Category: ADOPT THE SINGLE SOURCE OF TRUTH

SAP Hybris

EKR allows to complete SAP Hybris with specific components for paper disclosure. The main tools to do this are the EKR Knowledge Base and EKR Selector

When a company enters SAP Hybris, it realizes very quickly that it is necessary to complete the application coverage given natively by SAP Hybris to allow marketing departments to obtain the set of static documents, essential for the dissemination and sale of the product. 

The limitation of SAP Hybris is not having a component for paper disclosure. In fact, its information structure is not suitable for collecting all that set of media dependent information, vital for the creation of brochures, catalogs and price lists.

EKR has developed an important integration with SAP Hybris to ensure that all SAP Hybris information is available within the EKR Knowledge Base and can, therefore, be integrated by all those media dependent logics essential to obtain catalogs, brochures, price lists and static documents in PDF.

The possibility of using SAP Hybris with EKR Selector allows a marketing office to maintain the perfect consistency of the SAP Hybris PCM information and integrate this information with what may be necessary for the completion of the paper information, maintaining perfect synchronism between SAP Hybris PCM and the information present in a document.

The typical use case sees the marketing department as protagonists, which collects data in SAP Hybris PCM for online dissemination, and the part of the marketing department that has to deal with the publication of catalogs: it is necessary that the two parties work talking the same language through the connection and integration module.

Another typical scenario is the integration, with the way EKR is used for technical documentation, manuals and data sheets. All the information present in SAP Hybris (typically procedural information, processes, troubleshooting, maintenance and regulatory logics) is integrated into EKR for the creation of manuals. The latter collects all the technical information and whatever is present in SAP Hybris, also in terms of structural organization and presence on the market for the production of manuals synchronized with SAP Hybris.

SAP Hybris Connector

Expand the limits of SAP and manage extended information without compromise thanks to EKR Orchestra SAP Hybris Connector, getting the most of the two platforms

The SAP Hybris platform includes a fairly limited product data management module, I’m talking about the ICM module. It is easy to see how the need to include extensive information, articulated within Hybris PCM often clashes with the rigidity of the platform, and requires to follow the path of compromise by greatly reducing the information to be entered, or the integration route, completing the SAP Hybris repository with a second environment, characterized by strong flexibility and expandability. 

This is the scenario in which EKR Orchestra SAP Hybris Connector fits. The combination of SAP Hybris and EKR Orchestra allows our customers to get the most out of the two platforms and therefore to be able to complete the descriptive part of each product in an extremely broad, extensive and detailed way. In doing so, Hybris communicates all that is necessary on the web channel, but at the same time allows you to integrate all the information necessary for offline communication, cataloging, brochures, but also for specialized newsletters, product launches and above all for documentation. technique. It is important that a technical data present in SAP Hybris PCM is exactly consistent with the paper brochure, with the catalog, with the price list, and even more so with the technical documentation, the technical sheets and the manuals.

This is now possible thanks to the strong integration developed in the EKR Orchestra SAP Hybris Connector module, which allows you to get the most out of the characteristics of each of the two platforms, in order to publish through Adobe InDesign and therefore obtain excellent pdfs . The EKR Selector tool, part of EKR Orchestra, gives the marketing department the opportunity to obtain high quality brochures and catalogs in perfect sync with the information on the web through the Hybris portal.

KIT

The Knowledge Improvement Tool allows each Knowledge Worker to enrich the company knowledge base without limits and manage different types of information

It is the latest born within the EKR Orchestra ecosystem. 

KIT, Knowledge Improvement Tool, aims to be a tool to collect and extend company knowledge over time.

Extremely configurable, it is based on a continuous verification of the quality and completeness of the information, carrying out a validation on an intermediate structure built in the project analysis phase and maintained by those who deal with the quality and completeness of the information. 

Through EKR Kit it is possible to manage both tabular and textual information, even very extensive, as well as being able to manage all the organizational trees (hierarchies) that give order to the information structure within the knowledge base.

Adobe Indesign

EKR Orchestra allows to overcome the limitations of Adobe InDesign in large and articulated publications and to complete it with an ordered information repository

Adobe Indesign is undoubtedly the best product for creating static pages on the world market.

However is a tool strongly oriented to manual creative activity and, although easily automatable for small tasks, is not suitable for efficiently managing large publications (for example catalogs of different hundreds of pages, in different configuration and language variants)

If, on the one hand, its extreme flexibility is a strong point for creating documents of relatively limited size, it is however a great weakness for large and complex publications that require continuous updates.

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Companies often write valuable information directly to Indesign that can then be used in various media, making it the de facto product information database.

From here they often proceed by copying and pasting the Indesign file to other documents or to other media such as CMS or Excel sheets for sending to other systems.

EKR orchestra allows you to use Indesign in its best aspect to transform information in graphic format for static documents.

Using Indesign within an EKR Orchestra scenario allows you to obtain 10 times its value from Indesign compared to manual use.

In EKR Orchestra, nothing is lost of Indesign’s flexibility, but enormous advantages are obtained in terms of document updating, language change, data updating and correctness and the correct segmentation of online publishing tools (e.g. catalogs for specific Industry or specific geographic areas). 

EKR has decades of experience in using Indesign (Editor’s note, Marco Galiazzo, founder of EKR is one of the very first Adobe Certified Expert in Italy) and has exploited the expertise of EKR in the Indesign world for to integrate Indesign itself with all those fundamental parts for offline publications at a large company level.

Put us to the test by asking for a demo!

Glossary and masterdata

Without a common glossary and an official registry, the risk of errors in disclosing information increases. EKR allows you to manage these processes at best

One of the biggest shortcomings in most companies is the definition of a common glossary and an official registry of any object that is created and managed in the company itself.

When we start an EKR project we sit at the same table with different people (from the Technical Documentation Office, Marketing Office, After-sales Office, etc.) and we ask them to name and define the terms to be used to identify the product hierarchy (the division of products into lines, ranges, etc.), the very structure of the machines (the denomination of the various parts) or of the products: in almost all cases it turns out that different offices name the same things differently.

This problem brings enormous disadvantages to the company and considerable risks linked to the disclosure of inaccurate and / or ambiguous information in the data management chain itself.

Very often in the company the same terms pass from person to person and are gradually transformed: in some cases this involves even security risks.

A lot of important data often goes through the Excel files that are configured as well as the information repository and an error in copying the contents is sufficient with consequent damage, even of great entity.

An extremely recent example in this sense are the erroneous estimates on the impact of Covid in the UK.

Starting from an incorrect use of Excel and the management of the file formats created, the number of cases present was underestimated, underestimating the extent of the phenomenon and the need for timely intervention.

(https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54423988)

The presence of the Glossary and of the Masterdata allows instead to have the guarantee that the data are defined and baptized in a uniform way in a single point, without the risk that the passage from person to person can lead to deterioration of the accuracy of the information, as occurs in the wireless telephone.

Finder

Always find the right phrase and the right translations. Don’t miss a comma! It guarantees maximum accuracy and efficiency, precision and speed

It is a simple application, always present on your desktop, which allows you to search, in a very simple and rapid way, the translation of any sentence or part of it. 

With EKR Finder you can choose the area in which you want to search (translation context), insert a part of the sentence concerned and immediately evaluate the translations already present in the system, with the possibility of editing, copying and adding variants. This tool is a tool that can be used by various company roles, primarily marketing and technical documentation, but, without difficulty, it can be easily used by all offices, in order to access all the guaranteed and certified translations present within. of the company.

Elastic high speed engine search

Performance problems due to the granularity of EKR Knowledge Base information have been solved by developing a powerful elastic search engine

The EKR Knowledge Base is characterized by extreme flexibility and granularity. Every single information is enriched by a semantic structure that could be extremely articulated and can have an almost infinite granularity. This leads to the concept of flexibility being taken to extremes, but on the other hand it brings obvious technological performance problems. This performance issue has been answered by integrating in the EKR platform a very powerful engine based on elasticsearch technology that complements the granularity of the EKR Knowledge Base with an extremely performing structure that can also collect the complete granularity of the Knowledge Base but also more often manage simplified situations. In the Knowledge Base we have the data at maximum granularity and complexity, in Elastic the data is simplified aggregate. Let me give an example to evaluate: a sentence in the KB could have two / three reference units inside, when it passes on elastic the RUs are resolved and then the translation is also managed in a way that inside elastic there is the data in the simplest way possible. The fact that elasticsearch is based on noSQL technology in flet structures called documents allows EKR Orchestra services to access with very high performance aggregated information in the ways necessary for the end user and allows access to any combination of information present in EKR Knowledge Base also including translations to then be used typically through on-line portals first of all EKR PIM Portal.

EKR Template Engine

Producing high-quality templates will no longer be a problem thanks to the EKR Template Engine, which allows you to publish hundreds of PDFs using knowledge base data

If there is a need to reproduce extremely repetitive elements, perhaps of small size, there is a module for high-performance publication: EKR Template Engine (EKR T.E).

It allows you to produce hundreds of PDF pages in seconds, using the data present in EKR. 

EKR stencil

A simple tool for creating and editing content designed for the web. It makes it possible to manage content from a PC, tablet or smartphone, even in touch mode

It is a responsive web tool for creating and maintaining content. Deliberately simplified, it allows those who need to create, consult, update and edit content, to access, through touch mode, both from PCs, tablets and smartphones. 

It is part of the EKR LaunchPad suite of tools based on OpenUI5 technology.

EKR Selector

One of the flagship tools of the EKR suite, it allows you to assemble information from the Knowledge Base, obtaining high quality technical or marketing documents

It is the flagship of the EKR Orchestra platform. 

When the information is perfectly organized within the EKR Knowledge Base, the Selector user can assemble it, within documents with a variable structure (SmartDocument), without any constraint given by templates, in order to obtain any kind of technical or marketing document, with maximum effectiveness. There is no substantial constraint in the construction of the page. 

Ekr Selector is a tool that can be used by people with graphic skills, thus expanding their way of working but it can also be used by technical editors or product managers who want to have direct control of the structure of the documents that will then be to support their presales or aftersales business. 

Using a metaphor, Selector is an assembly table that uses information as LEGO bricks are used to build increasingly complex toys. The information, at maximum granularity, is chosen from the Knowledge Base warehouse through a selection and instantiation method. The information chosen and inserted in Selector remains continuously connected with the data source, therefore any variation of the information in the data source will propagate in an update request within the SmartDocument. 

The Selector SmartDocument goes far beyond the potential given by a template system or a deconstructed pagination system, such as InDesign, allowing the construction of very complex and articulated artifacts that themselves become the storehouse of a competence that, otherwise, would be delegated to unstructured and difficult to maintain documents. 

A Selector SmartDocument can produce dozens of document variants, thanks to its conditionality features that allow you to choose the behavior of presence or display, in the publication phase, of any element that structures the SmartDocument itself. It is therefore easy to obtain, with Selctor, manuals by serial number, manuals for products sold with different brands, characterized by different markets and, as regards the publication in the marketing field, it is possible to generate brochures, specific catalogs for geography, localization and industry. 

Selector is a tool that includes a server component and can be automated for all those activities that do not require the direct intervention of an operator to decide which final result to obtain.