Across six categories, these awards honor brands that have built and utilized product experience management (PXM) best practices to drive growth and turn challenges into opportunities as they adapt to the evolving omnichannel environment. Though the selection process was anything but easy, each of our award winners proved they’re changing the game by tapping into the power of Akeneo. 

But without further ado, the awards go to… 

Expansion Award Winner: DELFINGEN 

The Akeneo Expansion Award recognizes those who are creating better experiences in their current channels, introducing impactful new channels, and connecting with new audiences, all to drive meaningful business results. 

Who are they? 

DELFINGEN is where family-owned and globally recognized meet. As the leading global supplier in the automotive industry, DELFINGEN specializes in protection and routing systems for electrical networks and on-board fluid transfer solutions. Their products are sold directly to top automotive companies and through distributors to smaller businesses.

What makes them award winning? 

Expansion was the name of the game for DELFINGEN in recent years, particularly with the acquisition and merger of Schlemmer. For most companies, significant growth comes with significant challenges, but rather than fall victim to product data management woes, DELFINGEN turned to Akeneo. By integrating Akeneo PIM, DELFINGEN centralized and streamlined product data management, sparking improved cooperation and productivity.

This efficiency empowered DELFINGEN to keep growing, and in 2022, they made another big move, launching their new online channel, www.schlemmer.it. By adopting a D2C approach, DELFINGEN connected with new customers and gathered valuable consumer data – and saw big results. The launch of www.schlemmer.it became a game-changer, allowing DELFINGEN to improve customer experiences, increase sales, reduce internal costs, and be more competitive in the market.

Acceleration Award Winner: Kolmi-Hopen 

The Akeneo Acceleration Award recognizes those who have significantly reduced the time-to-market of their products, decreased the number of steps, and cut back on manual work to accelerate growth. 

Who are they? 

Kolmi-Hopen is a French manufacturer of single-use protective equipment (masks, gloves, gowns, head covers, shoe covers, etc.). For over 50 years, it has designed and manufactured products with exclusive technologies for contamination control and risk prevention.

Akeneo Partner: EasyCom

What makes them award winning? 

The COVID-19 crisis sent the demand for Kolmi-Hopen’s products into hyperdrive. To meet demand, they had to get rid of complicated enrichment processes and scattered product information sources which slowed productivity. Enter Akeneo. With features like Shared Catalog, table attributes, asset manager and more, Kolmi-Hopen was able to reduce the dependence on Excel, improve team collaboration, and accelerate information finding, allowing them to offer customers a premium, personalized product experience. 

Global Award Winner: FENDI 

The Akeneo Global Award recognizes those who are expanding their business outside of their HQ country, flourishing in new territories, and working with local teams to connect with new audiences. 

Who are they? 

Founded in Rome in 1925, FENDI is an Italian luxury fashion house producing and selling worldwide fur, ready-to-wear, leather goods, shoes, fragrances, eyewear, timepieces and accessories.

Akeneo Partner: Alpenite

What makes them award winning? 

With a worldwide distributed digital team, FENDI was no stranger to the challenges of global expansion. Most notably, heavy usage of Excel/Impex, the absence of permissions/visibility rules between different departments, and a translation flow that lacked integration with their service provider were causing exhaustive manual workloads – until Akeneo. 

With Akeneo, FENDI was able to limit enrichment flow to the HQ team while giving important read-only access to the worldwide distributed team. Plus, the additional structure and translation integration possible with Akeneo also created a translation flow that is now 2 times faster than before. What’s the bottom line? Quality increased while overhead time decreased. Win-win. 

Leadership Award Winner: Arkema

The Akeneo Leadership Award recognizes those who are improving the lives of their teams through more efficient workflows, creating opportunities to be less operational and more strategic, and empowering their teams to grow. 

Who are they? 

Arkema addresses the ever-growing demand for innovative and sustainable materials, driven by the challenges of new energies, technologies, the depletion of resources, mobility, and increasing urbanization. 

Akeneo Partner: InBetween

What makes them award winning? 

Before Akeneo, Arkema’s researchers, digital marketing managers, and product managers had to manually gather product information from scattered locations like Excel, SharePoint, and pdfs, build the desired material and then feed it into the desired channel. (Trust us, that’s an exhausting process.) Recognizing this was time-consuming, nerve-wracking, and inefficient for their team, Arkema took action. 

Using Akeneo PIM, Arkema not only centralized product data, they also automated the creation of technical data sheets (TDS). Arkema estimates that the automation of just a single TDS saves 6 hours of employee time. With Akeneo PIM by their side, Arkema is creating better experiences for their customers and their people. 

Experience Award Winner: Smartphonehoesjes.nl

The Akeneo Experience Award recognizes those who provide exceptional product experiences, creates content for the right audience at the right place, and is cutting edge in how they represent it to their consumers.

Who are they? 

Smartphonehoesjes.nl is an international eCommerce retailer for mobile device accessories, such as screen protectors, charging cables, power banks, smartwatch straps, and more. 

Akeneo Partner: Calago

What makes them award winning? 

To be successful in their market, Smartphonehoesjes.nl knew they had to connect the right content to the right channel, paying particular attention to their visual assets. The catch? The company has a lot of assets, meaning tons of manual work matching them to products. 

Tapping into Akeneo, Smartphonehoesjes.nl was able to upload images in bulk and then utilize a set of rules to make sure those images were connected to the correct products and customized to their location. This saved 15 hours of manual work each week. Considering this was a team of just 2 people, that. is. Huge. The improved efficiency and localized product images translated into a better customer experience… and better business results. The company saw a 10.2% increase in product conversion on their own webshops and 5.7% increase of product conversion on bol.com, the biggest marketplace in the Netherlands. 

Ambassador Honor Winner: Bowens

In addition to the five PXM Champion Awards above, Akeneo granted an Ambassador Honor for the exceptional use of the Akeneo product. 

Who are they? 

Bowens is a fourth-generation family-owned market leader supplying the largest variety of quality timber and building supplies in Australia. 

What makes them award winning? 

Having used Akeneo at her previous job, Bowens’ new eCommerce coordinator – the only person managing the 45,000 products the company offers online – knew our solutions would provide exactly what the company needed. After successfully advocating for Akeneo, the eCommerce coordinator and Bowens and the company’s SI partner Aligent integrated Akeneo and said goodbye to time-consuming manual processes. Bowens was able to improve the product content quality online, increase the number of products online, get products listed online quicker, and allow suppliers to enrich content with ease, all thanks to Akeneo PIM and Akeneo Onboarder. Bowens now has a strategic advantage over competitors as it quickly grows its online store and perfects its eCommerce customer journey.

Congratulations to all of our PXM champions, and we look forward to seeing you all at the PXM Awards next year!

Not sure where exactly you are on your path towards product experience excellence? Take our PXM Self Assessment to find out!