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SUCCESS STORY
GALERIA S.à r.l. & Co. KG is one of the leading department stores in Europe with 83 stores and over 12,000 employees throughout Germany. It offers an extensive variety of fashion, accessories, toys, gifts, lifestyle, and services for customers in the heart of German city centres and through its fast-growing e-commerce website.
Its online business contributes about 10% of its approximately €2 billion in total annual revenue. Their vast inventory includes 500,000 proprietary brand products and a marketplace with 1 million SKUs from over 100 partners. It is actively developing new omnichannel experiences, with ambitious plans to rapidly expand its marketplace offerings.
GALERIA started to build a custom PIM system a few years ago, but as business priorities changed, such as the new emphasis on accelerating its marketplace growth, their capability demands changed too. Additionally, the running costs were too high and it was built to only manage their products, not partners and their products. They realized that it was time to search for a new PIM solution that could help them:
They wanted a system that was less expensive to operate, without a team of in-house developers. They didn’t want to be a technology company when their focus was to be a trading company.
The existing PIM system lacked some core functionalities such as mass editing of data records. If an article or brand was displayed incorrectly or new content was not displayed correctly, either a ticket had to be sent to a developer or each page had to be corrected manually. There was also no way to make changes to the attribute and data model yourself. For example, only developers could add an attribute or change a default setting.
Automation became necessary due to staff reductions. New processes required new programming. For this reason, conditional rules like “if supplier XY, then release” could not simply be implemented, which limited flexibility.
Data model changes were time-consuming, often taking months to implement. Given their large data model, they couldn’t develop all requests simultaneously, so they had to prioritize. Typically, they would start with new attributes and then move on to deletions, as these were more complex. The timeline for updates varied: simple updates could take two to three weeks, depending on prioritization, and major data model changes took up to a month or more.
These and other issues led GALERIA to conclude that it was time to acquire a proven PIM system from a leading solution provider. The priority was to find an adaptable system that didn’t force them into a rigid, pre-defined structure. They wanted a PIM system that would let them optimize certain processes to fit their needs with maximum flexibility.
Their selection process spanned 8-12 weeks and included:
During this process, the most crucial aspect for GALERIA was taking the time to thoroughly examine each provider’s strengths and weaknesses through detailed demos. While conducting a Proof of Concept (POC) would have been ideal to test the system hands-on, they were constrained by time. Nevertheless, it was essential to allocate sufficient time to properly evaluate the systems against relevant use cases. Throughout this review, they involved end-users in the decision-making process to ensure the chosen system would work well for them.
GALERIA’s goal was to reduce time spent working directly in the system and editing data, which made some solutions less suitable for them. Other considerations included whether the system was cloud-native or on-premise, which could be important for data security reasons. The technology stack and the provider’s focus (supplier PIM vs. retailer PIM, backend vs. frontend emphasis) were also crucial factors.
Lastly, they considered the system’s expandability. Could they add features later, or were they locked into the initial configuration? The ability to add capabilities in the future without resorting to workarounds was important.
This timeline allowed them to thoroughly evaluate their options, see demonstrations of the systems in action, and make an informed decision, while balancing functionality and cost, to ensure that they chose the right PIM solution for their current needs and future goals.
The productive go-live of Syndigo is targeted for the 2nd quarter of 2025. In addition to growing its marketplace, GALERIA plans to push automation to the limit and use modern AI approaches or AI models so that they can get to a turnaround time of minutes instead of days for a streamlined process: the content comes in, goes through the systems, is preprocessed, quality-checked, and put into the shop, so products appear online faster for customers to experience.
