An online marketing and web design agency, Astral Web also specializes in Magento commerce implementations. For one of their clients, the agency wanted to customize Akeneo PIM to improve PIM user experience and speed up product setup and maintenance tasks.

Challenge

The client sold products via B2B and B2C channels and product content needed to be shared with three different sales platforms – B2B, B2C, and CMS websites. Though the total product count was not high, the product attribute count was very high (over 500). The eCommerce website needed most of these attributes, but the B2B site needed a much smaller subset of data.

Products were typically released to the B2B channel first. New product setup and enrichment activities were initially focused on meeting the requirements of the B2B channel. The users wanted the ability to see only B2B specific attributes. However, Akeneo PIM does not provide that feature out of the box, i.e. Akeneo does not allow a user to specify what product attributes are relevant (or not) for a given channel for data management purposes. It was very frustrating for users to have to scroll up and down a long list of product attributes to find and complete the ones relevant to the B2B channel. In addition to user frustration, this also meant there would be delays in launching new products to market.

Solution

Astral Web asked StrikeTru to review its requirements and customize Akeneo PIM. Astral Web wanted the ability to leverage the Akeneo user interface to configure product attribute visibility by channel. Out of the box, Akeneo provides a standard screen to configure what attributes are relevant for a given product family and for a given sales channel. StrikeTru extended that existing feature to allow a user to specify (with a click) if an attribute should be hidden when completing product setup for a given channel. The configurations are persisted in the database on a real-time basis, and then retrieved on-demand to hide specific attributes when entering data using Akeneo’s standard Product Edit Form. StrikeTru delivered the custom code and install instructions for Astral Web to self-deploy the customization in its environments. StrikeTru also trained Astral Web users to help ensure they leverage the customized feature effectively.

Result

StrikeTru and Astral Web were able to provide the client a much-needed usability enhancement in a relatively short timeframe. Setting up and maintaining product data for the B2B channel takes much less time than before.

“StrikeTru quickly customized Akeneo to our exact needs, and helped eliminate a significant pain point for our client. We look forward to working with them in future to leverage their domain and Akeneo/Magento platform expertise” — Ori Tzvielli, Astral Web

StrikeTru routinely partners with digital marketing agencies to deploy modern PIM and DAM capabilities to boost eCommerce and digital transformation programs. If you’re a marketing agency looking to solve your clients’ data management challenges or complement your service offerings, we can help. Please contact us for more information on how we can partner.