Biosynth AG, based in the Swiss town of Staad, produces and sells chemical and biochemical products. The company supplies large companies in the field of microbiology, food and environmental analysis, clinical diagnostics, and the pharmaceutical industry, as well as many chemical companies and trading companies worldwide.

Via an integrated shop on the website, Biosynth AG offers its customers a total of 100,000 products and counting. To better manage the extensive product portfolio, W4 has developed and implemented a PIM that is connected to the existing SAP solution. The products are maintained further in SAP. The PIM acts as a management system from which all channels can be operated externally.

Customized product management system

The technical basis is the Community Edition of Akeneo. This was customized by the developers of W4 and extended with extensive functionalities. An automated data update every night keeps the portfolio always up to date. As part of the update, the data is fed into the PIM. Thanks to particularly user-friendly export profiles, price lists, and product catalogs can now be created automatically by the employees. The data to be exported can be individually selected via a filter. The products include. Information can be published on the website by means of a web connection.

The challenge: individual customer features

The biggest challenge is the nightly import of such a large amount of data. Within a few hours, all products must be reliably updated. The range of prices also includes various currencies (US dollars, euros, Swiss francs). In order to ensure an automatic conversion, our developers have integrated additional computing mechanisms.

Moreover, the different packaging sizes per product had to be considered during the development process as well. Some products are offered in different sizes.

Since Biosynth AG deals with biochemical products, it was also necessary to incorporate country-specific restrictions. Not all products may be freely offered in every country. All gifs (pictures of chemical formulas), data sheets, etc., are stored in a fileshare filing system. Again, this was developed by the experts of W4