Signify has a storied past and ambitious future plans. With a heritage that spans more than a century, the company first commercialized electric lighting as Philips in the 1890s. Today, it is the global leader in lighting, offering a comprehensive portfolio of professional lighting products, systems and services, as well as consumer lighting products and smart home lighting systems.
The company employs 29,000 people across 70 countries and manages an extensive portfolio of brands such as Philips Lighting, Philips Hue, Interact, Color Kinetics, WiZ and Dynalite.
Signify currently manufactures and markets more than 500,000 products across 12,500 classifications and manages 1.8 million digital assets. All of this is governed through the Stibo Systems Platform, which has supported Signify for more than a decade. With its sights set on continued growth, Signify is undertaking a transformation in how it manages its product portfolio to enable greater agility, efficiency and innovation.
Challenges
Efficiently managing an expanding product portfolio
Signify wanted to address two key issues: the need to handle an increasing number of products, and the need to reduce the extra costs associated with that growth.
In the past, this level of investment in product growth strategies was inevitably accompanied by scaled resource costs in terms of employee headcount, system resources and other investments.
The company was leveraging Stibo Systems Platform for its product information management (PIM). Over the years, the sheer volume of SKUs and associated attributes that its on-premises PIM solution managed had skyrocketed. With further product growth on the horizon, the company needed a solution that could scale as fast as the company could innovate.
Migrating to Stibo Systems’ cloud-based SaaS solution for product data management was a logical next step, as it would enable faster deployments and a more scalable cost base.
Solution
A seamless migration experience
Signify opted to migrate its on-premises solution to SaaS. The new solution, Stibo Systems Product Experience Data Cloud hosted on Microsoft Azure, capitalized on Signify’s decade-long working relationship with Stibo Systems.
The switch from on-premises to SaaS cut infrastructure and operational costs for Signify while simultaneously resulting in faster operations and searches and improved data handling. It also provides a future-proof platform that can take on the extra load of an expanding product catalog and new languages.
The SaaS migration was planned for an expected period of low activity for the company’s internal teams. Due to the focus and dedication of the Signify team, the initial phase was accomplished in 12 weeks, including planning, testing and migration, which was then followed by two weeks of post-migration support.
Testing makes perfect
A team of developers was dedicated to full-time regression testing, and further testing was carried out on the company’s SAP implementation, as well as middleware platforms and translation workflows, to ensure a smooth transition.
Existing customizations developed for Signify over the previous decade were also rebuilt with the support of Stibo Systems. Legacy API connections were maintained to keep integrations running, with a number of improvements slated for the future.
Heavy users of the old solution were recruited for testing to help identify any potential issues.
Putting the plan into action
The detailed planning and testing paid off. With the system switchover, performance improved, and users reported a smooth experience. Selective release management and freezing some non-urgent projects enabled Signify’s team to focus on the migration, resulting in minimal impact to its business-critical services.
Following the migration from on-premises to SaaS, Signify has better control over upgrades and can better manage the environment through a dedicated self-service portal. It is realizing the following benefits:
- Scalability for future growth: supports an expanding product catalog and 57 languages
- Cost savings: on-premises infrastructure and operational costs eliminated
- Ready for future integrations: potential for broader cloud integration
- Performance gains: faster operations, searches and improved data handling
“We really valued the fast connection with the Stibo Systems team as they supported us throughout the project. I had an answer within the hour for most of the tickets that we handed in. I think within a day we had a solution, so they're really quick and responsive.” Lydia Bijsmans - van Well, Senior Stibo Systems Developer, Signify
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Outcomes
Ready for future expansion
Thanks to detailed and structured planning by Signify and Stibo Systems, the migration resulted in only two days of downtime, exactly as planned. Performance improvements have already had a positive impact on the user experience, and Signify now has better control over its future direction as costs are easier to anticipate. Product sets from acquisitions can be incorporated quickly, and integration with the company’s ERP, middleware and language translation workflows have been streamlined.
