Case Study Selsey
Selsey is one of the leading furniture and decorative products retailers in Poland. The company sells online in 10+ markets with its warehouses located both in Poland and abroad (UK). The offer already includes more than 70,000 products, including variants from 260 manufacturers. Selsey also remains an important supplier and partner to Amazon and Wayfair. Since its launch in 2013, Selsey has expanded its catalog and sales channel network, which has resulted in the need to organize product data. The company sought a technology partner specializing in Akeneo PIM implementation.
Challenge:
Customization of the default Akeneo solutions to meet individual client needs and integration with the current ERP system.
Solution:
Implementation of Akeneo PIM Enterprise Edition
Selsey has clearly defined its needs and chose Akeneo from the available solutions – Akeneo PIM Enterprise Edition. This version features a wide range of functionalities for simplifying and streamlining product information management, e.g. the Asset Manager module or the module for so-called reference units (objects used for describing products, which have a more complex structure than standard attributes). Another advantage, which was decisive for the choice of Akeneo, was intuitive and simple user interface. This is because Akeneo software is not implemented for one person or department, but by design it works for multiple teams that are responsible for product data to a varying degree.
Integration with Odoo ERP software package
Our task was not only to assist in implementing the solution. The key aspect was its integration with Odoo ERP software package. In the case of Selsey, the ERP supported all areas of the company, in addition to partially acting as a PIM. The management and information transfer processes had to be mapped and transferred to Akeneo. Although there is an integration module available on the Akeneo App Store, it did not meet the client's objectives or Macopedia's quality standards. The client has a specific organization of activities within the company, which had to be respected during the project. Each decision was preceded by consultations and needs analysis. Ultimately, we designed the integration architecture and developed the interfaces.
Efficient Data Migration to PIM: Importance of Data Modeling and Attribute Definition
When moving data from the previous system to PIM, the client put a lot of work into modeling the data and defining attributes and attribute types so that other teams wouldn't encounter difficulties when they started sharing it.
Outcome:
Work on the implementation lasted from November 2020 to May 2021. The client can fully benefit from the capabilities of the Enterprise Edition (EE) from Akeneo, and the problems it had previously faced have been eliminated.
Among the most important and noticeable effects of implementing the solution was the improvement in the quality of data in the system. The structure is now better modeled, providing e-commerce with a structured and consistent product database. Teams working with the product can easily verify the status of e-store offer information, what information is missing and who is responsible for the given fields. In addition, managing, handling and adding data has been accelerated. As a result of the migration, the number of products posted on the e-commerce platform has increased significantly.
Openness to client needs was of great importance to the project, thus, the default operation of Akeneo has been modified. Regular and sale/outlet products were singled out as their handling flow across Selsey systems looks different. We also used our custom plugin that enables automatic translation of tens of thousands of products and attributes. Editors in Akeneo select the products and text attributes they want to translate and then choose the language of translation. At that time, the plugin connects to the Google Translate API. Such a solution is a great benefit from a business point of view – saving time and human resources, accelerated go-to-market process and facilitated sales in different markets and languages.
Highlights:
Dedicated business solutions
We personalized the Akeneo system accordingly to meet specific client requirements. One of the possibilities is to transform a simple product into a variant. We have also mapped in Akeneo the process of packing the product into packages, enabling the Selsey team to transfer data between PIM and ERP.
New products are ready for sale faster
One of the biggest benefits the client saw after the production launch of the system was a 3x increase in the number of products posted on the e-commerce platform.
This confirms how much value Akeneo brings to an organization. More and more people are recognizing the need to keep data up-to-date and of high quality across all places, with a PIM system becoming the natural choice.