Innovation at Sika with yuuvis®

In 2019, Sika made the groundbreaking decision to introduce yuuvis®. This was to ensure that its employees had access to a modern, flexible and expandable system. Peter Simon, Team Head Web & Digital Solutions Sika AG, describes the special situation when it comes to document management: «Due to the strong regulations in the construction chemicals industry, we have to fulfill a large number of compliance rules and laws – and this worldwide in every country where our products are manufactured and distributed. The IT effort we put in at this point is correspondingly high». The goal was clear: only up-to-date and approved content should be used and passed on to customers.

As a global company with hundreds of different teams, Sika has a wide variety of processes. In addition, there is a multitude of IT tools to collect, organize and share the various types of documents within the global organization as well as with partners, dealers or customers. To simplify all processes, current information about a product and a technology developed by Sika should be centrally available in a one-stop store for both internal and external communication – and all this under the aspect of compliance.

After extensive market research, the Sika project team was finally able to reduce the number of possible candidates to two finalists. In addition to the basic technical ability to set up a standardized enterprise architecture, the customization options with regard to a highly adaptable and user-friendly interface were another important key factor. The yuuvis® product from OPTIMAL SYSTEMS was able to clearly differentiate itself from the competition in both respects and was therefore awarded the contract. DTI Schweiz AG was entrusted with the implementation of the project at Sika not only because it stood out as a competent partner during the evaluation, but also because it has had a successful business relationship with Sika since 2017 in connection with the introduction of an enterprise search solution.

The project was launched in December 2019 and the solution went live in the first countries in May 2020. The implementation went smoothly, as Peter Simon confirms: «Several factors complemented each other perfectly in this project. Firstly, DTI already knew our IT and information handling philosophy inside out. Secondly, yuuvis® had exactly the technical features that were essential for the successful implementation of the project: API-first approach for the integration of the various peripheral systems, individually customizable, intuitive user interface in a responsive design, also for mobile access, and a powerful full-text search (search-driven approach «Google like»). With the new platform, all Sika employees now have access to all product-related technical documents required for their daily work».

The implementation began with the migration of the extensive data into yuuvis®. The user interface was adapted to Sika’s corporate design and workflow processes were set up for approval. A mobile Progressive Web App (PWA) was developed to make it easier to read and share documents on the go, regardless of the device used.

The new «Enterprise Document Management System – EDMS» was given the task of central document management. The task was to integrate the versioning of technical documents and instructions, complex configurable workflows, structured user rights and authorizations, a seamless user experience and advanced search and tagging functions.

A particular challenge was to integrate content from various peripheral systems such as SAP-Hybris (PIM), Web DMS and Schema ST4. Careful planning and implementation and the openness of yuuvis® (API-first approach based on REST) led to a seamless integration into Sika’s existing, quite complex system environment.

A major uncertainty on the part of Sika for the success of this project was the question of acceptance of the new solution within the organization. However, the response was overwhelmingly positive. The search-driven operating philosophy and user-friendly interface of yuuvis® were convincing across the board.

In order to continue offering Sika employees a single source of truth, further integrations are being planned. As the system is used worldwide, the interface will be available in various languages such as French, Spanish, Italian, Chinese and Japanese.

The core elements of the platform enable end users to work in a time-efficient manner and minimize the effort required to search for information. Thanks to the new DMS, business-relevant documents can now be found easily and efficiently in their current and most recently released version. The use of standard workflows for approvals based on the «four-eyes principle» ensures that all stored documents are always valid and reflect the latest changes to a particular product. Peter Simon comments: «By standardizing the workflows and increasing the transparency of all process steps and changes in a document, both the quality of the documents and trust in the system have been increased to the highest level across all processes».

The Sika project team also found the relationship with DTI to be very professional, dynamic, flexible and ultimately completely transparent. Peter Simon is delighted with the successful implementation: «The DTI team is a great asset to our Swiss partner network of implementation agencies. Although we do not have a direct relationship with the manufacturer of yuuvis®, OPTIMAL SYSTEMS, but only through DTI, the responsiveness and support from both parties was greatly appreciated. Both had a major influence on the success of our joint project».

Thanks to yuuvis®, Sika has increased its efficiency, improved the security of its published information and simplified collaboration within the organization. This success story is an impressive example of how innovative technology can help companies achieve their goals and realize their visions.

Our focus is on the use of modern technologies and architectures such as Docker/Kubernetes, microservices, artificial intelligence (Gen-AI/LLM) and the cloud. We rely on leading software technologies and products (best-of-breed).

Yuuvis® is our central building block for data management and the data hub in COGNAiO®.