Our customer speaks: De Isolatieshop

They could no longer continue in the same manner at De Isolatieshop. They were expanding their product range and making strides in Germany and Belgium. As a result, entering and modifying the product information took increasingly more time. That’s why they were looking for a PIM (Product Information Management system). The combination of Horizon and the unique capability to maintain and import ETIM data, along with our expertise and good communication, led De Isolatieshop to choose us as their implementation partner.

• The customer: specialized and in full growth
• Challenge: Too much time spent on duplicate tasks
• Decision: It was settled in a week
• Our Approach – Smooth, Good, and Fast.
• Solution- Fully meets expectations
• Result: Efficient

The customer: specialized and in full growth

De Isolatieshop has been in existence since 2010 and is a wholesaler of insulation materials and accessories. Doing an insulation job? Then they deliver what you need from A to Z. They distinguish themselves in the market through their specialization. Instead of dealing in only A- or B-choice products, De Isolatieshop deals in both. This is available for both private and business customers. Including logistics, there are approximately 100 people employed at De Isolatieshop. The product range currently consists of more than 2000 products and is growing weekly.

What is important for De Isolatieshop is to make insulation possible for everyone. They achieve this by providing extensive product information and advising customers as well as possible. They source data from various suppliers and sell their products through multiple channels, such as their own webshop and bol.com.

We spoke with Ayrton, the person responsible for all product data within De Isolatieshop. He was the most involved in the PIM implementation and could tell us everything about the project.

Challenge: Too much time spent on duplicate tasks

Since this year, De Isolatieshop has a Belgian webshop that is bilingual. Two years prior, they had also expanded to Germany. This gave Ayrton a lot of extra work with the product information. The product range in the Netherlands was complete, but not yet in Germany. Plus, a third shop was also added to the mix.

This became difficult to manage and resulted in duplicate work. “In the old situation, I had to manually enter labels 3 times,” Ayrton told us about this. “And every attribute that belonged to that product, I had to link manually. If you have 15 attributes on one product, and you do that times 3, it becomes a bit too much of a good thing.”

But this was not the only thing; every category also had to be manually linked, always three times. Did Ayrton want to create a new category? Then he had to go through each product manually. If a product had 15 variants, he also had to add the category 15 times. And then again in 3 different webshops.

In order to prevent Ayrton from spending the majority of his time on such tasks, something had to change. They needed something where they could easily make bulk adjustments in one environment and where they could create structure. In other words: A PIM system.

Decision: It was settled in a week

Various solutions were discussed internally at De Isolatieshop. They delved into PIM online and started looking for partners. They remembered Calago from previous contact and, in addition to us, invited two other parties for a consultation. The choice for a partner was made within a week. Calago would assist with the implementation of Akeneo’s Community Edition, in combination with Calago’s own plug-in called Horizon.

The choice for Calago was made quickly after the first consultation meetings. “We just actually clicked,” Ayrton told us about this. “It felt right for us. We also had the impression that Calago was eager to collaborate with us on this project. That was decisive for us. Good feeling, had a good conversation. Also thinking along, like what Alexander suggested with the ETIM classification. Then we had something like: This party.. is the party for us.”

The idea from Calago to work with ETIM classifications in the PIM system caught on. This was a unique system, and in this regard, De Isolatieshop is still ahead of many competitors. With Horizon, they could enrich their data with ETIM in an efficient manner.

Our Approach – Smooth, Good, and Fast.

Regarding Calago’s approach, Ayrton had little to say; he simply experienced it as positive. “In my opinion, it really went well,” he also said. “Quite smooth, easy going as well, quick communication. Which ensured that the plan was on the table fairly quickly.”

In response to the question of how Ayrton would describe the collaboration with Calago, he quickly had an answer. “Very thoughtful, specialized in their own field, and thereby also distinctive.”

“Calago is very thoughtful, specialized in their own field, and thereby also distinctive.”

Ayrton, E-commerce & Online Marketing Employee, De Isolatieshop

Solution – Fully meets expectations.

Since the delivery, the PIM system has been consistently used by Ayrton. Currently, he is the only one who works with it extensively, but the plan is to expand this in the future. Learning the PIM didn’t take much time for him. This was partly due to the provided manuals and already assisting with the implementation.

The combination of Akeneo and Horizon has been well received and still meets the expectations set in advance. Processing data is now much smoother. Tasks that Ayrton previously had to enter three times can now be done all at once, and labels are automatically applied to other products and languages. On the question of what he liked most about the new solution, Ayrton answered: “Mainly that I can now upload images and product data all at once for ten products.”

Currently, Ayrton is not missing anything. Work is still being done on a few small things, such as improving dynamic product information. Therefore, the support from Calago is still fully utilized, even after going live.

Result: Efficient

The result of the PIM implementation is that the company has grown enormously in the efficiency of product information. What used to be repetitive and time-consuming is now easy to work with. Tasks that previously had to be done manually can now be handled in bulk, and much more data can be added. With the transition to the B2B market, that additional information is especially a big asset.

The Belgian website is already running on PIM, and the German one is in the planning. Ayrton is very optimistic about the use of the PIM system. “It already saves me a lot of work, let alone in the future.”