diePartments: New Pimcore Partner in Cologne

diePartments is a software development and digital agency based in Cologne, Germany. They develop eCommerce applications primarily for B2B use cases and just became a Pimcore Silver partner. We asked what made them choose Pimcore.

They have much experience developing applications with the Symfony PHP framework and are using VueJS and Angular for the frontend. Their projects can be categorized into B2B portals, eCommerce, mobile / progressive web-apps and some traditional websites. Always looking to become more efficient, they started a research, to be able to deliver projects to their retail and manufacturing clients faster. After an evaluation of recurring requirements, which were necessary for nearly all of their projects, diePartments came to a first conclusion:

They always needed to manage some type of structured data. This data needed to be enriched with binary data, such as images and videos. The data needed to be managed and pushed to portals. And it needed to be displayed on traditional websites. Standardized APIs were necessary, to easily import and export the data. More and more of their clients also required shopping carts and check-outs. When looking for a solution, which would save them time on new projects, they stumbled across Pimcore.

"Pimcore provides the flexibility, which we are used from the frameworks we are using, while at the same time it has a vast amount of additional features out-of-the-box. Especially the integrated eCommerce features of Pimcore attract us, because for many of our B2B clients – eCommerce plays a vital role."

After a period in which they mainly used eZ publish, they are using Pimcore since 2017 again for all new projects. They love the modern technology stack and the unmatched flexibility Pimcore has in comparison to other products. Pimcore can cover all of their requirements in managing product data, supplier data, content data, customer data and any other data. Additionally, Pimcore manages all media asset data, images, videos, PDF files, MS Office documents and more. Logging in and working with a single interface, this data can be used and worked with directly in Pimcore in managing traditional websites, B2B portals or eCommerce applications.

Since when is your company using Pimcore?

We discovered Pimcore in 2011 when it was based on Zend 1. Unfortunately, this framework was outdated by 2015 and it got hard to find programmers willing to work with it. We started using another open-source framework for a couple of years. When in 2017 Pimcore announced that the Version 5 release would be based on the leading PHP framework Symfony - we switched back to Pimcore and use it for many new projects since.

Why is Pimcore the right solution for your company?

We did extensive research and evaluated multiple CMS and PIM Systems for our customers. Pimcore not only offers a flexible foundation without deadlocks. It also enables us to accomplish things fast and thus having a short time-to-market for a wide variety of projects. We like using it also because many of us are experienced Symfony developers and the technology stack feels native for us. Not to forget - it is fun to use and easy to train new developers.

What are some cool projects you did with Pimcore?

We have developed over 10 Pimcore projects. One worth mentioning was the Bürkle GmbH eCommerce project in 2016. We connected Pimcore directly and seamlessly to the ERP for calculating prices in the shopping cart and individual prices for each customer. This typical B2B scenario required a powerful solution with a flexible data model such as Pimcore.

Currently, we are working on another eCommerce project for a B2C company. The connection of the CMS with Pimcores eCommerce module enables content-commerce. We will build a magazine-like online shop for a retailer, which has much content - more than a traditional online shop could have.

What made you join the Pimcore Solution Partner Program?

Firstly  –  we believe in OpenSource and would like to help attract more attention to Pimcore. Due to our many years of experience, we gained in-depth knowledge with Pimcore and Symfony. It felt like an overdue step to take. We hope the partnership will also lead to work closely with the Pimcore team – which does a great job.

We are always open and curious for more cases and would like to see this as an opportunity to reach out for interesting new projects.