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Case Study: SBS Mobile

How PIM Helps SBS Mobile Stay on Top of Tech Trends

Akeneo PIM’s workflow allows us to be more efficient. We can exchange product information more easily, and have a product enriched before it even arrives in our warehouse.

Alexander Karelin, CTO

Challenges

  • No single source of truth for product information made it difficult to manage product information.
  • High number of SKUs, quickly changing trends, and cross-border commerce required agile and speedy product data management.
  • The company needed a solution that could be used by a wide range of team members.

Benefits

  • Creating a single source of truth for managing product information reduced errors and increased speed of enrichment.
  • Instituting automation, improved workflows, and validation engines increased speed and efficiency.
  • Akeneo’s easy-to-use interface had 20 members of SBS Mobile up and running quickly.

The Challenge

Since 1994, Italian company SBS Mobile has established its reputation as a global leader in the market for smartphone accessories.

This market has been quickly growing in recent years. According to researchers, the industry grew to reach $224.69 billion as of 2018, and is expected to grow to $284.05 billion by 2026. But while the reward for retailers in this space can be great, the challenges loom just as large.

Because consumer tastes are rapidly changing and smartphone and tablet technology is constantly being updated and improved upon, accessories providers need to move quickly and offer a large range of products to remain competitive. According to Alexander Karelin, CTO, SBS Mobile offers more than 6,000 unique products to customers via three sales channels.

What’s more, SBS Mobile products are often highly technical and are designed to match specific devices. This combination of a large, diverse, and technical product catalog, however, made it difficult to enrich and manage product information.

Initially, the company worked to manage this information using internal databases and external databases. However, this proved to be an insufficient method for handling product information, and SBS Mobile soon realized they needed a dedicated, purpose-built solution for managing product information.

 

We needed a more robust system for Product Information Management.

Alexander Karelin, CTO

The Solution

After years of struggling with ineffective ways to manage product information, SBS Mobile decided to take the plunge and invest in a PIM.

However, as the company searched for a solution, it kept running into the same problem: Most of the dedicated, purpose-built product information solutions the company considered were far too technical for the diverse range of team members SBS Mobile needed to work on the PIM.

“We decided we wanted to enrich product information even further than we already were,” Karelin said. “But often what happens is these solutions are very complex, and the data needs to be fed into the system by someone who is very technical. That’s not good for us.”

Enter Akeneo PIM. The easy-to-understand user interface allowed all of SBS Mobile’s team members to get up and running with the PIM after a short training period. Meanwhile, Akeneo’s business driven solution also allowed SBS Mobile to gain access to tools like validation workflows, automation, and business rule engine.

This has allowed the company to remove errors and inconsistencies, improving the quality of its product information and the efficiency of various enrichment processes leading to accelerated time-to-market.

 

 

 

We now have about half of our company using Akeneo PIM on a daily basis.

Alexander Karelin, CTO

The Result

A single source of truth

By implementing Akeneo PIM, SBS Mobile was able to take control of product information by instituting a single source of truth for product data management and enrichment. It allowed them to raise the quality of their product information by reducing errors and inconsistencies.

 

Keeping up with changing trends

Implementing Akeneo PIM also allowed the company to speed up its product enrichment process using features like Akeneo’s business rules engine, validation workflow, and more. This has been particularly important for SBS Mobile, which must keep up with a quickly changing market and shifting consumer trends.

 

Better, faster translation

With customers speaking five languages across roughly 70 countries, SBS Mobile needs to be able to translate and localize product information quickly and accurately. Akeneo’s product information management tools, along with its partnership with translation service provider TextMaster, has “really sped up how long it takes us to work on translations,” Karelin said.

 

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