An integrated ecosystem that has resulted in one of the leading manufacturing digital sites today

When it comes to construction and building material organizations, they aren’t typically considered the ‘cohort of digital excellence’. But if we dig a little deeper, you’ll see that isn’t really the case.

Enter stage left, Etex. The global construction company with a mission to inspire people and their living spaces in a conscious, sustainable way. They operate around the globe with over 15,000 employees in more than 40 countries.

An inspiring vision in a world of cement

Collaboration is at the heart of Etex, and of course it is also central to digital transformation, which has been a priority for Etex over the last three years under the leadership of Global Digital Transformation Leader, Alan Edmondson.

Edmondson took on this role in 2018, and his goal was immediately clear: to harness the power of digital to significantly expand Etex’s business and global impact. The vision for Etex’s technology infrastructure was for it to be an integrated ecosystem so that teams at all levels of the organization could collaborate and more efficiently execute strategies.

Marketing technologies “built on sharing”

When it came to their marketing technology stack, Edmondson wanted to implement a system of technologies that would best facilitate their marketers to provide customers and prospects with 1:1 information – to be able to “communicate the right messaging to the right people, at the right time.” Etex’s incumbent digital estate had been built on a linear, rigid methodology that made it difficult for dynamic collaboration to flourish.

Edmondson explained that Etex is a corporation “built on sharing,” so marketing teams worldwide would need a centralized platform to share insights, expertise, and feedback. The digital leader realized it would only be through migrating their digital environment that Etex could deliver high quality, personalized digital experiences to everyone interacting with their brand.

On top of this functionality, Etex leadership was also looking for solutions that would be easy-to-use, avoiding a complex architecture. They wanted it to be simple for marketers to be up and running comfortably with the platform – for them to have exactly what they needed to immediately create and distribute content, without having to compromise time by reading an instruction manual. Etex also craved a platform that would speak directly to a new breed of customer as the profile of a ‘typical’ buyer was shifting.

Etex sought to address the need for a new digital experience platform, migrating away from their existing infrastructure. With a high appetite for change, they were asking above and beyond what traditional construction companies had looked for. Etex set out to trash the status-quo and become a game-changer.

Building a content legacy

Optimizely Content Cloud met all the requirements. Using Optimizely, Etex marketers quickly realized that they could develop and work with content in a way that helped them establish and nurture relationships with their end users (when previously, Etex’s relationship strategy was limited to contractors).

Content is king, and central to how Etex establishes touchpoints with their community, and how they build business relationships. To ensure that every piece of their content always meets its full potential and reaches every relevant person throughout varying customer journeys, Etex needed to integrate their CMS with a digital asset management (DAM) solution.

What is Digital Asset Management (DAM)?

DAM software complements a CMS because it provides a centralized platform from which a community of users can manage the complete project lifecycle of all the digital assets that go into creating content. From the platform, marketers can create, manage, distribute, archive, alter, and even reuse digital assets. A DAM solution is also crucial to quality control, ensuring that everyone who consumes your content consistently experiences the highest quality images, videos, and all other assets that represent your brand.

As Etex conducted their search for a new DAM solution – one that would maximize their experience with Optimizely – they reiterated their requirements for digital solutions: a platform that would allow users to provide personalized end-to-end customer experiences, and one that would also be easy to use (translation: no instruction manual required).

Enter: the Digizuite DAM, an Optimizely technology partner offering a cloud-based digital asset management software solution that connects with Optimizely so well that it functions as an extension of the CMS. Digizuite provided a solution that met all of Etex’s needs for a DAM, as well as the customer focus that Etex was accustomed to in their experience with Optimizely.

“Etex was in the process of moving multiple websites [from their previous CMS] to Optimizely, so it made sense that they were looking to add in master data management – DAM and PIM [product information management] solutions,” Peter Toft, Digizuite’s Vice President of Global Business Development, said. “Getting a DAM was always part of a larger digital marketing initiative for Etex.”

A DAM good (and collaborative) implementation

The first phase of Etex’s Digizuite DAM implementation began in December of 2019. And, as is common in the digital transformation process for manufacturing companies, Etex’s DAM software implementation occurred at the same time as their implementation of the Inriver PIM solution.

It was delaware Consulting – a corporate partner of Optimizely, Digizuite, and Inriver – that has managed the implementation of all three technologies within Etex’s environment.

''We have been impressed from day one with how the three products not only provided value in their span of control, and also with how smooth the integration towards one platform went'', Bart Van Kerkhoven, Partner, delaware.

Etex initially procured the Digizuite DAM to function as a media library so that users – marketers and the account managers, business development teams who represent the Etex brand – could effectively manage product related information, like technical documents and reference cases.

“For example, there could be 600 people scattered around the globe managing the construction of huge projects,” Digizuite Sales Director, Mircea Verbeeren said. “Every single one of these people working on Etex projects needed to be able to upload images from photo shoots, or material from other promotional events, to a DAM so that anyone who needed it, even at a moment’s notice, could leverage it properly for any purpose or distribution channel.”

With a growing number of users and assets in the system, Etex has found that Optimizely and Digizuite function like a well-oiled machine, as if the CMS and the DAM were one platform.

The future of Etex: a single source of optimism

Looking to the future, both Peter Toft and Mircea Virbeeren said they foresee Etex using the Digizuite DAM as “a single source of truth.” In other words, Etex would leverage the DAM to achieve full operational control of all their assets and intellectual property.

As it stands now, one thing is for sure: the story of Etex’s implementation of each element of its new-and-improved marketing stack has been a successful one. And, the deep-running theme of this story is end-to-end collaboration – all too appropriate for Etex, a company that considers collaboration invaluable.