Product and Content Management Software Consulting for a Semiconductor Manufacturer

Summary

A leading semiconductor manufacturer ran an online product catalog of more than 500,000 SKUs on a track record-old custom website builder, where every product and content update needed developer involvement — making the workflow slow and costly for internationally located teams. INNERLUXES provided IT consulting that reviewed the workflows, recommended moving to dedicated PIM and CMS systems, and compared leading products against the manufacturer's business and budget criteria, recommending Akeneo for product information management and Pimcore for content management.

About the Client

The Client is a leading semiconductor manufacturer that relies on an international distributor network in its sales strategy.

A 500K-SKU Catalog Stuck on a Decade-Old Builder

The company's online product catalog supplied end customers with product information and helped them connect to distributors for purchase. Despite being an important marketing channel, it was complicated to administer and lagged behind modern content and product management, running on a custom website builder designed about ten years earlier and never thoroughly updated. Product information was edited in PDF files and handed to the development team for extraction, processing, and upload, with about 200 templates for over 500,000 SKUs — each template having its own extraction script. Developers were also needed for non-catalog content: marketing created pages in any editor, saved them as HTML, and submitted them for upload, which is how about 200 content-rich pages were maintained. The result was high-cost product and content workflows that stalled the work of internationally located teams, so the Client started with operational consulting to set the direction for its website technology.

Consulting on PIM and CMS Options

INNERLUXES's consultants reviewed the product and content management workflows and concluded that the decade-old legacy system would be harder and more expensive to upgrade than to migrate to a modern application. They advised implementing two types of data management systems — PIM and CMS — and explained the purpose of each and how the investment would return through operational savings.

Product information management. A PIM system was needed to provide unified product information, faster product uploads without development support, and a more efficient marketing team. INNERLUXES shortlisted Pimcore, Akeneo, and a custom Symfony-based solution, analyzing them against cloud readiness, scalability, ease of implementation, customization flexibility, and cost — and awarded the highest score to Akeneo as the optimal choice from a cost-benefit perspective.

Content management. To replace the outdated website builder with a CMS, the goal was an effective but much simpler workflow for non-technical marketers, fast content publishing, and faster deployment of website changes. INNERLUXES focused on three strong performers — Pimcore, Drupal, and WordPress — and examined them against ease of content creation, document management, content personalization, scheduled publishing, visual-scheme development, and cost. The comparison showed Pimcore as the best fit for the Client's business and budget.

A Technology-Driven Roadmap for Self-Service Updates

• The Client gained a technology-driven approach to managing its website.
• Based on the consulting results, the Client planned to modernize and automate its product information and content management workflows.
• Implementing Akeneo and Pimcore was identified as the optimal way to reduce developer involvement and give the marketing team self-service tools to update product information and website content.

Methodologies

Business workflow investigation, Q&A sessions, technology market research.