The Paper Store

As TPS expanded into eCommerce, the team soon realized their limited data infrastructure, data quality, and scalability was limiting their potential to become a true market leader.

Prior to Akeneo, TPS had “no enterprise system,” forcing them to rely on fragmented spreadsheets and their ERP system as their sources of truth. As you could imagine, this lack of a single source of truth had a major impact on the data itself, as crucial information was either difficult to identify or completely siloed. This meant the team faced significant manual work, specifically struggling with complex data structures like handling multiple UPCs for the 500,000 SKU, of which only 15,000 were actively online.

Determined to solve these issues, TPS needed a single, structured way to centralize product information, standardize data governance, and publish consistent content across channels while reducing manual work.

TPS initial phases rolled out Akeneo PIM, enabling them to handle the complex UPC-to-SKU mapping and automate supplier onboarding, instead costing them hours of manual work and data-quality loss. The “hot data” was migrated out of the previously fragmented spreadsheets and the ERP system, into Akeneo PIM, to create a centralized repository, acting as their new single source of truth. 

The implementation also allowed the team to re-platform to Kibo (e-commerce), using an Minimum Viable Product approach, to get the site live before the holidays, while simultaneously building the long-term PIM structure. 

Recognizing they have “a lot of suppliers” and no efficient way to bring suppliers into their data ecosystem, TPS included Akeneo SDM in their roadmap to automate data onboarding in future phases. This would reduce the back-and-forth with suppliers, improve their data quality at point of entry, and help the team scale the product onboarding without the adding manual work or struggling with the UPC-to-SKU challenge.

The Result

After implementing Akeneo PIM and SDM, the TPS team instantly solved their company’s ‘biggest Achilles heel,’ and instead were able to see the measurable impacts of their adoption of Akeneo Product Cloud.

The speed to market for each product has been greatly improved from taking weeks to just a few days. The catalog of 500,000 SKU, which was once a challenge with only 0.003% SKU active, are now 100% active and enriched. This transformation streamlined product data management, specifically reducing the “manual work” required by the IT and eCommerce teams and solving the technical complexity of mapping multiple UPCs to single SKUs.

Outside the team, the implementation of Akeneo Product Cloud was felt by customers. TPS are now able to ensure a consistent digital experience, allowing the “modern buyers” they are now targeting to easily discover the full breadth of the catalog, and in turn, receiving the customer experience they deserve.