The MediaMarktSaturn Retail Group is Europe’s leading retail company for consumer electronics and related services. As part of its strategic realignment, the company is repositioning itself from a classical product seller to a solutions-oriented omnichannel platform focused on delivering “Experience Electronics.”
A subsidiary of CECONOMY AG, the company includes the brands MediaMarkt and Saturn, which comprehensively network their more than 1,000 fixed-location stores with online sales platforms. Another important part of its portfolio is its own brands PEAQ, KOENIC, ISY and ok. With around 2 billion customer contacts per year across all channels, the electronics retailer has an enormous reach.
Challenges
Need for standardization and automation
MediaMarktSaturn previously maintained a decentralized approach to product information management (PIM), with each country independently creating and managing its own product items. This resulted in language-specific redundancies and inconsistent product descriptions across markets leading to negative customer experiences, especially in closely situated European markets with significant cross-border shopping. To address these challenges, centralization and standardization through data governance became essential.
Inconsistent data had far-reaching repercussions, affecting analytics and hindering the assessment of country efficiency and areas for improvement. The slow rollout of new stores or web applications was a consequence of the lack of uniform data.
MediaMarktSaturn also faced challenges with redundant data pools, collecting data from manufacturers that did not contribute to the pools. This prompted the need to eliminate the use of data pools and instead transform manufacturer data into customer-friendly product information.
Implementing central processes across all countries became imperative, not only for overcoming language-specific issues but also for enhancing analytics, facilitating the rollout of new ventures and streamlining data collection from manufacturers.
Solutions
Centralized data repository
The consumer electronics retailer opted to overhaul its existing Stibo Systems master data management (MDM) solution, which was implemented in 2013, creating a unified source of trusted data by standardizing data models across the organization. This approach allowed for the gradual replacement of the old PIM system. The goal was to establish a single, multilingual object that could be created, managed and published across all applications.
To streamline its operations, global product IDs were introduced, consolidating all local articles under new IDs. This facilitated reporting, identification of assortment overlaps and recognition of potential synergies.
A data lake collects product data in the format provided by the manufacturers. The new Product MDM solution, positioned as a layer between the data lake and business systems, transforms the data into the required structure and format needed for the consuming systems. This streamlined process eliminated the need for previously used data pools.
Recognizing the increasing significance of MDM, especially in light of emerging data-driven trends such as AI, generative AI and machine learning, MediaMarktSaturn acknowledged the growing importance of adopting MDM to stay ahead in the dynamic business landscape.
The centralized master data management has really enabled us to satisfy customer needs and get ready for omnichannel.— Christian Brandl, Lead Product Owner Product Data, MMS Technology GmbH
Outcomes
Process efficiency
Standardization of data models across the entire group operating in 12 countries, including standardization of product creation and product IDs, has led to the establishment of a global assortment and a global product data catalog.
Having a single source of truth for the entire retail group serves as a centralized and consistent data repository for a variety of processes. For example, MediaMarktSaturn has achieved an enhanced agility in rolling out digital touchpoints, such as web and app solutions, across various countries, and is now able to provide an improved customer experience because all departments and countries have access to comprehensive and accurate product information.
Overall, data management has been streamlined to increase process efficiency in areas such as assortment planning, demand planning in the warehouse and other operational processes.
The implementation of machine learning approaches contributed to automation processes, including morphology prediction and product classification.
Foundation for growth
Centralizing data management has provided MediaMarktSaturn with a single source of product data. In summary, this asset is now being leveraged for a number of purposes:
- Feeding all digital touchpoints from a unified data repository
- Improved data-driven decision making, especially in areas like assortment planning, with detailed product specifications
- Implemented new web and app solutions with standardized data, making the process of rolling out digital touchpoints more agile
- Standardized global product IDs to enable cross-border planning and delivery
- Increased process efficiency in building assortments and planning warehouse demands
- Labeling products with eco-friendly logos based on attributes and energy consumption
- Exploring sustainability data management
- Implemented machine learning approaches to enhance automation processes, such as morphology prediction and product classification
