Perfion manages product data of 1 million products equaling 7 million items and half a billion values
“Before we started using the Perfion PIM system, we had 80,000 products in our assortment, managed by 7 people. Today we have 300,000 products managed by the same 7 people. It is an enormous increase of products handled in the same amount of time - and a large increase in efficiency.” Lars Dalseg, Head of Masterdata department - Løvenskiold Handel AS
Løvenskiold Handel in Norway operates MAXBO, a leading chain of stores in the fields of living and building supplies. The company handles product data of 1 million products equaling 7 million items and half a billion values in Perfion.
Every day Løvenskiold receives critical data about new products, changes in products, price changes and expired products from suppliers through NOBB, the industry’s database. All critical information has to be compared, validated and approved by Løvenskiold’s employees before it is pushed to the ERP system and to the MAXBO and MAXBO Proff webshops.
Challenge
In the past, Løvenskiold Handel managed all product data in the ERP solution and in numerous Excel sheets. This system made it difficult to A) keep data updated everywhere, B) get an overview of new, changed and expired products, and C) check and prove the validity of product information.
Solution & Benefits
In 2012 Løvenskiold decided to shift to the Perfion Product Information Management solution. One reason for choosing Perfion was its out-of-the-box integration with Dynamics AX that ensures that Perfion integrates Product Information Management 100% into the ERP system and works directly with live up-to-date ERP information, such as prices and other product changes in the MAXBO assortment.
Bulk validation with ‘Multiple Compare/Multiple Change’ functionality
Another reason was Perfion’s ability to handle huge volumes of product data. Perfion works seamlessly together with the NOBB industry database that contains 1 million products. When an update is sent from NOBB into Perfion, the ‘Multiple Compare/Multiple Change’ functionality in Perfion compares the existing data with the new data (e.g. price changes, pictures, expired products, new products) and makes it easy for Løvenskiold to get an overview of all the changes.
Lars Dalseg explains how the ‘Multiple Compare/Multiple Change’ functionality works:
“If there are price changes for 1000 products, Perfion allows us to see and compare all these products at the same time. We can approve all 1000 price changes at once – or disapprove all at once – or just select and approve 900 of the 1000 products. It is a great functionality enabling us to have an efficient workflow. Earlier we could handle only 1 price at a time.
We are using this functionality to approve critical changes - like prices. If a price increase is not in accordance with our agreement with the vendor we need to respond. Product names are also critical, as we often need to enrich them and make them searchable.”
Webshops with always updated data from Perfion
Perfion also works together with the MAXBO and MAXBO Proff webshops. Because of the huge volume of data, all product information from Perfion is initially sent to an Azure Cloud solution and from there into the webshops.
Because Perfion is an open system it is easy to build and configure new features and functionality into the system. Løvenskiold has configured a lot of new product attributes. The next step will be to build new search filters on these attributes into the webshops and thus make them much more user friendly for filtering and searching the products.
In short, Løvenskiold uses Perfion for:
- Lifecycle Management
- Master Data Management
- Managing the Assortment (which products in which warehouse)
- Mastering of campaigns
- Price Control
- Enrichment of item names, pictures,
descriptions and attributes - Systems Management - configuring new
features, dependencies, integrations and filters
About Løvenskiold Handel
Løvenskiold Handel has since 1995 developed a leading chain of stores in the fields of living and building supplies in Norway. MAXBO is today strong brands with a leading position in the Norwegian market.
Løvenskiold Handel is part of Løvenskiold-Vækerø, a family corporation and a leading company within commerce, real estate, forestry and agriculture.
