Who uses Akeneo? A closer look at companies that depend on Akeneo every day

Many companies used to wrestle with spreadsheets and spend hours on product updates until Akeneo showed them a more efficient path and transformed their workflow. By using this PIM system, you can focus more on growing your business and less on the headaches of managing product information.

In this article, you'll learn about:

• which types of companies benefit most from Akeneo PIM,
• how Akeneo supports manufacturers, distributors, and e-commerce businesses,
• when centralizing product information delivers the greatest value,
• which product catalogue challenges a PIM system can solve,
• how to recognize when your organization needs Akeneo or another PIM solution.

5 types of businesses using Akeneo: Who are they?

Businesses today work in a busy and complex environment, making it important to handle product information well. Here, we'll identify the types of businesses for which this task is particularly important.

Different types of organizations use Akeneo in different ways because they vary in their data sources, catalogue structures, and the sales channels through which they publish product information.

What they all have in common is the need for a single, reliable source of product information that can feed multiple systems and sales channels.

Retailers

The specific challenges they face: Have you ever wondered how major retailers manage product listings without error? These companies have vast product catalogs that require constant updates.

Imagine a clothing retailer with thousands of products, each with multiple variations like color, size, and style. Every time a new season's collection is launched, this retailer needs to update the product information across their in-store displays, catalogs, marketing materials, or website. Without a centralized system, this can be chaotic, and customers might receive outdated or incorrect information, resulting in dissatisfaction or returns.

How Akeneo makes a difference for them: Akeneo helps manage all the product information in one place. When the marketing team needs to update a product description, they do it once in Akeneo, and the update is automatically reflected across all channels. Customers always have access to the latest and most reliable information.

In practice, PIM delivers the greatest value to retailers managing large numbers of SKUs, product variants, and multiple sales channels where the same product information must remain accurate, consistent, and up to date.

eCommerce companies

The specific challenges they face: Unlike traditional brick-and-mortar retailers, eCommerce companies rely entirely on digital platforms to showcase and sell their products or products of various sellers. So, the difference lies in how they interact with their customers.

This means that every piece of product information must be not only up-to-date but also engaging and appealing. It plays a crucial role in attracting online shoppers, reducing uncertainty and influencing purchasing decisions as they typically cannot physically interact with products.

What types of product information can be managed? There are several. For fashion brands, we refer to sizes, colors, and styles across collections. Food and beverage companies focus on ingredients, nutritional information, and regulatory compliance. Electronics companies, on the other hand, keep track of technical specifications and feature lists.

How Akeneo makes a difference for them: Akeneo enables e-commerce businesses to manage product data efficiently, create customized attributes, and standardize product listings from various sellers, ensuring that all product information is complete and consistent for a better customer experience.

In an ecommerce context, PIM technology is used to enrich product data – e.g. adding detailed descriptions, high-quality images, videos, specifications – which not only helps in making individual products more appealing but also enhances the overall brand perception. For an example of how an e-commerce platform and a PIM system can work together in a multichannel architecture, read our article “Shopware and Pimcore combined: Effective multichannel sales”.

In e-commerce, Akeneo serves as a central source of product information, enabling data to be distributed consistently across online stores, marketplaces, and other digital sales channels.

For more information on how Akeneo PIM can benefit your business, reach out to us today. Our team is your perfect ride partner.

Manufacturers

The specific challenges they face: Manufacturers are at the heart of product creation. They design, produce, and distribute a wide range of items, from electronics to machinery, each with a vast array of details that need to be meticulously tracked. These details can include technical specifications, compliance documents, assembly instructions, and material compositions – far more complex than the product information retailers usually handle.

To sum up, while retailers focus on making sure their products are well-represented to customers with appealing product descriptions and eye-catching images, manufacturing companies need to manage a deeper layer of information.

Let's take, for example, a company that manufactures industrial machinery, such as a high-tech drill press. This product might have numerous parts, each with its own specifications – like the type of metal used, the motor's power output, and safety certifications. Not only do these details need to be correct and consistent across all company documents, but they also need to be easily accessible to engineers, sales teams, and customers.

How Akeneo makes a difference for them: Akeneo PIM not only helps manufacturers keep this information organized and consistent but also streamlines the entire production process by ensuring everyone is on the same page. This leads to fewer errors, faster product launches, and ultimately, a smoother operation from factory floor to marketplace. If you manage a large product catalogue or want to better understand the role of PIM systems in manufacturing and distribution businesses, be sure to read our article “PIM for manufacturers and distributors”.

For manufacturers, one of the greatest advantages is the ability to manage technical specifications, product variants, documentation, and the information required by sales, marketing, and business partners within a single, consistent data model.

B2B companies

The specific challenges they face: One of the biggest challenges for them is managing vast catalogs of products that may have multiple versions or customizations.

B2B businesses, which focus on bulk sales or specialized goods, must offer detailed and complex information, including technical specifications and compliance standards, to help customers decide on a purchase. Unlike e-commerce companies, which might focus on appealing product descriptions and eye-catching images, B2B companies need to emphasize functionality, reliability, and compliance.

Moreover, B2B transactions often involve longer sales cycles, multiple decision-makers, and complex pricing structures.

For example, a company selling industrial pumps might offer different models based on pressure ratings, materials, and sizes. Each of these variations requires precise and accurate information to ensure that the customer orders exactly what they need. Without a centralized system like Akeneo, this information can easily become disorganized, leading to errors, delays, and dissatisfied customers.

How Akeneo makes a difference for them: Akeneo helps B2B companies keep track of all the necessary details, ensuring that sales teams have access to up-to-date product information, which they can easily share with potential business clients. They maintain consistency and accuracy in all their communications, regardless of how complex their product offerings are. If you are planning a broader B2B sales transformation, be sure to read our article “B2B digitalization: Why should you move sales online?”, where we explain how an e-commerce platform, a PIM system, and process automation work together to support sales growth.

Akeneo is particularly valuable for B2B organizations managing product catalogues with numerous variants, technical specifications, language versions, or information tailored to different groups of business customers.

Distributors

The specific challenges they face: The complexity of handling diverse product data from different suppliers is what sets distributors apart. 

Distributors play a unique role in the supply chain, acting as the middlemen between manufacturers and retailers or end customers. They are all about managing and moving products between these two ends.

They handle vast inventories of products from their network of retailers. This means they deal with an enormous amount of product information from different sources, each with its own format and level of detail. Each supplier might provide information in a different way – imagine a distributor who supplies electronic components to various electronics stores. They might receive product data from one supplier that has complex databases full of technical specifications, another that only provides a brief and basic description, and yet another that offers data in a foreign language.

Without a system like Akeneo, the distributor would have to manually sort through all this information, translate it if necessary, and then format it for their own catalogs or sales channels so that it can be easily understood by their customers, who might be retailers, other businesses, or even consumers. This process is not only time-consuming but also prone to errors.

How Akeneo makes a difference for them: PIM Akeneo simplifies and automates much of this work. It allows distributors to collect all the product information in one central location, regardless of the source or format. The system can automatically standardize the data, ensuring that every product is described in a consistent way. For instance, Akeneo can help a distributor ensure that every electronic component in their catalog has the same format for technical specifications, making it easier for customers to compare products.

Moreover, Akeneo allows distributors to enrich the product information. If a supplier provides a basic description, the distributor can easily add more details, such as images, user manuals, or compliance information. This enriched data not only helps the distributor offer better service to their customers but also makes it easier for retailers to sell the products, as they have all the necessary information at their fingertips. This unique need to aggregate, standardize, and enrich diverse data from multiple suppliers is why Akeneo PIM is particularly valuable for distributors.

This is why distributors are among the organizations that can benefit most from a PIM system, improving the quality and consistency of product data while significantly reducing the time needed to prepare products for publication.

How do you know when your company needs Akeneo PIM?

Akeneo is worth considering when managing product information begins to slow down sales growth or make day-to-day operations more difficult. This typically happens as the number of products, sales channels, markets, or suppliers increases.

Common signs include:

• product data is stored across multiple spreadsheets and systems,
• the same information has to be updated manually in several places,
• the catalogue contains a large number of SKUs and product variants,
• product data comes from multiple manufacturers or suppliers,
• the business publishes products in multiple languages or markets,
• sales, marketing, and e-commerce teams work with different versions of product information,
• preparing products for publication takes increasingly more time.

The more of these challenges your organisation faces, the greater the value that a centralized PIM system such as Akeneo can provide.

Insight from Tandemite implementations

“In the PIM projects we have delivered, the first noticeable improvement was the speed at which new products could be introduced and published across multiple sales channels. Teams also gained the ability to expand product offerings without increasing the amount of manual work. That was the fastest and most tangible benefit our clients experienced.” - Maciej Pałubicki, CEO of Tandemite

Summary: Which companies are a good fit for Akeneo PIM?

If managing product data is taking up more and more of your team’s time, Akeneo can help streamline the process. The system is particularly well suited to companies with large product catalogues, numerous variants, multiple suppliers, or offers published across several sales channels.

Manufacturers can use Akeneo to manage technical data and documentation, distributors to standardise information from different suppliers, and e-commerce businesses and retail networks to enrich and publish consistent product information.

As the size of the catalogue, the number of channels, and the number of people working with product information grow, centralised product data management becomes increasingly important.

If you are considering whether Akeneo is the right solution for your company, get in touch with the Tandemite team. Together, we will review your current approach to product information management and help you plan a solution tailored to your organization’s needs.