Integration and development of Akeneo PIM custom modules for an online store

Client

Latvia's largest multi-profile online store with more than 300,000 people. SKU, headquartered in Riga, with offline sales outlets.

Challenge

The client wanted all information about goods, suppliers and nomenclatures to be stored in a single database. It was also necessary to take into account the fact that:

• the same product can be sold by different suppliers and at different prices;
  

• Each supplier can give different descriptions and characteristics to the same product.
  

It is also necessary to automate the process of assigning product IDs, which was done manually.

Akeneo PIM integration

Integration with Akeneo PIM was implemented to store all information about goods and suppliers in a single database with the ability to centrally manage marketing and technical information. In addition to Akeneo's boxed functionality, we have also developed new custom modules specifically for the project.

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Development of a custom module “Suppliers”

In a customer's online store, the same product can be sold by different suppliers and at different prices. To prevent the site from creating duplicate products and misleading customers, it was decided to develop an additional “Suppliers” module.

It works like this: the PIM system enters a list of products that are taken as a basis. Offers (goods) are received from each supplier, the PIM system correlates the attributes of the received goods with the main ones, and if there is a match of more than 90%, PIM will automatically combine them. If the match rate is less than 90, PIM will prompt the operator to combine items by manually checking them first.

In addition, if one supplier gave a detailed description of the product, and another did not give a complete description of the exact same product, then when combining the product into a single one, the site will display a full description of the product. Also, the product description, if there is a lack of information, can be supplemented with the characteristics provided by different suppliers.

Attribute matching and merging module

For each supplier, the name or description of the characteristics of the same product may be written in different ways. With the advent of new offers (products), the number of attributes is increasing, and to avoid duplicate attributes, we have created a mechanism for combining attributes. The logic of the work is similar to processing offers from suppliers.

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Initially, the PIM system receives a list of attributes that are taken as the main ones. To avoid duplicate attributes, we have developed a module for comparing them. Initially, the operator manually processes the incoming attribute stream and decides which ones to combine into one. The next time you boot, PIM automatically solves this. Also, if the PIM system's main database contains two identical attributes, the operator can choose a single main one from them, while all links to goods will remain.

Automatic product ID generation module

Initially, Akeneo PIM assigns product IDs manually. In addition, the client wanted different product categories to generate SKUs according to different rules.

Our developers have created a module for automatically generating a unique ID. Now, when you add an item to Akeneo PIM, it is automatically assigned a unique ID, taking into account the category rules. So, if an item falls under the “Clothing” category, it will have its own ID generation rule, while products from the “Home Appliances” category will be calculated using a different rule.

Result

The integration of Akeneo PIM allowed the customer to store all information about goods and suppliers in one place. Custom modules developed specifically for the project helped automate the process of generating product IDs, avoid duplicate attributes and products, and provide the most complete product descriptions for their customers.