Context and Challenge
Since its inception, HFN had been using a legacy admin system for product management. While the system had served the company well in the past, its limitations became increasingly evident as the business grew.
The challenges HFN faced included:
- Outdated system: The legacy system was no longer able to keep up with the company’s expanding product catalog and evolving needs, becoming inefficient and prone to errors.
- Lack of essential features: The system lacked critical functionality needed for smooth day-to-day operations and failed to support HFN’s growth ambitions, limiting the company’s ability to scale.
- Inability to process growing volumes of data: As HFN’s product range exceeded 1 million items, the system was unable to manage the increasing volume of data, causing slowdowns and inefficiencies.
- Data fragmentation: Product data was fragmented across multiple systems, including the legacy system, ERP, and other databases. This created inconsistency and inefficiency, as managers had to manually switch between systems and consolidate data across platforms, leading to errors and delays.
These challenges resulted in a fragmented, error-prone product management process that hindered HFN’s ability to efficiently manage and scale its operations.
Client’s Objectives
Initially, the client explored an off-the-shelf solution. During the discovery phase, it became clear that this solution lacked the flexibility and features required. Thus, HFN decided to invest in a custom PIM system to meet the following goals:
- Build a reliable and maintainable order management system: The solution had to be secure, cost-effective to maintain, and based on clean, well-documented code.
- Reduce errors in product management: By automating processes and unifying how product data is handled, HFN aimed to minimize mistakes caused by manual work.
- Work in fewer systems: Managers previously had to switch between multiple platforms. The new system needed to bring all product-related tasks into one place.
- Scale product volume: HFN’s product catalog was close to 1 million items, and they wanted to grow further. The new system had to support this growth without performance issues.
- Improve product data quality: Centralizing data and using a consistent format would help ensure clean, accurate, and reliable product information.
- Automate repetitive tasks: Automation would free up managers’ time and allow them to focus on higher-value activities.
- Enable easy integrations: The system needed to connect smoothly with other tools HFN used, such as ERP, finance software, warehouse management, public websites, and the admin system.
These goals guided the decision to build a custom PIM system tailored specifically to HFN’s business needs.
How We Approached the Project
Our team aimed to build a scalable, user-friendly PIM system tailored to HFN’s requirements. Key steps included:
- Discovery and research: We conducted interviews with HFN stakeholders and analyzed competitors’ solutions. This helped us define requirements and outline features like master categories, specification properties, advanced filters, and others.
- Custom development: Using Scrum methodology, our team of 9 experts collaborated to design a modular, scalable system. Milestones ensured continuous release of features and close alignment with client expectations.
- Proactive innovation: Leveraging our experience in e-commerce, we proposed advanced features to improve functionality and optimize manager work.
Thanks to good research, teamwork, and our e-commerce experience, we built a system that works well for HFN.
Solution Overview
The custom PIM solution included the following features:
- Master categories: Allows products to be categorized by their type (e.g., sofas, tables) for better management, data analysis, and sales metrics calculation. Managers are assigned to specific categories and responsible for all products within them.
- Specification properties: Enables managers to create, update, and delete specification properties (such as material, dimensions, and guarantee) using a user-friendly UI. This helps customers make informed decisions about products.
- Public categories: Provides a tool for managing public categories in a hierarchical structure (e.g., Furniture → Beds → Kids beds). This helps easily navigate products and find the items users need.
- Advanced filters: Offers a more flexible filtering system, enabling managers to filter products based on complex criteria, such as price, vendor, and completeness.
- Campaign pages: Streamlines the creation and management of campaign pages for product promotions, allowing for faster product updates and reducing mistakes in the process. Campaigns can be created, edited, and managed easily using various import methods.
- Universal import flow: Allows for easy integration with new sources, saving time and effort in adding new product data sources.
- Prices management & margin level tool: Enables managers to set different price types (e.g., Daily, Hero, Regular, Budget) and calculating margin levels to optimize product pricing and profitability.
Detailed Execution Timeline
The entire project was estimated at 640 hours and took around 16 weeks. It was divided into several iterations:
- Discovery phase & requirements gathering
- Infrastructure setup
- Product data management
- Vendor & stock data
- Pricing & campaign pages
- Integrations
- User roles & permissions
- Enterprise-scale optimization
- Quality assurance
- Deployment & support
Results and Impact
Qualitative results:
- HFN now has a custom PIM system designed to match their business needs.
- Product management is easier and faster for managers thanks to automation and better tools.
- Workload for managers decreased, allowing them to focus on more important tasks.
- Access to product data is simpler and quicker, with fewer steps needed to find information.
- The company fully migrated from the old legacy system to a modern, scalable solution.
- Adding and updating product data is now smooth thanks to the universal import feature.
- Product search and filtering are more accurate, helping teams work more efficiently.
These improvements helped HFN create a more organized, reliable, and scalable system for managing product information.
Technology Stack
Backend: PHP, Lumen
Database: Redis, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch
Frontend: Less.js, Webpack, Vue.js, Vuex
Virtualization: Docker
Cloud: Kubernetes
Cloud Platform: Google Cloud Platform
Tools: Pub/Sub
Continuous integration: Jenkins
Logs: Kibana, Stackdriver, New Relic
Key Takeaways and Lessons Learned
Success factors:
- Collaborative discovery: Close engagement with HFN stakeholders ensured the solution addressed their pain points.
- Iterative development: Frequent feedback loops enabled continuous alignment and improvements.
- Long-term partnership with Forbytes: A trusted relationship enabled seamless collaboration and a deep understanding of HFN’s unique needs.
- E-commerce expertise: Forbytes leveraged extensive experience in e-commerce to design a solution tailored to industry challenges.
- Proven track record: Previous successful projects with HFN reinforced confidence in Forbytes’ ability to deliver high-quality, impactful solutions.
- Customized solution over off-the-shelf: Unlike the off-the-shelf platform, Forbytes’ custom PIM solution offered the scalability and flexibility HFN required.
Challenges overcome:
- Legacy system migration: Transitioning from HFN’s legacy admin system to a modern PIM involved complex data migration and integration processes. We developed robust algorithms to ensure data consistency and accuracy during the transition.
- Scalability constraints: The legacy system couldn’t handle HFN’s growing product catalog. Forbytes designed a scalable infrastructure capable of supporting over 1.6 million products, with room for future expansion.
- Disparate data sources: Product information was scattered across multiple platforms. Centralizing this data into one system streamlined workflows and reduced inefficiencies.
- Custom feature development: Off-the-shelf solutions couldn’t accommodate HFN’s specific needs. Forbytes created a bespoke solution with advanced filtering, universal data import, and hierarchical category management.
- Error-prone manual processes: Automation significantly reduced the time managers spent on repetitive tasks, improving accuracy and freeing up 20-30% of their monthly working hours.
- Time-intensive information retrieval: Previously, retrieving product data involved 15 steps. The new system reduced this to just 6 steps, thanks to centralized data and intuitive interfaces.
As a result, overcoming these challenges ensured a successful and transformative implementation of the PIM solution for HFN.
