The use of a PIM is essential for any manufacturer of manufactured products with a complex and voluminous catalog.
E-tailers are often forced to adapt to importing and updating their e-commerce site’s product catalog using a PIM.
Objective
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Related issues
Importing via an archive generated by the PIM (CSV, XML, or JSON files) allows bypassing API and server resource limitations.
This batch process can be scheduled during off-peak hours to minimize the impact on site performance. The data structure is already normalized and enriched by the PIM, significantly reducing the need for transformation during import.
Using the PIM API offers a more dynamic approach with real-time updates. This method enables finer synchronization of changes (prices, stock) and better management of dependencies between products.
Modern PIM APIs typically include pagination, filtering, and robust error handling mechanisms, which are essential for large catalogs.
Case studies
A European motorcycle manufacturer publishes daily updates of its product catalog using a PIM.
Catalog updates are uploaded to an FTP server accessible to all its resellers.
The catalog is periodically provided as a zip archive of about one hundred gigabytes, containing: an XML file, an image folder, a folder of iconographic elements, and a folder with product sheets and user manuals in PDF format.
The catalog includes very diverse product categories: motorcycles, spare parts, clothing, and accessories.
A “vehicle compatibility matrix” is integrated into the catalog to establish compatibility of each spare part with the motorcycle’s year/model combination.
This compatibility matrix is used to search for spare parts based on the model and year of a motorcycle.
In total, the catalog contains over 60,000 product references along with associated information: manufacturer reference, attributes and features, short and long descriptive texts, photos, PDF product sheets, etc.
The update of this catalog (and the related vehicle compatibility data) on PrestaShop is automatic and requires no manual intervention.
Synchronization settings allow selecting which product categories and subcategories should be synchronized.
A mapping table is also used to match the catalog categories with those on the website.
The full process to handle a complete catalog update takes an entire night.
All processing is carried out on the Hub4commerce platform. Data exchanges with the site have been optimized and paginated to minimize impact on site performance.
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