Trek Sprints to the Lead with Superior Product Information Management

Trek Bicycle Corporation is a global leader in the design and manufacture of bicycles and related products. Founded in 1976 and based in Waterloo, Wisconsin, the company has 1,600 employees. Trek believes the bicycle can be a simple solution to many of the world’s most complex problems, and is committed to breaking down the barriers that prevent people from using bicycles more often for transportation, recreation, and inspiration.

Challenge
Trek had become a tremendous success despite having a barely adequate information management strategy. Important data was stored in several separate business systems, and third-party agencies managed product data. According to Marc Richards, Web Technologies Manager at Trek, the company didn’t have any real control over the data they used to market their bikes. To get that control, the company needed to make product information management a core competency so they could use a range of key information across channels and publish it more efficiently in catalogs and on websites.

Fragmented data and a lack of control over product information limited the company’s ability to market effectively. It prevented Trek from collecting relevant product data in one place and from telling a compelling product story. “We had silos of information and individuals who knew about components, or technology, or the lifestyle a product supports, but we had no single place where all that information could be stored together,” says Richards. “That meant we couldn’t tell the whole story we wanted to tell.”

Trek tried to use its product lifecycle management (PLM) system to mitigate the problem with its aftermarket products. That approach wasn’t effective because Trek still had no way to localize or globalize the data, which it needed to do for its markets around the world. The company also had no translation functionality. So it tried pushing all the data out to end points—a business-tobusiness website, a consumer website, and several print catalogs. Problem was, all the translation and localization processes would happen within silos at those points, which was far more expensive than making it a centralized, repeatable process. The company was succeeding, but it was using very cost-ineffective processes just to accomplish basic functions.

Solution
Trek selected Stibo Systems to provide an information management solution and implemented STEP in mid-2010. The company chose Stibo’s solution because it functions as a complete digital asset management (DAM) system and a complete product information management (PIM) system. Trek determined it could fully integrate STEP with its creative process so it could create print publications and integrate on the back end with all its websites.

Ease of use was another key factor in Trek’s decision—the company’s creative staff were expected to be heavy users, and the intuitive interfaces in STEP would enable them to use the software effectively without requiring extensive user support from IT.

Yet another advantage is that STEP gives Trek a place to consolidate, view and edit all its siloed data. The software allows the company to derive processes incorporating that data so Trek can implement very efficient processes for localization and translation, which is critical for worldwide marketing. Trek already has 35 unique country/language combinations in STEP—a giant leap from the five they had before implementing the Stibo system.

Groups at Trek actively using STEP include creative services, marketing and brand managers, as well as a new, six-person team called the Content Management Department, which is composed of individuals managing content around the company. The total number of system users is now more than 80 and growing. “Of those users,” says Richards, “probably 20 were invited. The others asked to be included because they saw how valuable STEP could be to their jobs. In fact, product managers unanimously decided on their own that the PLM system wasn’t meeting their needs and they wanted access to STEP.”