Perfion forced Smartwares Group to restructure their data to have a single central place for product information. Now they harvest advantages like easy changes and faster actions. Product data from Perfion feeds their websites, catalogs, marketplaces and more. The implementation of Perfion required effort but Smartwares sees benefits like flexible and scalable distribution of product data to their websites.
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Case story: Perfion PIM forced us to create a new data structure
1. Perfion forced us to create a new data structure
Now we harvest all the advantages
“The best about the Perfion
PIM system is that we now have
one central place for product
information. Changes are made
easily, and consequently we can
act faster.
From Perfion we have an easy
connection to our websites and
other marketing channels - we
can export data to other parties
in a standardised way as well.”
Pim Poll
Director Business Systems
Smartwares Group
The Smartwares Group is a B2B supplier offering a rich selection of smart safety, lighting
and home appliances. The main customers are e-commerce portals like Amazon,
Bol.com, Conrad or CDiscount plus a large number of Europe’s top retailers and purchasing
organizations. Smartwares Group originated from a merger between the companies
Smartwares Safefy and Lighting and Tristar in 2016.
Challenges
After the merger of Smartwares and Tristar, some product data was still maintained in two
different ERP systems. A lot of data did not belong in the ERPs but was stored there as a
result of time-consuming customizations. Product information was not well structured and
manual interferences could lead to errors in product descriptions. It was not possible to
export data based on language, because this information was difficult to get out of the ERP
systems.
Other product information was stored in Excel sheets and on server level, and some was
created in InDesign files or in the CMS system. Some information was not available at all.
Furthermore, Smartwares was not able to distribute data or to export it to its many web-
sites.
Solution & Benefits
Smartwares opted for the Perfion Product Information Management solution because of its
scalability and its complete integration with the Sana Commerce platform and Dynamics
NAV 2013 that is now the company’s only ERP system (an upgrade to D365BC will take place
later).
Perfion | info@perfion.com | www.perfion.com
2. About Perfion
Perfion is a 100% standard Product Information Management (PIM) solution for companies with a complex product structure
or need for multi-channel, multi-language communication. With Perfion you get a single source of truth for product infor-
mation which gives you control of all product data wherever they are applied. Perfion has a documented return on invest-
ment of less than a year.
Perfion | info@perfion.com | www.perfion.com
At Smartwares, the Perfion PIM system will be the single, central place for managing
product information. From Perfion, product data (descriptions, images, etc.) of 6500 items
and in 8 languages is fed to:
• 15 websites & webshops (e.g. Smartwares.eu, Tristar.eu, Princesshome.eu)
• InDesign catalog files
• Icecat catalog solution
• Marketplaces
• Excel exports, e.g. product lists for customers
• Data Sheets via Perfion’s built-in designer
• Pricelists
• Distribution partners
Later, Smartwares will also create a connection from Perfion to Spotler, the group’s newslet-
ter marketing automation tool. Furthermore, they will have a connection to GS1 and more
direct customer connections. The content from Perfion will also be distributed to a supplier
portal in order to ensure that ordered goods have the correct specs.
Pim Poll, Director Business Systems, explains:
“The implementation of Perfion PIM forced us to face our data structure challenges. We
needed to restructure our features and feature data and clean up our ERP system. This has
taken a lot of effort, but we really see the advantages now. Especially in the way of sending
data to our websites. Perfion is extremely flexible and scalable to our needs.”
About the Smartwares Group
The Smartwares Group is a fast-growing consumer goods company, B2B and based in
the Netherlands, offering a rich selection of Smart Home essentials: crisp, clever, well-
designed products to use in and around a home. They are a leading player in smart safety,
lighting & home appliances. The main brands are Tristar, Princess and Smartwares.
The Smartwares Group originated from a merger between the companies Smartwares
Safety and Lighting and Tristar in 2016. The group is an active player in 47 countries with
16 offices and 400 employees worldwide.
www.smartwaresgroup.com
Example of a brand catalog created with product information
coming directly from the Perfion PIM system