The requirements with which Kitchen&Co approached Pimcore partner elbkapitäne were complex and varied. Therefore, it was essential to carry out an intensive system evaluation on the customer side before starting the project.
Kitchen&Co is a franchise system for fitted kitchen retailers in Germany. It is part of the Otto Group- a trading conglomerate- which operates worldwide, employing around 50,000 people. Retail is the core business of the Otto Group, and therefore a multi-channel strategy is a must. The fitted kitchen trade is a highly competitive international market. To digitalize the customer journeys, Kitchen&Co has commissioned Pimcore Partner elbkapitäne with the realization of an e-business platform to provide optimum support for the kitchen purchasing process.
A free-planned fitted kitchen as it is available to consumers in the kitchen studio is to be understood as an aggregation of a large number of components and appliances. At Kitchen&Co, up to 60 combinations of components can be adjoined to create approximately 500,000 kitchen variations with over 200,000 product illustrations.
The main challenge was to correctly use various functionalities that Pimcore PIM/MDM offers for data modeling and structuring (object bricks, consistent inheritance) to map massive amounts of data with high-performance and then design them in a streamlined and user-friendly way.
The high connectivity and the flexible data model of Pimcore made it possible to obtain manufacturer and supplier data from over 20 APIs in real-time and merge them as PIM/MDM data sets. The Pimcore DAM also enabled the client to obtain assets from various sources (manufacturers, suppliers, and information portals) and transform them for output channels on the Kitchen&Co website.
Buying kitchen appliances is once in time investment. Most prospective customers research a lot before zeroing on the final decision. The objective is to offer potential customers a consistent customer journey across all touchpoints for the high-interest product "kitchen". On the new Kitchen& Co website, customers should, therefore, be able to prepare themselves in the best possible way for the personal sales talk in one of the many kitchen studios of Kitchen&Co. To this end, visitors should be able to get to know the depth of the product and the diverse configuration options without being overwhelmed.
Early UX tests in the project have shown that a digital range of inspiration and information must be very diverse. The individual target groups are characterized by differentiation with respect to prior knowledge, the need for advice (basic knowledge vs. detailed configuration), and approach (functional vs. emotional buyers).
Based on the Pimcore PIM/MDM and eCommerce framework, customer journey was mapped and subsequently various functionalities were designed to guide users to their dream kitchen. Users with an affinity for technology can filter kitchens according to numerous facets and installed appliances, while users with an interior background can find their kitchen by creating a personal ideas book based on colors, shapes, and magazine articles.
One of the decisive advantages of Pimcore was: How can complex product data be transformed into an engaging user experience? By seamlessly integrating product data, Pimcore offers excellent possibilities for realizing user-centered prototypes in real-time and testing them directly.
All franchisees now find their new digital home on the new Kitchen&Co website. This does not only mean the own location/studio page, which is generated for each franchisee from the Pimcore CMS, but also the administration possibilities, which each studio operator receives. Via the Pimcore API, master data of the franchisees are used to generate individual studio pages as well as automatically create users and even the corresponding roles in the system. Currently, more than 200 users can manage location information and local offers (e.g., local campaigns, events, show kitchens, etc.) via a specially designed dashboard. Corresponding workflows ensure that content changes for over 200 users can be centrally controlled and released.
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