Butlers, a homeware retailer has announced its selection of Akeneo to manage product information as part of its evolving omnichannel strategy.
With 113 stores across 11 countries, the homeware specialist recently began improving its online operations. With Akeneo’s product information management system it has been to take its store online in the space of eight weeks. Launched in 1999, Butlers has added around 3,000 new product items per year and its catalogue now features around 15,000 products across a wide range of channels, including its eCommerce website, store and social media.
Prior to onboarding Akeneo’s PIM, Butlers faced the challenge of managing their product inventory as efficiently as possible. Since implementing PIM, Butlers can now access identical accurate product data for their online and offline product assortment. This has reduced time to market and boosted productivity across their team of 800 employees, unlocking rapid growth and scale globally.
Currently leveraging around 20 per cent of the PIM, Butlers primarily uses the tool for product information and descriptions, producing rapid benefits. For example, the batch function combines products of one type into groups. Attributes such as the capacity of cups (in millilitres) can be changed or updated within seconds for any number of similar products. Previously, the process required each individual to be updated individually, which when carried out across whole product ranges becomes a hugely time-intensive process. With 15,000 items in the product catalogue, Akeneo’s PIM solution produced immediate time and cost savings, as well as creating the potential to continuously improve its product data strategy.
Butlers intend to use the PIM for customer support in the future, where the sales staff in-store will also gradually benefit from the user-friendly PIM via handheld devices, improving their productivity. Using the PIM, staff will be able to provide engaging, tailored recommendations, improving customer service and streamlining the omnichannel experience.
“A key aspect of why we chose Akeneo is the extremely high variability of the PIM. It allows you to individually control channels and adapt the product inventory to the marketplace available in that specific country, as well as in several languages” explained Dr Lasse Meißner, head of Butlers Digital. This requirement for product descriptions, becomes invaluable due to cultural differences – “Now our product descriptions with approximately 350 attributes – which includes colours, shapes or designs, for example – are relevant to every country, region, marketplace or language.”
Share