DIGITAL PRODUCT DATA AS THE FIRST STEP TO SUCCESSFUL E-COMMERCE

Ortho-Walker AG has been selling specialist orthodontic material since 1988 and has established itself as the market leader in Switzerland. Thanks to its successful development, Ortho-Walker AG is well networked with orthodontists, laboratories and other institutions in the industry. The successful positioning of the company recently led to its takeover by Piemontana Holding AG, which is also the owner of Mikrona Technologie AG. Ortho-Walker AG will continue to operate as an independent brand. At the same time Ortho-Walker AG and Mikrona Technologie AG form together the Mikrona Group.

In the course of the company's history, Ortho-Walker AG has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to innovate. Currently, it is also playing a pioneering role in the context of the digitalisation of products and services: The self-imposed goal of offering dental technology and dental products online is setting new impulses within the industry. This pioneering achievement not only opens up a new sales channel, but also gives customers the opportunity to obtain information on the diverse product portfolio in advance. 

Before the concrete implementation of the webshop it is necessary to prepare the manufacturer information accordingly: The existing product data should be orientated to e-commerce instead of brick-and-mortar business. Up to now information is only available as continuous text and a variety of abbreviations are used. From the customer's point of view, this data cannot be consumed. For the product data onboarding the Onedot platform is used: Within this process relevant attributes are extracted, abbreviations are resolved and a uniform structure is implemented. In this way, Ortho-Walker AG creates the prerequisites on the data side for a successful entry into e-commerce.

HOW ONEDOT HELPED

The advent of a web shop changes the requirements for the preparation of manufacturer information: A uniform categorization as well as the availability of the most important features as filters is needed. In addition used abbreviations have to be resolved. Ortho-Walker AG provides the existing product information as CSV files, a list of abbreviations and a target data structure, the product data onboarding is done by Onedot.

First the data is loaded into the Onedot platform and read into the software. The platform is a web application with an easy to understand user interface. This is followed by the extraction: In concrete terms, this means that the abbreviations, technical terms and technical specifications are extracted automatically from the existing continuous text and made available in a structured form. The manual effort for this step would have been an extensive effort for the employees of Ortho-Walker AG. 

Subsequently, the prepared manufacturer data is integrated into the predefined structure of Ortho-Walker AG in the course of attribute mapping. This creates the conditions for the simple import into the webshop system later on. The predefined categorization serves as a basis for the structure and allows filtering according to certain criteria. In this way, Ortho-Walker AG can create a customer-oriented digital shopping experience, and thus also increase the conversion rate, i.e. ultimately the revenue. 

The consumable product data is made available to Ortho-Walker AG for import into the web shop in the correct structure and format. By adhering to the target data structure, the product data could be directly integrated into the systems of Ortho-Walker AG.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is used for the steps in the product data onboarding process. The specific algorithms were developed at Onedot and take over various tasks. After each intermediate step, the user can give feedback thus training the AI: A confidence level is also given when the processed data is output. This serves to show how secure the software was in the respective assignment. Therefore the user can check purposefully and override it if necessary. The AI learns through every user interaction and the quality of the output is continuously improved accordingly.

During the entire process, Ortho-Walker AG was able to check the status and evaluate individual steps via the Onedot web application. This interactive design leads to a better traceability of the results.

THE RESULT

The unstructured information from the manufacturers' product catalogues was processed according to the product data model to enable direct import into the systems of Ortho-Walker AG. Using the Onedot platform, more than 35'000 SKUs were processed and then assigned against almost 50 attributes.

After the sophisticated extraction of attributes from continuous text, only a few feedback iterations were necessary in the subsequent mapping to quickly adapt the results to the specifications of Ortho-Walker AG.

Through product data onboarding, the information is available in a consumable format. This preparation has created the necessary conditions for successful e-commerce. In addition, the employees were relieved by the reduction of costly and repetitive data management. 

By using Onedot, Ortho-Walker AG was once again able to prove its willingness to innovate and is well positioned to meet future challenges resulting from digital change.