Press Release
Jena/Leipzig - For the upgrade of its product information management system, the Christian publisher St. Benno Verlag decided to call on the expertise of the digital agency dotSource. The existing Community Edition developed by the French software provider Akeneo was to be replaced with the more powerful Serenity Enterprise Edition. Despite complex challenges, dotSource’s certified Akeneo consultants were able to help the publisher and mail order company set up a future-proof product data management system by means of a tailor-made middleware.
Customers depend on reliable product information when shopping online. For the purpose of creating high-quality, enriched data sets, product information management (PIM) tools help manage and structure large amounts of product data and distribute it to the various relevant systems. These PIM tools are particularly valuable for publishers and mail order companies like St. Benno Verlag, as they manage a wide range of product families and categories (books, non-book items and products from other publishers) in their online shops.
From Good to Excellent Product Data Management
Up until the beginning of 2022, the publisher with headquarters in Leipzig (Saxony) had used the Community Edition of Akeneo's PIM system to manage its product data. However, it was necessary to migrate to the more powerful Serenity Enterprise Edition in order to meet the complex requirements encountered in the mail order business.
As opposed to the free Community Edition, the Serenity Enterprise Edition comes with user-friendly digital asset management features for handling product-related media files such as images, data sheets and audio files. Another feature was of particular relevance to St. Benno Verlag, playing a crucial role in the company's decision: Through reference entities, Akeneo makes it possible to compile and enrich certain recurring information centrally, which is then shared between multiple products. This means that information on seals of quality, for example, does not have to be managed individually for each product record, but is obtained from the associated reference entity.
Tailor-Made Middleware for Optimal Data Import
During the migration to the new PIM system, the large number of individual changes to the existing Community Edition posed a challenge to the dotSource experts. Since these were not supported by the Serenity Enterprise Edition, they had to be replaced as part of the system upgrade. To achieve this, the dotSource PIM team examined the functional logic of the customisations and subsequently worked out a sensible way of replacing them – without affecting data import, causing downtime or destroying the established data workflows.
Ultimately, it was decided to work with a tailor-made middleware that can be used to automatically assign product families and categories based on defined rules. All sets of rules were implemented in such a way that the team at St. Benno Verlag can respond quickly and independently to changes in requirements in the future.
Convincing Results as the Basis for Further Collaboration
By working together with dotSource, it was possible to ensure successful data onboarding with the help of the tailor-made middleware. Throughout the integration into the existing system landscape, the data quality of the more than 450,000 product records (with numbers on the rise) was maintained and even improved owing to new features for automatic data import and digital asset management.
»Thanks to dotSource's extensive PIM expertise, we were able to take our product data management to a completely new level and ensure high-quality data. As a result, we are well positioned for further growth of our product portfolio,« Stephan Radig, Head of E-Commerce at St. Benno Buch und Zeitschriften Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, comments on the collaboration.
In the coming years, St. Benno Verlag plans to onboard additional suppliers to expand the wide range of products available in its online shop. dotSource will support the publisher in mastering the associated challenges and continuously optimising its Akeneo architecture.
Want to learn more? I'm looking forward to hearing from you!
Contact Form
