Blog
November 22, 2021
How can product data from different suppliers with varying quality levels be automatically brought online? With this e-commerce infrastructure, it’s possible.
The management of Building Materials Suisse (BMS), Switzerland’s largest distributor of building materials for structural work and interior finishing, has addressed this issue. Well-known brands such as Baubedarf, Richner, Gétaz, Miauton, and Regusci Reco are sold under the BMS umbrella brand. With their strong local roots, these brands have become an integral part of the Swiss construction industry. Due to company acquisitions and a consistent multi-brand strategy, various online shops based on different technologies, such as desktop publishing (DTP) systems with limited scalability, have emerged over time.
In order to achieve its stated goal of offering the majority of its product range online using a shared database, BMS sought out strong technology partners who could support the transition from the existing infrastructure to a modern and forward-looking e-commerce strategy.
Competitive advantage thanks to automated product data onboarding
For BMS, a future-oriented e-commerce infrastructure means using a modern PIM where all web shop-relevant product data can be stored centrally and where product data from different data sources, namely suppliers and internal catalog systems, can be onboarded quickly and easily.
With the introduction of a PIM, the question arose as to how product data could be optimally modeled so that it could not only be found quickly in the online store, but also compared with other products. In addition, the products should also be described in such an informative way that they meet the data requirements of other sales channels.
With a clear goal, strong technology partners, and a coherent strategy, BMS has succeeded in establishing an e-commerce infrastructure in which products can be automatically onboarded and stored in a central location in the appropriate e-commerce quality. This allows products to be displayed and updated more quickly in the online store.
To ensure that the data in the PIM is of the desired quality, a clear, structured onboarding process was implemented with the core steps of product categorization and assignment of supplier attributes to BMS attributes. The artificial intelligence of the Onedot platform automatically generated product categorization suggestions, which could be checked by the user and overridden if necessary. This feedback helped to further train the AI and thus further increase the accuracy of future categorization suggestions. Parallel to the onboarding process, the BMS product data model (PDM) was also expanded, specifically the category tree and the product attributes per category, including value lists. The categorization and mapping suggestions provided by the Onedot software helped to identify gaps and highlight non-mappable supplier attributes to the user. This allowed the product data model to be further expanded and professionalized with each onboarding process.
This onboarding process has already been used to create or enrich more than 400,000 SKUs in the PIM via the Onedot platform. In addition to individual suppliers, the large data catalog from the Swiss Wholesale Association for the Sanitary Industry (SGVSB) was also imported into the new PIM via the Onedot product data platform. In the future, additional product catalogs will also be connected automatically.
Today, BMS has a modern, powerful, and flexible e-commerce infrastructure that allows it to continue to compete successfully in the national market and to flexibly expand or adapt its diverse product range.