A family-owned technical wholesaler Knorring Oy Ab produces solutions for the manufacturing industry and the public sector with a wide range of products. The company was founded as early as 1890, and it can be considered a pioneer of technical wholesale in Finland.
The company started mapping its system architecture a couple of years ago, because it had become aware of the need for reform. As background work, the needs and current situation were examined, as well as what alternatives would be available. After the background study, it was concluded that the new system architecture can be considered from scratch.
"We are working on all digitalization and related processes," says Eemi Karhu, Project Manager leading Knorring's entire large digitalisation project.
Knorring decided to make extensive changes in its solutions: it was decided to build a multi-vendor environment, in which Microsoft was chosen as the ERP and customer management system, Adeona as the PIM supplier and Workato, which transmits information between different systems, as the integration platform. In addition, Saleor was chosen as the e-commerce platform.
"The aim is to be ready in early 2025 – at least so that the online store would be operational. At the moment, we are already using PIM and the next step will be to implement ERP and a customer relationship management system," Karhu continues.
When choosing the PIM solution, Knorring realized that product information is at the core of the company's business, so it must be of high quality, in the right format, and serve users. Knorring acts as a reseller with an expert angle. The company has many suppliers in Europe and other countries: they provide comprehensive product information and material. Customers and partners, on the other hand, have a lot of needs for product information. Therefore, it was clear that product information must have its own system, designed specifically for the needs and use of product information.
When considering the PIM solution, Knorring has also taken process aspects into account: who produces product information, who processes it and where the information is obtained.
"We receive a lot of product information from suppliers, so it is important for us to have the information transferred consistently to one system. Of course, if the company has its own manufacturing or product life cycle management, the needs may be different," says Karhu.
"When choosing the PIM solution, we emphasized the process of importing product information, i.e. which system meets the need when product information is imported from suppliers. It was also important that the chosen system supports the operation of other systems and fits the overall architecture best. You also have to think about whether customization is needed. At Knorring, we wanted a ready-made system with functional processes."
