Market leader Nathan wants to clean-up their item data and classify in conformity with ETIM.

Roel de Bie has held the position of Supervisor Customer Service with Nathan since November 2015. When he started his job, he was assigned to the project ‘product classification’ for his new department. The preparation for this project had already been initiated for some time and Compano had already been selected to assist with setting it up. De Bie: “Our starting point was to classify all current products, in conformity with ETIM. We faced a real challenge, since the available data of our suppliers were very minimal and incomplete. Data that we would never want to pass on to our clients, the wholesale businesses.”

“We knew Compano, when we started to look for a solution last year. The pragmatic software and strong approach of Compano appealed to us very much. The intended final result of our item classification is to provide our potential customers with a list of items that is as complete and up-to-date as possible; correct and reliable. It allows to make a well-considered choice to buy our products. As we work exclusively in the B2B domain, our clients consist mainly of wholesale businesses. We are a partner for all the parties that are active in the sustainable climate technology sect.”The two main reasons to change to the PIM application of Compano were the adequate support (short response times and for example customized training) and the user friendly interface that is used in their system.”

Thought leadership

The challenge in the project ‘product classification’ for Nathan is two-fold. On the one hand it is a challenge to clean-up the number of items:(down from 12,268 to 2.628). On the other hand, to correctly classify and enrich the data on the basis of received supplier data.“ And that is not an easy task. We have to do a lot ourselves, since the supplied data is poor, in our opinion.”

De Bie: “in the sustainable heating and cooling market many clients are still looking for the correct solution. It is a relative new market. Very few dispose of sufficient knowledge to fully service the market. We, as Nathan, try to be the ‘thought leader’. For wholesale businesses and installers Nathan is the central point of contact for quality products and the knowledge centre of sustainable climate technology.”

Switch to Compano's PIM

The switch to Compano’s PIM system is now in the final phase “At this moment we are busy classifying all of our Nathan itemitem We are constantly improving our data in conformity with the ETIM-standard. And due to the ease-of-use that we experience with Compano’s software it will take only a few weeks at the most. Right now about 25% of our products have been classified optimally, including data enrichment. A slowing factor in classification remains the limited quantity of useful data from the manufacturers. Unfortunately, we must search and enter quite some data manually.”

Although the limited quantity of useful data had a considerable impact on the time spent by Nathan, the first impressions during the implementation are very positive. “As far as we are concerned, everything is getting easier. Important advantage: the result is happy customers. Our data is simply correct!

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