A fusion of Shopware and Pimcore. Does it work? Pimcore is a multifunctional platform for managing product information, media, and customer relations. In turn (and also), Shopware is an open-source e-commerce platform that is designed to manage discounts, provide SEO and streamline the user experience. So if Shopware already lets you manage your product portfolio, why add Pimcore to the mix? It turns out that the two platforms complement each other perfectly. How does this work? Let’s find out!
Why is it worth using Pimcore?
Pimcore offers simple and precise management of the roles of employees and contractors
If you need your employees to have different levels of access to data, Pimcore will let you set up personal authorizations.
The same functionality helps you manage your cooperation with different enterprises and teams by eliminating downtime and idleness; for instance, when subcontractors or new team members can’t perform their tasks because they’re waiting for their authorizations to arrive.
Most importantly, this functionality of Pimcore secures your business from unauthorized persons accidentally being granted access to sensitive data or your internal know-how.
Workflow definitions ensure fluid product management
Pimcore can simulate the lifecycle of products, from the initial import of basic data from an ERP system to product archiving. The result is a clear and reliable administration of your product data.
In practice, this functionality shortens the induction time for new employees and minimizes errors in recurring processes.
Guarantees the quality and consistency of data
Pimcore is your single source of product data, which can be published across multiple sales channels. This can range from sales campaigns on your own social media pages and the different language versions of your store, through your partners’ sales channels, to marketplaces (Amazon, eBay and Allegro) and comparison websites (Homebook, Google Shopping, and Ceneo).
Regardless of how many channels you use to reach your customers, they’ll always have access to up-to-date product information. Furthermore, you only need to update the information once in Pimcore, so your administrator or content editor won’t have to waste time switching between tools.
What’s more, Pimcore can manage not only the colour, dimensions, and other product parameters, but also – thanks to the DAM module – all the marketing materials, including your product descriptions, photos, videos, manuals, or pamphlets in various formats.
This means that two different teams – for instance, marketing and design – can synchronize their workflows to store images in all formats in the same place.
This helps to eliminate errors and confusion resulting from publishing different photos of the same product between different channels.
Supports your international sales
Pimcore contains a module for translation management, which means you can integrate the platform with other translation management tools, such as those provided by Translations.com or the GlobalLink TMS (Translation Memory System).
You can deliver consistent translations on time, even with a dispersed team or with translators working for different agencies (this is where Pimcore’s ability to assign specific roles and permissions comes into play again).
You can also translate and localize your product attributes and convert the currencies to suit individual language versions and more. This helps to reduce the number of returns and queries coming to your customer service team, should the data for a given country be incorrect.
Why is it also worth using Shopware for e-commerce?
Shopware is flexible
In the words of Maciej Pałubicki, CEO of Tandemite (formerly Blue Paprica), ‘Shopware is universal. It can be implemented flexibly in both large and small enterprises in all industries’ – quoted from an interview for Mam Start-Up.
Shopware is the cornerstone of B2B services (ThyssenKrupp) and stores in many different industries, such as interiors and living (Paulman), fashion (Bijou Brigitte), and food (M&M’s). Shopware also boasts of case studies in the fields of cosmetics (Yope), products for children, and electronics.
Shopware is a fully functional solution for both large brands, such as the Discovery Channel, and small or local businesses, such as a Polish online tea store, for which we’ve had the pleasure to lead a project as a silver partner. The implementation of Shopware for teaverso.pl was a resounding success.
Customisable with plugins
One of the many ways that Shopware supports e-commerce is a rich selection of plugins, which are ready to use after just a simple configuration process.
You can browse the full list of plugins for Shopware and select your favourite ones, to customize the system.
Your choices include:
- B2B tools that allow you to implement a price-on-request functionality, switch views between net and gross prices and restrict the availability of products to selected groups of customers
- Integration with payment systems, from PayPal, through Klarna and Amazon Pay, to courier services including DHL, UPS, and GLS
Customise the plugins to fit the tools and environment that you operate in.
Improves the online visibility of your store with extensive SEO tools
Filling in the basic parameters related to SEO, such as the meta title, alternative photo descriptions, or friendly URLs, is only one of the nine strengths of Shopware.
In addition, Shopware can optimize the internal redirections on your website. This lets you refer customers to similar or related products, in order to streamline cross-selling and keep customers browsing in your store for longer.
Shopware also provides you with tools for website map generation to support indexing (which in turn governs how the product subpages appear in Google) – which is no small feat for stores that offer hundreds or thousands of products.
Other exciting features include optimization tools for PageSpeed (one of the top factors in Google rankings) that help your store appear higher up in search results and shorten the time it takes for your website to load, thus avoiding the risk of impatient customers leaving your store before they’ve even started browsing.
Supports your marketing activities
Shopware supports the increasingly popular ROPO purchases (research online, purchase offline – or the other way around) with tools designed for both online and physical stores, which you can add to a product sheet using a plugin. This will allow your customers to buy your products wherever they find it the most convenient to do so.
Shopware makes it easier to generate vouchers and exclude specific products from coupons. The system also offers a discount management functionality. You can set up the rules of each discount using a single tool, again thanks to a plugin.
In this way, all the rules are stored in the same place, which lets you avoid overlaps. You can also analyze the purchase statistics to help you optimize future discounts.
The fusion of Shopware and Pimcore: what are the benefits?
International sales tailored to local markets
We’ve already mentioned how Pimcore supports the translation and localization of product parameters, depending on the units and currencies used on a target market. It also offers a multisite functionality.
With this, you can create different versions of your product portfolio to suit specific markets from the same administrator panel; for instance, in order to sell particular products exclusively in a few selected countries. This functionality is provided by Shopware. It is then integrated with the vendors and international payment services (such as PayPal),
to better suit the preferences of local customers by offering deliveries and payments with the methods they’re familiar with. This means you’ll find it easier to acquire customers, even if you’re a foreign vendor.
Management of channels from a single panel
Pimcore is a single source of up-to-date information and media for all your products. Regardless of how big your team is, centralizing the data helps you to avoid errors and costs that can occur due to inefficient communication or dispersed documents.
The centralized data can be published in any channel and connected via an API with your contractors’ websites and marketplaces, including Amazon, eBay and Allegro.
What’s more, the data will always be up-to-date across all channels. If you change the information about a given product in Pimcore, all the new descriptions, parameters, and photos will appear on every channel at the same time. This saves you from spending time updating the statuses separately in each channel.
In turn, Shopware complements this functionality by adding the option to choose the channels for each country, allowing you to adjust your portfolio to local markets.
Better user experience
Pimcore’s DAM module, which is designed to store any and all digital assets related to products, from photos and videos, through manuals to additional files, keeps your brand consistent, regardless of the language version of the channel you publish them on.
As with other product information, all media related to the products are also centralized. What does this mean for your business? A simple and recognizable brand image and improved trust on the part of your customers.
There’s yet another way to save time for your system administrators and content managers. The files stored in DAM can be categorized and described with metadata, in order to make them easier to find. This is useful, for example, when subcontracting artists to create new product visualizations.
You can also use DAM to convert photos and videos into any format you want – no external tools are needed. However, if you decide to edit the local files, you can synchronize them with Pimcore Digital Edit to overwrite their old versions on the platform the moment that you’re done editing.
Combining this feature with the Shopware extensions gives users a smooth shopping experience. For example, the plugins can remember the products that were added to a cart by each user, autofill the fields in a form (shipping address, etc.), or automatically generate invoices and product availability notifications.
Your customers may not even notice these quality-of-life changes at first – but they’ll appreciate them immediately, once they visit your competitor’s e-store and compare their lower UX standard to that of your store.
This positive shopping experience and easy-to-follow transactions will ensure a steady flow of returning customers. According to Amazon Web Services, up to 88% of customers will not return to a store if they were unsatisfied with their previous shopping experience.
Pimcore and Shopware in practice: case studies
How does the fusion of Pimcore and Shopware work in the real world? Let’s take a look at three case studies.
Digitisation in the Kaiser manufacturing company (electrical installations)
The German company Kaiser had a Shopware-based store. However, they encountered a problem with the scalability of their PIM system.
The system could no longer handle the company’s distribution across a growing number of sales channels. Therefore, Kaiser decided to implement Pimcore’s PIM and DAM. As a result, the company migrated and harmonized over 500 attributes and 15,000 data sets.
Management of nearly 15,000 products with 50,000 photos at Hermann Historica (collectible auctions)
The Hermann Historica auction house also needed to solve the problem with scalability. This time, however, the goal was to increase the number of annual transactions. In the meantime, their team had to manage 15,000 objects categorised by historians and described in detail, through a workflow containing... a whopping 16 states.
Pimcore’s PIM and DAM now help Hermann Historica to manage this product information and to redirect it to the ERP system and its distribution channels – from a B2C store to printed catalogues
Large-scale personalisation of products from SCHLEIFRING GmbH (manufacturing & electronics)
SCHLEIFRING GmbH wanted to allow its customers to personalise products using a modular system. This meant no less than a separate product for every order, from a brand operating in 20 countries with over 3000 customers!
That’s why SCHLEIFRING GmbH decided to use the Pimcore platform to store data about the components, the combination rules, and other relationships.
The result was a product configurator consistent with the brand’s identity. The website has since been integrated with the Shopware platform and an SAP system.
Effective multichannel sales with a fusion of Shopware and Pimcore
As you can see, the combination of Shopware and Pimcore brings spectacular results. The two platforms complement each other perfectly, giving you a much-needed advantage over your competition.
Have you decided that the fusion of Shopware and Pimcore is just what you need? Or maybe you’re not yet convinced? Contact us! We’ll be glad to answer all your questions and help you choose the best solution for your business. Everything will be done at your own pace – because we always have time for you.
