Dille & Kamille is a multichannel retailer with a well-known concept centered on conscious, simple, and sustainable living. Since opening its first store in Utrecht in 1974, the brand has grown into a familiar name in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and France.

Behind that recognizable retail concept is a broad assortment with a wide range of product categories, materials, images, ingredient information, and commercial content. Managing and enriching all that information correctly for different channels makes product data management complex.

To bring more structure to that process, Dille & Kamille worked with YellowGround to select inriver PIM as the right fit for centralizing product enrichment. The goal was to manage product and marketing data more centrally, automate recurring processes, and help product information flow more smoothly to systems such as ERP, e-commerce, and BI.

The challenge

Dille & Kamille has a broad assortment in which product information can differ significantly by category. Beyond basic data, this includes commercial content, images, web categories, and ingredient information.

Before the project started, that information was spread across different systems and processes. As a result, tasks such as linking images, assigning products to the web category structure, building ingredient labels, and monitoring data quality required a lot of manual follow-up.

Dille & Kamille therefore needed a central PIM environment where product and marketing data could be enriched, checked, and prepared more efficiently for further distribution to systems such as ERP, e-commerce, and BI.

In practice, this meant:

• one central environment for product and marketing data
• better monitoring of data quality by product category
• less manual work for recurring tasks
• more automation around images, linking products to web categories, and ingredient labels
• integrations with ERP, e-commerce, BI, and asset flows

Our approach

Dille & Kamille chose inriver PIM. Its user-friendly interface and Lifecycle Management capabilities matched the way product information is built, enriched, and monitored within the organization.

The project was carried out in three phases: first the setup and data enrichment in PIM, then the integrations with other systems, and finally further automations and optimizations.

Phase 1: central data enrichment in PIM
In the first phase, YellowGround set up the PIM environment and defined how product information could be centrally managed and enriched in inriver.

YellowGround worked closely with Dille & Kamille throughout this phase. Daily short meetings and regular working sessions were used to align on configuration and functional choices. The YellowGround team consisted of a functional consultant, a technical consultant, and a project manager. The configurations were carried out by YellowGround and extensively tested by Dille & Kamille.

Phase 2: integrations with ERP, e-commerce, BI, and assets
Next, inriver was connected to the key systems within Dille & Kamille. Product data flows between ERP and inriver PIM and is then sent from inriver to e-commerce and BI. Asset flows were also connected, so product information and visual material can be handled within the same enrichment process.

Specifically, integrations were set up between:

• ERP and inriver PIM
• inriver PIM and e-commerce
• inriver PIM and BI
• asset flows and inriver PIM

Depending on the use case, the setup used CSV via FTP, APIs, and separate flows for images.

Phase 3: improvements and automation
In the third phase, the focus shifted to automating recurring tasks within product data management.

YellowGround worked on, among other things:

• automatic linking of images to products
• automatic linking of products to the web category structure
• data quality monitoring by category
• automated, customized generation of ingredient labels

This removed several manual steps from the day-to-day enrichment process and made it possible to monitor product information more consistently by category.

Results and impact

With inriver PIM, Dille & Kamille gained a central environment to enrich and check product and marketing data, and to distribute it further to other systems and channels.

Less manual follow-up
Automations for tasks such as image linking, web categorization, and ingredient labels remove recurring actions from the process. As a result, teams spend less time on tasks that previously required manual follow-up every time.

Better monitoring of data quality
Data quality can be monitored by product category. This is relevant for an assortment in which different product types require different information, attributes, and content.

Product information better connected to other systems
Thanks to the integrations with ERP, e-commerce, BI, and asset flows, product information can flow from inriver to the systems where that data is needed.

More structure in product enrichment
Product data, marketing content, category information, and assets come together more centrally. This makes it easier to enrich and monitor product information consistently across different product categories.

From fragmented product data to a workable PIM structure 

For Dille & Kamille, the value was not only in centralizing product data. It was mainly about creating a way of working that fits a broad assortment, different product categories, and multiple channels.

With inriver PIM, the organization gained more structure in product enrichment, less manual follow-up, and better data flow to systems such as ERP, e-commerce, and BI.

Need more structure in your product data and PIM processes? YellowGround helps you manage product information more centrally, automate processes, and better connect PIM with the rest of your IT landscape.