Allium, a Czech software developer, has been working to develop e-commerce and customer relationship management (CRM) solutions for customers since 1994.

With a strong international presence and a collaborative culture, the ISV has grown since its inception to around 50 employees working across several subsidiaries in the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Germany, and Romania.

Allium’s PIMICS solution—a product information management solution (PIM)—has been particularly successful with customers across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. While many organizations offer their own versions of PIM solutions, Allium’s approach is unique as the partner believes that PIM systems should be always integrated into a customer’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.

Allium works across several industries, but most typically serves small-to-midmarket business customers working in e-commerce, wholesales, and manufacturing companies who need to manage a large portfolio of products.

Allium has been a Microsoft partner since 2003 and holds a gold competency for Enterprise Resource Planning and silver competencies for Collaboration and Content as well as Small and Midmarket Cloud Solutions.

A major e-commerce customer needed help aligning products with customer needs

A major e-commerce customer in the EU faced challenges organizing and managing the enormous quantity of product data that it needed to run its business.

While the customer had some tools in place, it lacked the proper data management processes and solutions to effectively manage the sheer quantity of product data it possessed. Realizing it needed a solution, the customer did some research and connected with Allium regarding its PIMICS solution.

Allium quickly realized that the customer had certain processes in place that needed to be overhauled right in order to ensure it could meet internal deadlines and provide the best experiences possible for its customers while potentially expanding its catalogue of products.

Implementing PIMICS to improve data quality

Allium worked with its customer to implement its PIMICS solution and integrated it with Microsoft Dynamics ERP.

As part of the engagement, Allium also ensured that the PIMICS solution was integrated with the customer’s product suppliers as well as its online and offline channels including the customer’s own website, Amazon, eBay, and printed catalogues.

Given the PIMICS solution tight integration with Dynamics 365, the customer was able to use the familiar Dynamics 365 interface in order to use and manage the solution once it was up and running.

Allium’s work was not limited to setting up the solution, however, as the partner also worked with the customer to ensure its processes were updated to derive maximum value from the solution. Once the solution was implemented, Allium worked with the customer to analyze its existing processes, leaning on its significant product management experience to help the customer build efficiencies into its product management processes.

Realizing immediate results

Since implementing the PIMICS solution, the e-commerce customer has realized critical time savings that it has used to meet and accelerate internal deadlines and commit more resources to sales and marketing campaigns. Specifically, PIMICS helped the customer reduce time spent on data preparation by about 75 percent.

The PIMICS solution—in conjunction with the process improvements recommended by Allium during the engagement—has also allowed the customer to increase the number of products in its portfolio from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands.

Following the success of the solution in market, Allium worked with Microsoft to make the PIMICS solution available on the Microsoft AppSource portal.