How Spirotech professionalised digital product availability with Acterus and SyncForce

Project details

Customer: International expert and market leader in system water quality for heating and cooling systems.

Challenge:  Product information needed to be structured and consistent within the organisation and for their customers. Manual product catalogues, product data sheets and price lists, inconsistent product data, and time-consuming product data distribution

Solution:  Support Spirotech in easily managing and sharing up-to-date product data across all channels, enabling faster, more precise, and more consistent communication for teams and customers with SyncForce Circular PIM.

  • Always up-to-date product data
  • Automate product catalogues, price lists and product data sheets in minutes.

“For us, Acterus has always been a very accessible partner: communication lines are very short. And because we’ve been working together for a long time, they know Spirotech well. They have a lot of knowledge about our products and processes. When we want to publish new information, they not only understand what we need straight away, but they also give us good recommendations on how to get the most out of the system.”

Joost van Mameren – Teamlead Marketing Support

Higher standards for product data

A lot has changed at Spirotech in recent years: “We sell our solutions through wholesalers to installers and consultants. These wholesalers started asking for product data to be supplied in a better way. In the past, you could manage with Excel or PDF files, but that has really changed.”

Spirotech has used SyncForce for years. When Digital Marketer Laurens Costa joined, the team realised they could get much more out of the software. “SyncForce was mainly used as a media library,” says Laurens, “so a central place to store documents, brochures, and videos.

Laurens Costa - Digital Marketer

A huge opportunity

When Spirotech needed a new website, the team saw a huge opportunity: making the product data from SyncForce Circular PIM available on the website.

Implementation with Acterus
To implement SyncForce Circular PIM, Spirotech collaborated with Acterus, their appointed implementation partner. Acterus managed the full setup and configuration process, ensuring that the system was tailored to Spirotech’s digital product availability needs.

Joost: “For us, Acterus has always been a very accessible partner: communication lines are very short. And because we’ve been working together for a long time, they know Spirotech well. They have a lot of knowledge about our products and processes. When we want to publish new information, they not only understand what we need straight away, but they also give us good recommendations on how to get the most out of the system.”

To make the launch successful, a lot of work was still needed to enter product data. Laurens: “We have ETIM standards for all our products. That’s a really big advantage for us: standards make it much easier to share data, in our case with wholesalers.” The team worked hard for months to collect all the data and enter it into the PIM system. “But it was definitely worth it. Thanks to this effort, we now have 95% of all ETIM properties filled in.”

"We now know for sure that everyone is sharing the same information. Previously, we lacked insight into what was shared with customers. Different spreadsheets and PDF files were always going around.”

Joost van Mameren – Teamlead Marketing Support

A smart move

The combination of the new website, the link with SyncForce, and using ETIM turned out to be a smart move. “On one hand, as a supplier, we are simply expected to provide data,” explains Joost. “If a certain amount of data isn’t filled in, wholesalers won’t sell your products. But we found many more benefits. For example, we discovered it’s very easy to automate price lists using SyncForce. It used to take three months to create a price list; now, it takes less than a week.”

Spirotech also becomes more visible to our end-users, such as consultants and contractors. Joost: “Right now, we have all our products in SyncForce and have linked all available data for each product. We even have CAD drawings available that can be used in system designs. When the design is finished, and the installer requests a quote, SyncForce allows us to add information like user guides for installers, installation videos, and line drawings.”

Joost van Mameren - Teamlead Marketing Support

Improved relationship with wholesalers

This has greatly improved the relationship with wholesalers, says Joost: “We have review meetings with wholesalers every year and always score very high on data. That gives them confidence to do business with us. They can be sure our data is correct, whether it’s about our stock levels, the number of products on a pallet, or the dimensions.”

"But we found many more benefits. We discovered it's very easy to automate price lists using SyncForce. It used to take three months to create a price list; now, it takes less than a week.”

Joost van Mameren – Teamlead Marketing Support

Automating product data sheets

The next step was automating product data sheets. “Now that we have all the data together, we can serve our customers even better. Product data sheets are an example. They help customers choose between different products based on practical and technical, standardised data. We already offer this data on our website. By automating the product data sheets, we can provide the most current data at any time.”

Single source of truth

The increased use of SyncForce is not just noticeable within the marketing team; the entire Spirotech organisation now uses the software, says Laurens: “At one point, we had so much data in the system that we decided to use SyncForce as the single source of truth for the marketing team.” “That also has many benefits for our sales colleagues,” adds Joost. “They can find everything they need in SyncForce. If you can’t find it here, we don’t have it. And perhaps more importantly: we now know for sure that everyone is sharing the same information. Before, we didn’t have a clear view of what was being shared with customers; there were always different spreadsheets and PDF files going around.”

It has also become much easier for Spirotech to enter new markets. Laurens: “Suppose we wanted to become active in Norway; we could basically launch a website within a week, based on available data. Thanks to AI, we can easily translate the website and product information in SyncForce into Norwegian.”

"The increased use of SyncForce is not just noticeable within the marketing team; the entire Spirotech organisation now uses the software."

Laurens Costa – Digital Marketeer

A different way of thinking

The (r)evolution within Spirotech, as the marketing team calls the change, has even led to a different way of thinking, explains Laurens. “Before, the starting point was: we need to offer our product data somewhere. Now, we think much more from the outside in. What does a wholesaler or installer actually need? And what can we do to serve them as well as possible?”

Future

A future dream is to use this new way of working right from the design phase, says Joost. “Although we’ve made big steps, we still only use about half of what SyncForce offers, namely Product Information Management and Digital Asset Management. It would be great if we could gradually fill in all the (ETIM) data during product development. That would not only make our work in marketing easier, but it would also mean a shorter time-to-market; once a product is available, you immediately have the data ready to launch it.”

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