Spare parts, manuals and IoT subscriptions in one place. Without asking the user to “understand the system”.
Polin makes industrial baking ovens, installed all over the world. Its after-sales was full of steps still done “by hand”: documents, spare parts, activations. We built Polin Service, a single portal where documentation, spare parts and BakeApp Cloud subscriptions live together, with one guiding principle: it had to be the portal that understood the user, not the other way round.
WHO POLIN IS
Who Polin is.
Ing. Polin & C. S.p.A. is a long-established industrial company based in Verona, Italy — industrial made in Italy, present around the world — with a large installed base of machines that needs support, manuals, spare parts and, today, digital services connected to the ovens. The Polin Service portal was born to hold three key areas together: Documentation, Spare parts and BakeApp Cloud subscriptions.
The starting point was not “building a website”: it was getting user roles, ERP data and a very deep technical catalog to talk to each other, keeping control and consistency at international level.
THE CHALLENGE
“A portal that would save time for the people using the machines. And for us.”
The client’s sentence frames the challenge: “too many steps were still done ‘by hand’, especially between documents, spare parts and activations.” We had to turn after-sales into a digital experience that could carry three different needs at once: urgency (the spare parts), precision (manuals and PDFs) and continuity (the IoT subscriptions).
And users who are not “generic”: an IoT subscriber and a dealer see different things. Getting the profile wrong means getting prices, access, communications and support wrong. All of this while the data arrived from ERP imports, to be handled with no ambiguity and no manual work.
WHAT WE DID
A “service-first” setup, built to measure.
We set up a bespoke subscription system that assigns the right profile from registration onwards: when the data arrives from the ERP, dedicated import logic links every user to their role automatically, cutting manual work and inconsistencies. For spare parts we built a multi-level taxonomy (up to seven levels) designed on the logic of the machines — ovens, refrigeration, mixing and molding — not on generic categories.
The documentation (PDFs and update software) is cataloged by product category, findable where it is needed. And the search was customized to query products and documents each in its own way: two different worlds, one search that actually helps.
ADAM phases: Analyze + Design + Measure
Bespoke subscriptions
Roles / permissions
Deep taxonomy
Custom search
THE TECHNICAL PART
IoT subscriptions validated in real time against 10,000+ serial records.
BakeApp Cloud is not an “off the shelf” product: activation needs information about the production site and the link to real machines, with serial number and MAC address. The constraint was heavy: validation had to happen in real time, querying a base of more than 10,000 serial records in the ERP, without reloading the page, because the check has to be immediate and cut down errors.
We made a recurring service buyable with automatic renewal, with time options (1/2/3 years) and structured data collection inside the purchase flow. And the payment rules adapt to the cart, reflecting different policies for spare parts and for recurring services. The goal: that checkout would not turn into a support request in disguise.
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BUILT
WHAT WE BUILT
Five systems, a portal that grows.
01
Automatic roles from the ERP
The right profile from registration onwards, with no manual work.
02
Deep taxonomy (7 levels)
Spare parts organized by the logic of the machines, not by generic categories.
03
Documentation in context
PDFs and update software where the user actually looks for them.
04
IoT subscriptions validated live
A real-time check against 10,000+ serial records, with automatic renewal.
05
Adaptive checkout
Different payment rules for spare parts and recurring services; tailored emails.
→ THE PRINCIPLE
A portal that grows
A modular structure: today documents and spare parts, tomorrow new areas and services.
INTERNATIONAL CONSISTENCY
Four languages, one single price list.
A detail people often underrate: a centralized price list in four languages, to guarantee international consistency. This is not about translation, it is about avoiding commercial divergence and different readings from one market to the next. In a service portal the most expensive mistake is not a typo. It is inconsistent information, which generates tickets, delays and mistrust.
The same goes for the project’s own uncertainty: data, spare-parts organization and flows could not be settled once and for all. We treated that as part of the design — a system that grows without breaking, exactly as the home page says: “a portal that grows”.
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THE RESULTS
GOVERNABILITY, NOT JUST TRAFFIC
The portal understands who is coming in.
Roles & data
Clean
every user sees what they need; registration aligns the portal with the internal processes.
Findability
Immediate
spare parts by machine family and documents in context: support moves onto the real problems.
IoT reliability
Live
real-time validation against 10,000+ serial records: fewer errors and less dead time.
A filter between urgency and support: the portal understands who comes in and what they can do
10,000+
serial records validated
4
languages · one price list