Case Study: Pierce

After demoing four solutions, Pierce elected to go with Akeneo PIM. The solution’s user-friendly interface and long list of features appealed to the company, Nordh said, as it was previously using an inefficient and difficult-to-manage combination of in-house PIM and spreadsheets to manage product data.

All told, Pierce manages about 200,000 SKUs, already a daunting task, and plans were in place to even further expand the company’s product offering. Fortunately, the flexibility and capacity for growth offered by Akeneo have helped the company manage a large amount of products simply and easily. Pierce has also used the solution to define roles and institute more efficient workflows in order to boost marketer productivity and slash time-to-market, bringing new products online more quickly by only showing employees the tasks they needed to complete.

Six employees now use the software to enrich product information, while a team of 10 work to translate information into one of 12 languages Pierce does business in. Customer service has also started to use Akeneo PIM to rectify errors in product information or solve issues raised by customers.

Creating a centralized home for product information

Before implementing Akeneo PIM, Pierce’s product information was siloed in spreadsheets and trapped in legacy, “home-brewed” solutions. This slowed down the product enrichment process and led to slow time-to-market. By implementing a PIM solution, the company centralized access to product information, creating a single source of truth for accurate and compelling product information.

Speeding up sales

Because the implementation of a PIM solution provided the company with a single source of truth, Pierce’s product-information team no longer spends valuable time dealing with errors and confusion in product information. Instead, employees are free to focus more on creating compelling and creative product descriptions that lead to increased conversion rates. As a result, team productivity increased by 100%, according to Nordh.

Getting ready to grow

With barriers to growth like siloed product information and a slow time-to-market eliminated, Pierce is free to continue its history of impressive growth. Nordh said that, while it’s difficult to determine the exact cost and monetary benefits of implementing PIM, the company has seen notable increases in revenue thanks to decreased time-to-market and increased productivity, and expects to recoup its investment in Akeneo PIM within three years.