N Brown transforms customer experience with new PIM

N Brown enlisted the help of Inviqa to implement the product information management (PIM) system Akeneo to help transform the customer experience with improved product information across their websites.

  • Single source of truth for product data with standardised classifications across brands
  • Easy to manage, accurate, and standard product information across sales channels
  • Improved online product information experience
N Brown - where fashion fits all

The challenge

N Brown is an inclusive UK clothing and footwear digital retailer, and alongside a home proposition and unique payment platform, brings choice, affordability and value to all customers. Through its key retail brands JD Williams, Simply Be and Jacamo, they serve a diverse and often underserved customer base, having successfully transformed from a catalogue-based business to a fully digital retailer. 

With a tech stack that was at one stage the envy of its competitors, N Brown Group was struggling with legacy systems slowing time to market and making product information hard to manage – not just within a single brand, but across its entire portfolio.

The retailer’s leadership recognised there was a need to improve the speed at which new products could be brought to market, ensure greater consistency in product information, and benefit from the economies of scale obtained by having a single source of truth for product information. 

The implementation of a product information management (PIM) system would be the first stage of a larger digital transformation programme to modernise N Brown’s technical architecture.

Akeneo, who N Brown Group had selected as its PIM solution, recommended Inviqa as its configuration, integration, and implementation partner:  as we had successfully completed a project for another multi-fascia fashion retailer with similar complex requirements.

 

What we did

Inviqa was engaged to help N Brown’s in-house team implement the Akeneo SaaS PIM platform. Our previous experience with implementing the platform meant that we were able to highlight potential challenges for a successful implementation.

One of these hurdles was the accuracy of product information, which can be a significant issue when moving from more manual product information and enrichment processes. We recommended a workstream to cleanse N Brown’s product data would be essential before data was uploaded to the PIM system and used across N Brown Group’s consumer-facing sites.

A discovery process was undertaken to better understand how products were currently classified and managed and how Akeneo could be configured to support the various product classification requirements.

We investigated how product attributes – such as colour, material, and sizing - could be consolidated to take the number of variations from 1000s to a more manageable number.

During this discovery, it was also uncovered that some product attributes were classified incorrectly. This needed to be addressed to not only make products easier to manage but also ensure consistency across products and between brands.

We then supported the migration of live product data from N Brown’s existing systems into Akeneo and helped to develop the integration process for uploading new product data.
 

Two people at whiteboard at an online retailer company
Woman browsing an online retailer's website

Taking it live

For go live, we created an application that took a CSV file of existing data, cleansed and mapped this data into a new CSV file which could then be uploaded into Akeneo. For new product uploads we determined a REST API would be the best solution, helping N Brown’s developers define which API calls were required, the order of API calls, and the data required for each call. This was then implemented using Apache Airflow.

We also uncovered a further requirement relating to product information management and the ability to sell products across multiple channels. The client already had plans to implement the digital asset management system (DAM) Bynder, so we recommended this be implemented at the same time as Akeneo. We then configured the connector that synced the assets for accurate, up-to-date product information across both systems. 

Throughout the process of configuring data and setting up Akeneo, we worked closely with N Brown’s in-house team to ensure each system was configured in a way that works for the business today and is future-proofed to support growth ambitions. We trained the team on the technology and best practices: so that once the first brand  - Simply Be - was up and running on Akeneo, they could continue implementing the technology across all brands without needing our help at every step of the process.
 

The results

With Akeneo’s PIM and Bynder’s DAM solutions in place, N Brown now has a single source of truth for its product information, with standardised data relating to the myriad products it sells across all nine brands.

Product information is more accurate, easier to manage and there are fewer variables used to classify products. The results mean products can be made available on N Brown’s websites more quickly and easily, and shoppers have access to better quality and more detailed product information to inform their buying decisions.

We’ve also equipped As N Brown’s in-house development team with the knowledge and capability to support best practice product information management processes and consistency across all its sales channels going forward.

We were delighted to see that N Brown Group went on to win the 2024 Retail Systems Tech Project of the Year Award for its successful PIM implementation. 


 

Screen grab from N Brown's website
Is your business ready for PIM

Are you ready for PIM?

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