5. Associated with a CP3S infrastructure, this migration to Pimcore 5 was essential to have all the new features of the framework. Pimcore 5 based on Symfony 3 and the Pimcore editor to flesh out the functional scope of the application.

In addition, we have implemented the new features enabled by Pimcore's workflows, one of the solution's functionalities, associated with an evolution of the web front which is now fed with REACT components. This new interface offers a powerful level of responsiveness and performance, with extremely fast search functionality. Each production file can be visualized, automatically or manually, and thus have essential information for the project, such as the status or critical dates, the visual to download, etc.

Business Results

Since the implementation of this Platform, the file processing automation engine has seen its productivity be multiplied to absorb more and more orders.

DUO Display in numbers: