PIM for the Best Data in the Online Shop

CARAT is one of the largest German trade cooperations in the field of car parts wholesale. Its full product range covers car, commercial vehicle and van spare parts, as well as car accessories and workshop equipment. With a total of 140 shareholders in the CARAT group of companies and 2,000 system workshops, it generates external sales of approximately 1.8 billion euros. CARAT's day-to-day business is always focused on the development of central services for the shareholders.

CARAT's first step was to plan a new online store, but the demand for data quality increased, requiring the best product data for the new store. Therefore, CARAT decided to set up a PIM system alongside the new online store in order to be able to improve and guarantee the quality of its data. In addition, although CARAT has the opportunity to obtain standardized data from many manufacturers via TecDoc or DVSE, this option is not yet available from all manufacturers and the quality of the data varies greatly across the different product lines. Therefore, the PIM system should also be used to increase product data quality for marketing and sales purposes. For the data maintenance itself, there was a requirement to establish system-controlled processes and define fixed workflows to reduce redundant and erroneous data. For the same reason, the PIM system was planned as a single system for storing, preparing, and providing product data in order to avoid multiple maintenance in different platforms.

The top priority when selecting a PIM system at CARAT was the creation of a golden record, i.e. a central platform in which all data of any kind is brought together. Furthermore, the common standards for the automotive industry, such as TecDoc and DVSE, should be easy to adopt in terms of both content and formats. Therefore, a system was also needed that was equally suitable for vehicle-linked and non-linked products, so that all relevant product data could be maintained easily and efficiently. An important requirement in data maintenance is the ability to add your own data and logic to the imported manufacturer product data without having to overwrite it or maintain it anew. These include search trees, additional attributes, other texts and media, and license plates. In addition, daily updated and automated data checks were required, as the PIM is to be the central control center for the online store and must always present the latest data. Finally, individual and automated exports and the resulting data provision were to be implemented in order to provide shareholders with only relevant data and to always be able to update the store.

With ANTEROS, data at CARAT can be easily merged from existing systems. The vehicle and product master data is regularly imported in TecDoc format and supplier data is transferred from dealer portals. In addition, logistics data from the ERP and agency texts from the agency database can be transferred to ANTEROS via interface.
All this has resulted in an incredibly efficient and refined professional online store that enables CARAT to deliver outstanding customer experience while maintaining a competitive advantage in the automotive sector.

In future, CARAT plans to expand the PIM system to their GS network with satellite structures. In addition, data maintenance in ANTEROS is to be made even more efficient by planning the use of AI in the maintenance of texts, attributes and images. Furthermore, the interfaces to data dealers and suppliers are to be optimized and expanded, for example, with BMEcat and REST APIs. Finally, an expansion of the PIM project to the internal organization is planned, whereby a user and role concept is to be used.