Multinational hypermarket chain launches digital transformation with a single source of product information

Executive Summary

After decades of constant expansion, Auchan Retail France had come to an impasse where their digital infrastructure was working against them and no longer sustainable.

The company therefore launched an ambitious product information strategy facilitated by Stibo Systems PIM solution (Product Master Data Management), laying the foundation for their digital transformation.

The tangible results include:

• Cost savings by discontinuing legacy IT systems
• Increased operational efficiency
• Quicker product onboarding and shorter time to market
• Improved customer experience enabled by richer and more complete product information
• Cost savings by discontinuing legacy IT systems

The Business Payoff

Getting products to market faster. By streamlining the master data management process, product data moves quicker through the system from supplier to end-customer, reducing time to market. At the same time, staff resources have been re-allocated from manual data handling to customer-relevant catalog enrichment and other strategic projects.

The company can add more suppliers and product lines without increasing time or headcount. Furthermore, overall lowered data costs have significantly improved profitability.

The Customer Experience

Simplifying the technology stack. An explosion of attributes, different supplier formats and developing business segments over a long period of time caused the company to add applications and people to cope with new needs. The implementation of a centralized PIM solution allows them to leverage essential configuration capabilities to manage diverse data processes, such as product onboarding and data sharing, in a unified manner.

The one-data-hub approach also alleviated the heavy data lifting and simplified the architecture.

Challenge

Getting rid of errors. “Before we implemented the PIM solution to manage our master data, several people had to log in to multiple systems to prepare the same product for different sales channels. That was very time-consuming, and there were many mistakes,” said MDM Manager Michel Deshayes.

With separate applications for each channel, the architecture was growing in complexity, and the risk of product data becoming inconsistent was high. This entailed a lot of additional work to cleanse data and keep it up to date.

Solution

Unifying product information. To get on top of their data challenges, Auchan Retail France launched a master data strategy and sought a centralized system to support it. Stibo Systems Product MDM is a solution that unifies product master data to make it fit for purpose, enabling Auchan to:

• Accelerate product onboarding
• Reduce time spent on supplier data handling
• Integrate with the GDSN network for the GS1 standard to streamline taxonomies for food products, serving consumers useful information
• Provide digital asset management (DAM) and a print publishing capability to deliver in-store content
• Ensure rich and consistent product data across multiple ecommerce platforms

Result

Improved customer experience. According to Michel Deshayes, the solution has benefited the company in many ways: “Our efficiency has improved tremendously. We have re-allocated staff resources to more meaningful work, and we have a plan to discontinue legacy systems. This has enabled us to increase the speed to market and to deliver a better, more consistent shopping experience to our customers.”

Specifically, Auchan’s customers are experiencing a shorter buying journey due to more useful product descriptions, as well as easier navigation and search.

Future

Ramping up for expansion. Auchan Retail France is a rapidly growing, ambitious company. Thanks to a more streamlined system architecture and a single source of product information, their continued expansion will be much more manageable. A global solution for all territories and organizations is now within reach.

To support that process, Auchan Retail France will fortify their centralization efforts so that eventually all product lines are managed in their PIM solution. As a result, they can gradually discontinue legacy systems.

Auchan’s digital transformation is an ongoing project. With a proven master data strategy supported by Stibo Systems PIM solution, the company has a solid foundation to build on.