Topsoft 2019 – Digitalization. Live. Concrete.

This year’s edition of the Topsoft trade fair celebrated its debut at the Umweltarena in Spreitenbach. In keeping with the current theme of sustainability, the event offered its numerous visitors exciting insights into a future of greater efficiency with lower resource consumption.

Under the slogan “Digitalization. Live. Concrete,” Topsoft opened its doors on Wednesday, August 28, 2019, offering over 100 providers and 28 speakers a platform for their solutions for the digital age. Experts from Germany and abroad accompanied visitors on their journey through the themed worlds and ensured numerous lively discussions and unique insights into solutions for companies at both a general and specialist level. At stands covering topics from A for automation to Z for payment transactions, innovators awaited interested visitors with showcases and white papers. The numerous exhibitors were divided into thematic clusters, which made for an efficient visit and also provided the suppliers with an environment for high-quality exchange. The 16 workshops were interactive, placing a wide variety of topics such as marketing, finance, and fashion in a digital context and making the participants’ visions and concepts tangible.

Among all the innovative companies, Onedot was of course also represented. The PIM/MAM theme cluster highlighted the current relevance of product data, and as experts in product data onboarding, we couldn’t miss out. In a half-hour presentation, Onedot’s CEO, Bernhard Bicher, together with ERP and PIM expert Roger Busch, offered visitors exclusive insights into one of their projects. Together, they illustrated the implementation of a PIM system at a furniture wholesaler and highlighted the key points of such a Herculean task. The two speakers demonstrated the value of well-structured product data in a high-quality PIM (product information management) system.

The speakers summarized the key points from the presentation in the following six points:

1. Combining technology and change management brings success.
2. Change management measures belong in every PIM/MAM project assignment.
3. The devil is in the details.
4. Break down complex data (onboarding) processes into individual, verifiable steps.
5. Self-learning systems learn from pre-classified data and user feedback.
6. Clear definition of target systems and consistent requirements management are fundamental.

However, not everything went smoothly at Topsoft. The low number of visitors after lunch caused some discontent among stand operators and speakers. The catering, which only accepted cash at a digitalization trade fair, was also not very impressive. Overall, however, Topsoft was a successful and exciting event that offered visitors first-hand insights into digital possibilities and promoted exchange between experts and companies of all sizes and from all industries.