PREPARE PRODUCT DATA FOR FURNITURE STORE WEKO ONLINE AND STATIONARY

The sustainably operating furniture store WEKO realized that the existing merchandise management system was getting on in years and that the stationary Commerce one had to incorporate the e-commerce structures. The extensive product data must be embedded in the company's data system in order to achieve a competitive position in line with market requirements.

Modern PIM facilitates the management of rich product data. The end customer makes ever increasing demands on product information. More product information leads to higher conversion and thus to higher sales. The motivation to introduce a PIM system is not necessarily linked to e-commerce. For the stationary Commerce required print catalogues are dependent on granularly coordinated information. Comprehensive product data becomes more important because several sales channels are used simultaneously.

The article creation in a modern PIM system is technically demanding and ties up internal resources that are lacking in the operative business. For this reason WEKO decided to use an external solution to clean, structure and prepare the numerous, unstructured complex product data received from various sources. The expertise of both sides could be optimally combined: WEKO employees are experts with knowledge in the furniture sector, but on the data side, experts from Onedot are in demand.

HOW ONEDOT HELPED

First, the existing product data, a mixture of basic data and manufacturer data, was prepared. For each manufacturer, the existing product data and product attributes were compared with newly requested manufacturer catalogs, for example using existing keys such as EAN or purchase order number. Duplicate entries or products posed additional enrichment challenges and there was no target data, only a target schema.

The missing product information had to be compensated. WEKO had a precise set of rules for the filling of standard attributes for furniture, such as colour area or material area, which determine how these attributes must be filled, depending on the product type.

The Onedot software was trained in different batches, and various other requirements made the training of the software and the processing of about 20 manufacturers per run a challenge. Thanks to the cooperation, the data supplied by suppliers in any format could be converted into the format required for the article category and imported into the PIM system in a very short time: WEKO was able to bring the products live.

THE RESULT

More than 200,000 products from almost 100 suppliers were enriched and the data processed. The foundation stone for the use of the product data in further channels was laid. The ambitious WEKO schedule was kept to and thus the advantages of the modern infrastructure could be used promptly. This enables the agile implementation of further innovations and strengthens WEKO as one of the market leaders in the Bavarian furniture market.