At the 11th MDM & Data Governance Summit held Nov 8-10 in NYC, StrikeTru co-presented a case study on how the Akeneo enterprise-grade open source PIM helped overcome product data management challenges faced by SHOP.com, a global internet retailer. These are slides from that presentation. The session abstract follows: CASE STUDY: Enterprise-Grade Open Source PIM – An Important Option for Modern IT Kyle Christiansen, Applications Architect, Market America/SHOP.com Vik Gundoju, Partner, StrikeTru Legacy operations involve high cost and complexity in aggregating, managing, and sharing an ever increasing amount of product information with customers, trading partners, regulatory agencies, and consumers. A PIM solution makes it easy to manage and distribute product data. An enterprise-grade open source PIM solution has the best chance of helping IT reduce costs, operate more efficiently, and gain quick access to innovations in PIM. Despite the success of well-known commercial open source technologies, many IT leaders often do not fully understand the benefits and value of open source technologies. This session will review key open source MDM capabilities including: master, reference and metadata management; digital asset management: data governance: marketplace connectors; and product data synchronization between ERP, PLM, sales, and marketing applications. Specific attention will be given to Akeneo which is the market-leading open source enterprise PIM. To further the understanding of open source PIM, a case study discussing Shop.Com’s leverage of Akeneo to modernize its IT landscape will be presented. This enabled the enterprise to become more agile in managing its global, multi-site, multi-language, multi-currency, and multi-channel commerce operations. To highlight how open source PIM can accelerate enterprise success, StrikeTru and Shop.Com will present these topics: • Understanding the business & technology benefits of enterprise-strength open source technologies for PIM • Overcoming the prejudices & misinformation that plague open source decision-making • Planning for the next generation of digital commerce

1. CASE STUDY: Enterprise-Grade Open Source PIM
An Important Option for Modern IT

2. Vik Gundoju
vik@striketru.com
+1 832 303 3257
Kyle Christiansen
kyle@shop.com
+1 816-695-3918
marketamerica | SHOP•COM
Speakers

3. Agenda
• Why PIM
• The product information challenge
• The enterprise-grade open source option
• Open source software myths and reality
• Akeneo, an enterprise-grade open source PIM
• Case study: SHOP.com
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4. StrikeTru Overview
StrikeTru provides PIM consulting services and solutions for US companies.
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• Houston, TX
• Industry Experience:
• Retail
• Manufacturing
• Distribution
• Energy and other
• Platform:
• Akeneo Open Source PIM
• Other Platforms:
• Riversand, Innovit, Nuxeo
PIM
Sync To Internal Systems
ERP, WMS, Analytics
Sales & Marketing Tools
Aggregate | Manage| Distribute
Product Files
XLS, PDF
Digital Assets
Search Engines
Industry
Data Warehouses
Marketplaces
Brand Websites
Agency, Printer
Other Data
Sources
ERP
Distributors
Resellers
Product Content
Syndicators
Mobile Apps

5. marketamerica | SHOP•COM
• E-commerce retailer
• Worldwide reach
• 10 countries/currencies
• 8 languages
• Multi-channel
• Catalog website (SHOP.com)
• Desktop + Mobile
• Brand-specific websites (x8)
• Desktop + Mobile
• Mobile app
• Re-targeting and Affiliate Marketing
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6. PIM & Akeneo Overview
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7. Why PIM
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 High quality & consistent product data - lifeblood of commerce today
 Customers, partners, consumers, & regulatory bodies want easy access to data
 Powers critical online marketing & conversion tools - SEO, re-targeting, site search …
 Supports success KPIs across channels – AOVs, profitability, return & abandonment rates ...
 Legacy product data operations - high cost/complexity
 Modern PIM - best suited to manage rich product data for multi-channel selling
 Digital data & interactions speed customer path to purchase
 PIM makes it quick and easy to aggregate, enrich, govern, & publish data
 Critical capability for digital transformation of sales & marketing

8. The Product Information Challenge
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 Disparate systems, no single source of truth
 Inconsistent data, metadata, & quality rules
 Significant effort to compile & enrich product
data, every time!
 Inadequate features – data modeling, management,
governance, search, reporting, auditing, integration
 Poor support for digital asset management/distribution,
print automation, vendor data on-boarding, data sync
 Delayed product launches
 Poor data quality & compliance
 Cross-channel inconsistency
 Higher operating costs
 Legacy systems
 Clunky UI – hard to use
 Inflexible - requires a
rebuild to modernize
Hampers enterprise agility:
 Differentiated merchandizing
 Expanded assortment
 New distribution channels

9. The Enterprise-Grade Open Source Option*
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 Most successful open source projects affiliated with commercial vendors
 Vendors support community & make technology accessible to mainstream enterprises
 Stable, secure, & tested
 Scalable
 Predictable life cycle
 Manageable by vendor & 3rd party products
Software Attributes
 Software maintenance & support services
 Documented software audit trail
 Community support & documentation
 Professional services, training, & certifications
 Promotion of broad ecosystem
Enterprise-grade software can support mission-critical enterprise-scale workloads
* Source: IDC Whitepaper, Enterprise-Grade Open Source: An Imperative for Modern IT, April 2016
Most enterprises use open source software in different ways – network equipment, servers, & modern applications.

10. Open Source Software Myths and Reality*
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Myth: Constant updates & untested changes make it
unreliable & disruptive to critical enterprise apps
Reality: Enterprise-grade open source distributions are
stable & support a wide range of mission-critical apps.
Certified functionality, backwards compatibility, security
fixes, & SLA support throughout product lifecycle.
* Source: IDC Whitepaper, Enterprise-Grade Open Source: An Imperative for Modern IT, April 2016
Myth: Mission-critical workloads need performance &
security guaranteed by closed source commercial s/w
Reality: Widely used as embedded enabling technology
in many mission-critical solutions. For e.g., Hyper-scale
data centers operated by Google, Amazon, Facebook, &
others built on an open source software foundation.
Myth: ROI from infrastructure commoditization only
Reality: More ROI benefits due to streamlined
deployment, ability to standardize h/w & s/w layers,
developer productivity, code quality, & agile code
releases.
Myth: Open source software support skills are hard to
find & hard to develop
Reality: Vendors typically offer training & certification.
Most new graduates use open source technologies in
school & are productive quickly. IT Managers say open
source skills not difficult to find.

11. Akeneo, an Enterprise-Grade Open Source PIM
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 Stable
 Scalable
 Formal release processes
 Extensibility
 Maintenance & support
 Community support & docs
 Prof. services, training, certifications
 Innovation
 Cost of ownership
 80+ enterprise customers, 2500+ community users
 Manages millions of SKUs
 Major, minor, & patch releases – defined frequencies
 APIs, marketplace extensions, free source access, connectors
 Akeneo & partners
 Forums, documentation, cookbooks, videos, etc.
 Akeneo & 42 solution partners from 17 countries
 Usability, deployability, & integrations
 Better cost/value benefits compared to closed source PIMs
Championed by open source veterans from Magento & Oro platforms

12. Akeneo at SHOP.com
Case Study
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13. PIM Software at SHOP.com
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Goals
 Faster product setup & release to channels
 Content flexibility & portability
- Across channels, brands, countries, languages, & currencies
 Content consistency & control to reduce compliance costs
- FDA, Taiwan Dept. of Health, Singapore Source Disclaimer
Web centric, multi-channel retailer
Proprietary, legacy solution ran its course
Not flexible for current & future needs
Faced with a build or buy decision
Chose to go with Akeneo

14. Why Akeneo
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Met all our
requirements
User-friendly
Rich features
Affordable
Sophisticated data
management
 Data and meta-data management
 Rich data modeling
 Data inheritance
 Bulk edit
Audit trail & version
control
 Audit history, and version rollback
 A key driver for replacing legacy system
 Enabled removal of “gated” product release process
 End user visibility reduced IT support demands
 Promoted accountability
Open source, easy to
customize
 Content Automation: Product/SKU titles, digital assets, published prices
 Custom Kit Price Calculations
 Alerts: For price or inventory status changes
 Translation: Connector to Translations.com
Easy to integrate with
other systems
 APIs: Enabling contextual product page previews
 Out-of-the-box features to import and export data
 Integration framework that can be modified easily for specific
requirements

15. Use Cases
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Common data model
Defined a common data model
Promoted a common understanding of data, & how to use it
Introduced a new platform & framework to organize our data and reduce complexity
Rich data modeling
Multiple data types including asset & reference types
Products, SKUs, Kits, Relationships
Data inheritance
Single source of truth
Centralized data, meta-data by consolidating 4 systems
Data sync’d to 10+ sales & marketing systems, ERP, Inventory
Meta-data management
Hierarchies (merchandizing, reporting)
Categories and attributes
Attribute schemas (category specific attributes)
Relationships (cross-sell, up-sell, etc.)
Reference data
management
Multiple lists of valid values – Accounting/Taxation Profiles, Report Categories, Availability
Status, Product Type
Simplified product launches to new countries

16. Use Cases (continued)
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Data Governance
Multiple roles, role based permissions
Access controls: by entity, feature, locale, product category, attribute, import/export job
Enrichment and approval workflows
Digital asset management
Product and SKU images, Videos, Whitepapers
Automatic image URLs and thumbnail previews
Data automation, quality rules
Consistent product titles & asset URLs
Digital asset filenames for consistency
Content translation
Completeness checks
Published price management,
Alerts
Compute category & country specific published prices
Account for exchange rates, rounding & other rules
Email alerts (e.g. on price or inventory status changes)
Integrations
eCommerce websites
Middleware that feeds product data to other channels
Translations.com

17. Big Wins
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Enterprise agility
Changes are fast and easy to implement
Faster and more reliable product release to channels
Quicker setup and launch to new countries
Data consistency &
portability
Consistent data across channels and product sets
Product sets grouped by country
Multiple SKUs per product with country specific settings
Data re-use across channels
Improved
productivity
Elimination of significant duplicate data entry
Common data model enabled decoupling of website changes from product
management processes
IT system
consolidation
Rolled 4 systems in one PIM
Product Workflow, Categorization, Image, & Translations systems

18. What’s Next
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Contextual product page previews
Migrating more media/digital assets into Akeneo
Leverage enhanced selling attributes across more web properties
Enrich data to better leverage new features (price calculations)
Deprecate redundant downstream calculations
TWN recycling data

19. Thank You
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Vik Gundoju
vik@striketru.com
+1 832 303 3257
Kyle Christiansen
kyle@shop.com
+1 816-695-3918
marketamerica | SHOP•COM