What Is Stibo STEP & How Can It Help Your Business?

June 23, 2022
7 mins.
Martin Kjeldsen

What Is Stibo STEP & How Can It Help Your Business?

STEP (Stibo Systems Enterprise Platform) is the most comprehensive Master Data Management (MDM) software solution for creating, managing, and publishing accurate and consistent master data across a business.

STEP helps businesses by providing a single source of truth for their product, customer, and supplier information, which can improve data quality, reduce errors, and increase the effectiveness of data governance. 

Some of the key benefits of Stibo STEP include:

  • Data accuracy and consistency: STEP ensures a single, reliable source of truth for your organisation's data, reducing errors, inconsistencies, and redundancies.
  • Improved decision-making: With access to accurate and consistent data, businesses can make more informed decisions, enhancing strategic planning and operational effectiveness.
  • Better customer experience: By consolidating and managing customer data, STEP helps companies deliver personalised and targeted experiences, resulting in increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.
  • Streamlined operations: STEP enables efficient data governance, automating data management processes, and reducing manual efforts, leading to improved operational efficiency and cost savings.
  • Enhanced collaboration: By breaking down data silos and making data accessible across the organisation, STEP fosters cross-functional collaboration, driving innovation and growth.
  • Faster time to market: With streamlined data management, businesses can bring new products and services to market more quickly, gaining a competitive advantage.
  • Regulatory compliance: STEP helps organisations maintain data quality, adhere to data protection regulations, and avoid potential fines or penalties associated with non-compliance.
  • Scalability: The STEP platform is designed to accommodate an organisation's growth and adapt to changing data requirements, providing a flexible and future-proof solution for managing data assets.

Who are Stibo Systems?

Stibo Systems is a global provider of Master Data Management (MDM) solutions and is headquartered in Denmark. It’s part of the Stibo group of companies, which can trace its roots all the way back to 1794.

With offices across Europe, Asia, the Americas, and Australia, Stibo Systems serves customers all around the World and across multiple verticals such as:

  • Retail
  • Manufacturing
  • Distribution
  • Automotive
  • Healthcare
  • Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG)
  • Financial Services
  • Telecommunications
  • Travel and Hospitality

The company has a strong focus on innovation and continues to invest in R&D to develop new and improved solutions for its MDM customers, leading to better-informed purchasing decisions by end customers.

Read more: Glossary of MDM, PIM and Data terminology explained.

What is MDM and how do businesses use it?

Master Data Management (MDM) is a discipline and a set of processes and technologies used by organisations to manage their critical business data (known as master data). 

By centralising and standardising their data through an MDM strategy, businesses can ensure that everyone is working with and has access to the same information across the organisation.

Additionally, MDM can help businesses comply with regulations and data privacy requirements, as well as support data-driven initiatives such as analytics and artificial intelligence.

Read more: CEOs should consider MDM to help address their top concerns for the next 10 years

Why should businesses go for Stibo STEP?

STEP provides a single source of truth for all your business information by providing the ability to manage your data through its lifecycle from creation to publication in various formats. With STEP, you can get products to market faster with fewer errors; improve customer satisfaction; speed up time to revenue; streamline processes; reduce supply costs; gain visibility into global operations, and increase profitability.

Using STEP’s flexible workflow engine, you can automate repetitive tasks, make rule-based decisions and streamline business processes. It uses a centralized database as well as an extensible set of APIs that allow you to create custom interfaces for any legacy or third-party systems.

Product Information Management (PIM) simplified

PIM is a system used to manage product data by centralising, consolidating, and maintaining the product information collected from various sources.

STEP facilitates PIM by making it easy to create, manage, publish and access all of that product information. It provides a single point of reference for product descriptions, images, and specifications. Ensuring that it is timely, accurate and consistent in all languages, currencies, and units of measure organisation-wide.

STEP provides a single source of truth for all product information. It's a single point of reference for all product information in your organization. And it's the ultimate user-friendly tool for sharing product data across departments or around the world through its flexible user interface and advanced search capabilities.

Accurate and consistent product information is critical for business.

Product data powers the growing online world and helps provide a better overall experience for your end customers.

PIM is used across the organisation from customer service representatives to manufacturing teams, to sales & marketing as well as external partners and stakeholders. 

STEP is the standard for today’s MDM software, establishing a common vocabulary for all types of products to help ensure that they are represented consistently throughout an organisation and at all the important touch points for customers and employees. 

Omnichannel Communication Simplified

Creating content once for use across multiple channels is critical for an efficient and effective multichannel communication strategy. 

An omnichannel approach provides access to a wider audience, as customers shift between devices and touch points to research and ultimately make their purchase in the manner that they want.

Being able to adapt to a new omnichannel approach, businesses need to be able to utilize efficiently their content across multiple channels, such as physical stores, e-commerce, and social media, to reach out and engage with their target audience.

By using an omnichannel business model, businesses today can use data from online and offline touchpoints to gain a better understanding of their customer preferences and forecast their likely behaviour. Plus, by receiving information from numerous sources it ensures that product information and customer data is up-to-date and consistent.

As well as maintaining accurate and consistent product information STEP can also consolidate customer data, such as purchase history and preferences, to support a personalized shopping experiences across all touchpoints.

Product content from STEP can be seamlessly exported into any format required for online or mobile channels as well as print catalogues or brochures. STEP also integrates with marketing automation tools, POS and eCommerce applications to ensure that your messaging and product information is consistent, accurate and up-to-date on any sales channel.

In order to increase efficiency and avoid costly errors, you’ll want to create content that integrates across multiple channels and formats on and offline. STEP also integrates with eCommerce applications to ensure accuracy at the point of sale.

Product information accuracy throughout your organization

Accurate and consistent product information is critical for your business. It's used by many people across your organization, from customer service representatives to manufacturing teams, as well as partners outside of your company. Your product data powers the digital world and helps you provide a better experience for customers.

STEP is a standard that establishes a common vocabulary for all types of products to help ensure that they are represented consistently throughout an organization. STEP facilitates accurate and consistent product information across different channels and locations—across all touchpoints with customers, partners and employees—to drive efficiency throughout the supply chain while providing an improved customer experience.

Improved decision-making, less risk and better results

By having a trusted, single source of truth, companies can ensure that the data used in decision making is accurate and consistent.

Along with improved data quality and visibility, businesses can make better informed decisions, allowing them to identify new opportunities for growth and respond to market changes more quickly, reducing the risks of making errors.

STEP as an MDM solution provides a unified view of a company's master data. It enables organisations to manage their critical data in a centralised and structured manner, improving data quality, and reducing the time spent on manual data-related tasks.

Building a trusted source of product information enhances operational efficiency and accelerates growth. Accurate internal and external communication is supported by integrated processes for effective management of content across all channels.

When you have accurate product information, it’s easier to understand how your products can add value to your customers’ businesses. And when you know exactly what that value is, it’s easier to communicate it to others within your organization or externally as well.

The result is faster time-to-market for new products and services, more efficient decision-making based on real data, and better customer experiences.

What is the maturity level of your data management? Do your own Data Maturity Self-Assessmment test.

Works seamlessly with multifunctional teams

Collaboration with multi-functional team members—regardless of their location—is essential to getting products to market faster. STEP makes collaboration easy by providing team members with role-based access to master data and integrated workflows, enabling rapid response to changes in the marketplace.

STEP provides role-based access to master data and integrated workflows, enabling rapid response to changes in the marketplace.

STEP enables different departments within an organisation, such as marketing, sales, and product management, to collaborate and share information more effectively. By providing a centralised repository for data and information, it can improve data accuracy and consistency, and enable more efficient information sharing and decision-making.

Through STEP users can view product details, order samples, request technical help from an expert—anything that fits their needs. If you want them to be able to upload documents or images as well as enter text into fields — that's easy too.

Unit of Measure, experts in STEP

STEP is a tool that can help you make the most out of your content to achieve your business goals. If you are ready to bring STEP into your business, our experts at Unit of Measure are here to make your STEP journey simple and smooth.

Get in touch to roll out STEP for your business, improve data quality and governance, increase efficiency and revenue, and gain valuable insights for better decision making.

At Unit of Measure we have more than 20 years of experience in implementing STEP for large global enterprises with complex requirements. 

Typical drivers of complexity for large global enterprises are e.g.: 

  • Multiple countries and languages to contend with, so you need to handle translations and localisation of content.
  • Many different user roles involved in gathering, refining and approving master data with different views and privileges required.
  • Integration required to third-party systems to ensure a consolidation of data.
  • Managing and publishing content to multiple channels. 
  • Multiple data domains managed in the same solution such as e.g. product and customer records can bring new insights and tremendous value, but also drive complexity.  

At Unit of Measure we can help to realise this potential for your organisation. 

Book a free consultation call with us today to learn more about how we can help. 

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