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Heritage Parts Centre Supercharges Product Experience With Akeneo

With Akeneo PIM, we now have a unified data structure that has restored faith in our brand and increased our conversion rates.

Barney Dines CEO

At a Glance

Challenges

  • Errors and inconsistencies in product information led to a loss of customer trust.
  • Extensive and varied product catalog made timely enrichment and updates challenging.
  • Customers had difficulty finding specific products due to poor product information, resulting in a subpar experience.

Solutions

  • Efficient product creation and enrichment processes.
  • Implemented a single source of truth that allowed for accurate information, restoring customer faith and increasing conversion rates.
  • Improved accuracy and consistency of product information enhanced overall product experience.

Navigating Roadblocks in Product Management

Heritage Parts Centre is a renowned classic car parts supplier based on the South Coast of England, boasting a large and varied catalog of parts and accessories for cherished Volkswagen, Porsche, and Land Rover vehicles. The company faced significant challenges in product management and eCommerce due to its extensive product range and the technical complexity of its catalog.

Heritage Parts Centre was eager to bring its large and diverse catalog of classic car parts to enthusiasts online but struggled to accurately and consistently recreate that catalog via its eCommerce store. Barney Dines, CEO of Heritage Parts Centre, noted that prior to using a PIM solution, the company’s highly technical and varied catalog was difficult to enrich and maintain. Errors and inconsistencies plagued product data, causing customers to struggle to find the parts they needed and lose confidence in the company’s products.

Demand from their contact center teams grew as the company could not update products and correct these errors and inconsistencies frequently enough, meaning that customers continued to find incorrect or outdated information when shopping on the Heritage Parts Centre eCommerce site. This also caused the company’s time-to-market to slow to a crawl as it was unable to add new products to its catalog in a timely fashion. So, to navigate around the obstacles that blocked the company’s path to success, Heritage Parts Centre turned to Akeneo for help with its product information problems.

Thanks to Akeneo PIM, we can now offer a dynamic digital experience, allowing customers to shop by vehicle, part type, and many other criteria.

Barney Dines CEO

Giving Heritage Parts Centre a New Enrichment Engine

The first task for the PIM team was to radically accelerate time-to-market by updating its product enrichment processes, which led to increased accuracy and consistency in its product information. To do so, the company turned to Akeneo PIM’s accelerated workflow capabilities, including automation and a business rules engine, bulk actions and editing, and more.

According to Dines, implementing Akeneo PIM had a noted impact on the company’s product enrichment processes and the product information presented to customers. With the improved product information in place, Heritage Parts Centre could also more easily update and correct errors and inconsistencies in product information, which helped win back customers who had lost faith in the brand. It also allowed the company to offer a more dynamic digital experience to its customers shopping online, allowing them to shop by vehicle, by type of part, by manufacturer, and by many other criteria.

Akeneo PIM Supercharges Heritage Parts Centre Digital Operations

Heritage Parts Centre’s adoption of Akeneo not only enhanced the accuracy and consistency of their product information but also revolutionized how they manage and update their product catalog.

In particular, Heritage Parts Centre was able to enable:

  • Accurate, consistent product information: Before Akeneo, errors in product information were causing Heritage Parts Centre customers to lose faith in the brand and abandon planned purchases. After beginning their PX journey, however, the company was able to rectify these errors and inconsistencies in product data, helping them win back classic car enthusiasts’ trust.
  • Constant enrichment and updates: Implementing Akeneo allowed the company to radically rethink how it adds new products and enriches product information for existing products. Rather than updating products once a year, Heritage Parts Centre can now do so “nearly instantly and constantly,” Dines said, allowing the company to accelerate time-to-market and improve its product data accuracy.
  • Increased conversion rates and revenue: What do you get when you combine increased accuracy in product information with nearly constant product information updates? A dynamically improved product experience and increased digital revenue! Dines noted that the company had seen an “organic uplift in conversion rates” since implementing Akeneo, thanks in large part to the company’s improved ability to “present information to buyers that can confirm their buying decision.”

Key Results:

  • Unified Data Structure: Implementing a single source of truth restored customer faith in the brand.
  • Improved Accuracy and Consistency: Enhanced product information dramatically improved customer experience.
  • Accelerated Time-to-Market: The ability to instantly update product information made the company more efficient and responsive.

The project involved managing approximately 30,000 products and required the alignment of all stakeholders, from IT to marketing. The integration of Akeneo PIM with Magento and their ERP system, Sage, was crucial to ensure seamless data flows and synchronization across the company’s eCommerce ecosystem.

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