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Increased Productivity, repurposing one staff member
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Winning more tenders due to faster, more comprehensive quoting
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Created data architecture and improved data integrity
Why
Sebel is a specialist designer and manufacturer of furniture for the education sector. With over 13,000 products and many variants such as colors, fabrics, and materials, they have a complex product catalog to manage. Adding to the complexity, the range is ever-changing, with color palettes and styles updated each year to keep up with changing trends.
Sebel was operating with a difficult to use legacy system that was 20 years old. Their product information and assets were siloed across six separate systems. Each of these systems needed to be updated manually for changes such as new, discontinued or updated products. This led to errors and inaccuracy. Once the systems were out of sync, it was hard to determine which was the accurate record.
Additionally, Sebel wanted to be ready to move into eCommerce in the future. Which they knew would require a complete, accurate, well-structured set of product information at the foundation.
How
The project was 2-part. Firstly, working with Vesta eCommerce to collect and clean the product information, getting it into the right architecture and structure. Then populating the StrikeTru smallPIM with the clean data, and implementing new processes in the business using the smallPIM software.
Collecting and Cleansing the product data
Sebel and Vesta started together on a short series of workshops to define the architecture for the product catalog. These sessions included identifying the different product categories, Product attributes, and Product variants.
"We had no idea where to get started. But with Vesta, it was quite easy to work through it. Vesta guided us through the whole process and explained everything in a very easy to understand way."
From there, Sebel gathered the information identified from their different systems into a series of lengthy flat-file spreadsheets.
With the help of Vesta's transformation engine, the flat structured data was categorized into the architecture defined for both the PIM and any future eCommerce needs.
Also, codes needed to be created and assigned to all products, images named with product identifiers and color flows determined.
Once the data was assembled, cleansed, and structured, through integration, the product information and digital assets could flow directly from the Vesta platform into the StrikeTru smallPIM.
StrikeTru's smallPIM, powered by Akeneo
Striketru’s Vesta <> smallPIM connector, significantly reduced the time needed to set up the Sebel PIM solution and synchronize product updates coming from the Vesta platform. StrikeTru worked closely with Vesta to provide best practices in setting up smallPIM as the single source of truth for managing product and price data, digital assets, and reference data.
"smallPIM is so easy, so basic, and so user-friendly. It makes perfect sense to use it as a single source of truth for product data."
The Results
StrikeTru's smallPIM is now Sebel's central source of truth. It integrates with their other systems, keeping them all in sync automatically. They also have the data foundation in place to enter eCommerce and feed an online site or other channels and marketplaces from the PIM.
A commercial benefit of the new solutions has been winning more tenders due to being able to create quotes for customers instantly with real time information. Information for the quote is drawn directly from smallPIM, including images, colors, specifications and lead times. Time is no longer lost on searching for information or checking for accuracy.
The communication process with manufacturing has also been improved with that one quote document including all of the details needed for production.
For the product team, they are now able to easily identify missing product information or assets such as images or product weights for shipping. So they can work on filling those gaps to have a complete, accurate product catalog.
