Best practice: IA & Corporate Usability at B. Braun Melsungen AG

This article provides best-practice insights into the methodical planning and design of a new information architecture (IA) for the central, internal company product database – the “Product Center PC 5.0” of B. Braun Melsungen AG. The initial situation of the current system is represented by a growing data complexity in the multinational group and company environment. New information structures and logics were developed based on the top-down prioritization of “relevant and high-frequency” use cases from the user's perspective. The load structure of the multinational and multilingual product database comprises 5,000 products and 120,000 items.

User groups of the system include up to 25,000 internal company employees (information workers) in more than 60 branches of B. Braun Melsungen AG as well as business partners – customers, dealers and suppliers – whose aim is to is a fast and context-specific product search and/or maintenance.

The project planning approach was an iterative and participative design procedure in 3 project stages with key users from all areas of the company. An additional project goal was to achieve optimum “project usability” with the requirement for effective and and meaningful documentation and presentation formats for a time-optimized and congruent and planning-congruent project transfer.