A business is only as strong as its team, and a team thrives under strong leadership! At Akeneo, we understand that behind every exceptional brand is a visionary leader who empowers their teams and drives innovation while bringing strategy to life. That’s why we awarded each of the following businesses - Giant Tiger, KoRo Handels GmbH, Kruitbosch, and Groupe Emosia - with the 2025 Leadership Award at Unlock.
These brands are unmistakably at the forefront of internal transformation and efficiency. Faced with evolving customer expectations and growing pressure for operational agility, they made a strategic decision to streamline their processes with Akeneo Product Cloud. In doing so, they’ve not only overcome critical business challenges but also elevated the customer experience across all channels!
Navigating Unique Challenges on the Path to Product Excellence
To see a rainbow, you have to get through the rain, and before Akeneo, these companies weathered more than their fair share:
- Fragmented data, fragmented results: When your product information lives in five places at once, nobody knows which version to trust! For KoRo and Giant Tiger, product info lived across multiple tools such as spreadsheets, ERPs, and shared drives, making it difficult to maintain consistency. Both companies struggled with fragmented systems that led to unreliable product data and inefficiencies.
- Inefficiencies in everyday workflows: Spreadsheets and endless copy-paste routines? Not exactly a recipe for speed. Teams spent too much time on repetitive tasks like locating images, updating spreadsheets, or transferring data between systems. At Groupe Emosia and Giant Tiger, this slowed down product launches and distracted teams from strategic priorities.
- Limited access and limited alignment: Without centralized platforms, teams lacked visibility and had trouble working together efficiently. Groupe Emosia’s disconnected workflows and Kruitbosch’s multi-partner ecosystem made collaboration especially difficult without a single source of truth.
- Barriers to scalable growth: Growing pains are real, especially when your systems weren’t built to scale. Legacy systems made it tough to expand into new markets or channels. Kruitbosch struggled with adapting product content for B2B and B2C audiences across regions, while KoRo needed a better structure to scale operations globally.
- Unreliable data with risky decisions: Guesswork doesn’t belong in product data. Without proper control over updates, teams faced issues with outdated or incorrect product specs. KoRo lacked version tracking and change history, increasing the risk of compliance errors. Giant Tiger faced similar challenges as their catalog expanded.
Implementing Akeneo in-house with a small team, we consolidated four separate tools into one central platform, streamlining our product data management and reducing process complexity. This swift transition enhanced our workflows, allowing us to focus on improving product data quality.
Sebastian Thalheim,
Senior Processes & Innovation Manager
KoRo Handels
Turning Complexity into Capability with Akeneo Product Cloud
Execution is where leadership truly shows up. And execution gets a whole lot easier with the right tools. These top companies turned to Akeneo to lead their teams into a new era of product excellence. Here’s how they made it happen:
- Centralizing product data for unified control: Each of these brands began by centralizing their product information into one unified platform. For Giant Tiger, this meant eliminating scattered spreadsheets and inconsistent image storage. Kruitbosch and Groupe Emosia also consolidated product data across departments, suppliers, and regions. With Akeneo as their single source of truth, teams finally had consistent, accurate data they could actually find and trust.
- Automate the mundane to accelerate the meaningful: Manual work was draining time and energy. Akeneo helped Giant Tiger reduce time-to-market with advanced asset management features like metadata tagging and smart search, Groupe Emosia cut time spent managing and sharing product data by over 30%, and KoRo smoothed internal processes and eliminated unnecessary handovers. This helped all three move faster and with greater confidence!
- Seamless integrations across the tech ecosystem: Akeneo’s flexibility made it easy for these companies to plug into existing ecosystems. Giant Tiger leveraged integrations with tools like Shopify, Contentful, TwicPics, and Google Vision, while Kruitbosch synced product updates in near real-time across its B2B webshop using Microsoft Azure and also integrated Akeneo with its ERP system. Groupe Emosia connected Akeneo with Daiteo for smoother partner collaboration, saving time and reducing errors.
- Speeding up product launches: With centralized data, seamless collaboration, and smarter tools, these brands accelerated how quickly they could go to market. Giant Tiger cut down hours of asset hunting to seconds, while Kruitbosch streamlined onboarding from over 200 suppliers by leveraging Akeneo’s Supplier Data Manager (SDM) and Shared Catalogs. KoRo launched new product ranges with speed and precision, and Groupe Emosia’s logistics data accuracy jumped from 50% to nearly 100%, smoothing operations and reducing costly errors.
- Empowering teams and building a culture of ownership: Implementing Akeneo helped lead internal shifts at each company to have a heavier focus on investing in product experiences. Giant Tiger’s success inspired broader internal adoption beyond core teams, and KoRo’s contributors, from tech to marketing, now treat product data as a strategic asset. Emosia saw increased team satisfaction as staff shifted from repetitive tasks to strategic initiatives, and Kruitbosch empowered its workforce to focus on innovation and customer experience rather than data wrangling.
- Setting the stage for scalable growth: From enhanced supplier collaboration at Kruitbosch to retail expansion at KoRo, and from cleaner content at Giant Tiger to cross-functional synergy at Groupe Emosia, Akeneo Product Cloud helped turn scattered data into a launchpad for growth. These companies now operate with improved accuracy and a strategic approach to delivering world-class product experiences.
Akeneo has helped us bridge the gap between operational efficiency and customer experience. By creating a centralized platform for product and asset management, we’re empowering teams across Giant Tiger to collaborate effectively and drive meaningful results for our customers.
Tim Morrissey,
Head of eCommerce
Giant Tiger
Lead with Clarity, Not Chaos
Growing pains are an inevitable part of a growing business, but with the right leadership, the right technology, and the right strategy in place, any business can work through this pains and create scalable, sustainable growth.
And at the heart of every one of these transformations lies a leader bold enough to champion product experiences. These 2025 Leadership Award honorees exemplify what it means to lead with clarity, not chaos. They’ve championed smarter systems, empowered their people, and prioritized better product experiences for customers everywhere.
Their journeys remind us that great technology can’t replace great leadership, but it can elevate it. With Akeneo Product Cloud, these trailblazing brands have built resilient, agile operations that scale with confidence and deliver with excellence. We’re proud to support them as they continue shaping the future of product experience.
Thinking it’s time to streamline, scale, and set your team up to lead with confidence? Akeneo Product Cloud is exactly what you need. The AI-powered solution gives you the foundation to centralize product data, speed up time-to-market, empower every contributor, and grow globally without growing pains.
Are you ready to take the next step?
Our Akeneo Experts are here to answer all the questions you might have about our products and help you to move forward on your PX journey.
Venus Kamara, Content Marketing Itern
Akeneo