Modular Lighting Instruments: luminaries of digital transformation

Jan 30, 2024

sales, marketing and service
retail
Inriver
SAP

It started with a simple website revamp. What followed was a complete business transformation, both technologically and culturally. “We had to stop being so obsessed with ourselves to truly understand who our customers were, and what they needed,” says Arjen Ingenbleek, commercial director at Modular Lighting Instruments. Learn how a renowned architectural lighting manufacturer tackled its transformation journey, came face to face with its customers, and (re)discovered itself in the process.

Challenge

Moving from offline-focused marketing to a digital-first customer experience, with a website that was too technical, too complex, and not built for the people who actually use Modular’s products.

Solution

A future-proof digital experience stack (PIM, DAM, CMS + SAP) combined with one radical shift: design every step for one person, Aurélie, the interior designer who represents Modular’s core customer.

Results

A simplified catalog, richer product data, faster content creation, and a company-wide move toward conversion-driven, customer-centric digital experiences.

Challenge

For decades, Modular relied on what had always worked: printed catalogs, trade fair booths, and a website built mainly for resellers. But reality had shifted.

“In 2018, we finally decided to fully embrace digital,” says Arjen. “A risky move: our catalogs and fairs were hugely popular. But those tactics weren’t scalable anymore, and our digital maturity simply wasn’t there.”

Interior designers — not technicians — were the real decision-makers. Yet the website overwhelmed them with technical specs and complexity. To rebuild from the ground up, Modular turned to delaware, its long-term SAP partner.

Are you facing similar challenges? Contact us today to discover how you can overcome them!

Solution

Before rebuilding the website, the team needed clarity. Who exactly were they designing for? The answer became Aurélie: a fictional 30-year-old interior designer from Paris.

“Aurélie uses digital channels to get inspired, stay informed, and even buy,” Arjen explains. “By focusing on her, everything finally clicked. We saw which content mattered — and which didn’t.”

This led to a tough realization: Modular didn’t have the data to deliver the experiences it imagined. “In many cases, the data we had just wasn’t rich or mature enough. We were serving the wrong content to the wrong person at the wrong time," says Arjen.

The fix required new foundations:

InRiver PIM for structured, scalable product information
Digizuite DAM for digital assets
Optimizely CMS for dynamic content creation
SAP as the operational backbone

“Each system has very clear roles,” says Stefaan Vandeputte, Partner & Domain Lead Digital at delaware. “The governing principle remains: is this useful for Modular’s customers?” And with the new CMS, the marketing team finally gained autonomy: “A huge step up: we can optimize pages much faster and no longer depend on IT,” says Arjen.

What did
we do?

Redesign the catalog for real users

Over 30 technical filters were cut down to 5 intuitive ones. The full product journey was simplified to match how designers browse, not how engineers think.

Build the content backbone

PIM, DAM, and CMS were reconfigured to deliver the right content, to the right person, at the right time; finally enabling consistent, rich data. Together, these systems form a future-proof customer experience architecture.

Adopt a conversion-first mindset

Modular embraced iterative improvement over perfection. Pages became dynamic, measurable, and continuously optimized.

Teams moved from static catalog thinking to active digital engagement: fast edits, fast learning, fast gains.

We had to stop thinking inside out, stop projecting our own ideas onto our customer. The one question we had to ask was: ‘Does Aurélie really need this?’ If the answer was no: drop it.

Arjen Ingenbleek, commercial director at Modular Lighting Instruments

Results

Modular now creates faster, smarter digital experiences, built around what customers actually need.

A simplified catalog that matches how designers browse
Dynamic pages updated directly by marketing
Cleaner, richer, consistent product data across channels
A culture shift toward measurable, conversion‑driven decisions

And the foundation is set for what comes next: a self‑service portal, configurator, recommendation engine, and further automation across the customer journey.

Modular Lighting & delaware

Modular Lighting Instruments is a renowned architectural lighting manufacturer with a strong design heritage and a global footprint. When the company decided to rethink its digital presence, it turned to a familiar partner. As Arjen Ingenbleek explains, “we reached out to delaware, they have been our trusted SAP partner for many decades.”

For Arjen, that partnership mindset was essential: “Having a partner by your side who has both the technical expertise and business experience is indispensable for success. delaware was extremely approachable and solution‑oriented throughout the whole project.”