The PCP.COM Group has been active in online retailing since 1998. Today, the PCP.COM Group is one of the leading Swiss multichannel providers for computers and home electronics. The group includes the brands STEG Electronics AG, which operates both an online shop and specialist shops with 17 branches, and the technology online shop techmania.ch.
In order to survive in this competitive market, which is characterised by very large international players and high pressure on margins, PCP.COM relies on a broad product range that is always up-to-date and of high quality.
The topicality of the product range is a key element in the electronics market. This is another reason why sustainable success can only be achieved if a large number of products from a wide range of areas can be offered in high quality at competitive prices. But how can a medium-sized company offer a broad product range with products in the desired e-commerce quality quickly and automatically?
When the PCP.COM Group launched its first online shop in 1998, they were among the first to invest in an e-commerce structure instead of expanding stationary trade and thus became a just-in-time specialist. For a long time, the approximately 15,000 offers could be maintained manually by means of an in-house PIM development, thus ensuring a high quality of the offers.
With the takeover of further brands and the constant further development of the product range, the effort involved in the manual maintenance of the range could no longer be afforded. PCP.COM therefore developed its own onboarding solution, which was composed of the suppliers' basic data and additional content from the content provider CNET. Within a short period of time, approximately 100,000 offers of varying quality could be added to the already existing 15,000 offers. The difference in quality was mainly due to the fact that the content was not always available and subsequent improvements and additions to the content could not be taken into account.
In order to further expand the broad product range and to bring the quality of the described offers back to the high level that had previously been achieved thanks to manual maintenance, PCP.COM relied on the product data onboarding solution from Onedot. In contrast to PCP.COM's own development, this solution can automatically enrich data and take into account subsequently added content, as the automation process is repeated regularly. This means that the data on the products offered in the online shop is regularly updated, which in turn contributes to a very good buying experience.
The one who can offer online faster wins. So that the products can go online quickly, PCP.COM uses the rump data of the price entry and content data of the supplier, which are then enriched with additional data from a pure content provider. This process is repeated regularly, because certain data are sometimes not yet available or they change.
Thanks to Onedot, the desired e-commerce quality can thus be guaranteed across a broad and deep product range. Although certain niche assortments or exclusive products are still and will continue to be maintained manually, PCP.COM uses Onedot software for all automated processes. This applies in particular to the ongoing expansion with new product groups and suppliers, but also to the automatic processing of additional attributes. This is the only way to achieve a significantly higher output and an accurate result in a much higher quality.
