This fashion designer and manufacturer is a global leader in the design, innovation, and marketing of fashion lifestyle and accessory products. With hundreds of stores worldwide and a strong global e-commerce business, the company’s products were sold to department stores and specialty retail stores in over 150 countries and 12 languages across the world through company-owned sales subsidiaries and a network of independent distributors.

Challenge

To cater to customers across the globe, the company localized their main website. Realizing the importance of product searchability on its website, the company also localized product information stored in over 50 data fields. The company produces four seasonal catalogs each year. Considering that the company adds thousands of new SKUs each season in addition to updating data for tens of thousands of existing SKUs, the product content translation effort represented a significant undertaking for the company’s content managers. Generating all product content including translated values in time for each season required a lot of manual effort and coordination and often resulted in data quality issues and missed deadlines.

To overcome these challenges typically associated with managing large SKU counts, the company decided to invest in a PIM and automate the product content translation and localization processes. They chose Akeneo PIM and StrikeTru’s Akeneo2GlobalLink Translation Connector.

Solution

The company was already using Translations.com for translation services, and its GlobalLink Project Director solution to manage all enterprise content translation projects. Users manually submitted batches of product data stored in excel files to GlobalLink Project Director to execute their translation related workflows. The cost and complexity involved in this semi-automated workflow was significant. There was a need for a solution that streamlined initiating, automating, controlling, tracking, and completing all aspects of content translation and localization workflows.

StrikeTru worked closely with the company and with the Akeneo team to deploy and integrate StrikeTru’s Translation Connector Akeneo2GlobalLink. With product data centrally managed in Akeneo PIM, the StrikeTru connector automated the collection and delivery of content to the GlobalLink system via APIs. Translated content was automatically retrieved and posted back into product data records stored in Akeneo PIM.

This powerful combination of StrikeTru’s Akeneo2GlobalLink Translation Connector and the extended localization workflow capabilities of GlobalLink Project Director gave this Akeneo customer a robust solution. One that enabled the company to deploy product content for markets around the globe with minimal effort and little IT involvement.

Result

Time Savings

Content managers no longer need to email excel files or process translations in periodic batches. Translations can be done continuously and in smaller chunks as product data gets prepared for publishing.

Cost Savings

Thanks to GlobalLink’s Translation Memory, phrases translated once are remembered and not charged for again. As a result, translating an increasing amount of product content doesn’t necessarily increase costs in a linear fashion. By automating translation processes, more work can be done with fewer resources, which also results in additional cost savings.

Enhanced Collaboration

For the eCommerce channel, translated content has to be approved by country specific content managers and translators. These people often need to look at other documents such as Lookbooks when approving translated content. The combination of Akeneo and StrikeTru’s Translation Connector make it easy to share product content including Lookbooks and product images with people across the enterprise. Such visibility with appropriate access controls promotes enhanced team collaboration and increases efficiency.

With this integrated solution in place, the company has better control over its product content translation and localization processes and the capability to support digital marketing and commerce initiatives more effectively.

StrikeTru Can Help Your Business Too

If you are facing product content management and/or localization challenges, StrikeTru can help you. We work closely with Akeneo PIM and Translations.com to solve our customers’ challenges and welcome an opportunity to assist you. For more information, check out our Akeneo2GlobalLink page. You may also contact us at [email protected]