LAIKA Digital Platform All-in-one hub for digital content

Problem Statement

One of the world's largest retailers is Germany's largest retailer, which operates 674 wholesale stores in 24 countries. The Client is a German multinational company based in Düsseldorf which operates business membership-only cash and carry stores.

Challenges:

• A wide assortment of up to 20,000 food items and up to 30,000 non-food articles required a reliable platform as a single source of assets across the company.
• A non-scalable asset management system was a limiting factor in the architecture.
• A legacy DAM UI and publication flows became a significant bottleneck.

The workflows for publishing large volumes of assets and metadata were inefficient.

Solution Proposed

LAIKA is an Asset Center. The LAIKA-based solution was selected to combine advanced digital asset management with powerful marketing campaign distribution functionality and is available for employees in Client’s offices in 24 countries around the globe.

LAIKA was installed and integrated with existing customizations and applications. It was deployed as an autoscaling cluster to stay stable despite high loads.

Archived Results

The new solution seamlessly replaced an existing outdated platform without any delays. The migration process was done in time even considering a limited time frame. LAIKA empowered the whole Client’s landscape: performance bottlenecks were eliminated; costs were heavily optimized and the whole experience was improved. People from 24 countries are using this solution daily to design, produce and approve new assets; as well as to distribute marketing campaigns for internal and external users around the globe.

For EPAM this project was an important milestone. On one side it allowed extending an existing project for the Client with a new scope for several years. On the other side – it was a perfect test drive for a new platform in real-life conditions. There were almost no CRs during the project implementation which proved that the vision of the team regarding the platform and features was right. And there were no delays in delivery or complex issues during a runtime which proved that the solution itself is rock-solid.

Problem Statement

A large UK multinational fast fashion retailer with headquarters in Dublin, Ireland and which operates 398 stores in 14 countries.

The company has experienced large issues, especially during Covid-19 times, due to not operating and selling products online at all. With such lack of digital landscape in 2021 only 8% of Client’s products were present online with only one image and product title.

Existing processes and software landscape of the company did not allow increasing the coverage of products with rich content.

Challenges:

• Customer with low experience with PIM/DAM systems
• Lack of digital landscape (only 8% of Client’s products were present online)
• A demand to address the issues as quick as possible to avoid further financial losses.

Solution Proposed

LAIKA as a Product Content Management (PCM) and Digital Asset Management (DAM) system for product content.

The team has conducted a discovery to analyse current needs and pain points and propose the most valid PIM/DAM solution as a result.

We have delivered the MVP of the system in about 4 months in order to be able to start adapting and polishing the system as soon as possible in parallel with establishment of more advanced content management and copywriting processes inside the company.

LAIKA-based solution was designed to implement a product content authoring process inside the whole organization and now playing role of a product content management (PCM) application heavily integrated with other systems that form Client’s digital landscape.

Archived Results

New solution is a cornerstone for digital transformation. LAIKA as a PCM solution collects the product data and provides functionality to work on a product content and product assets; once the data is ready the platform distributes it among various channels. Such solution ensures the highest possible quality of content. As a result, almost 100% of the Company’s products were represented for purchase online.

LAIKA was a big door opener for EPAM: it is a usual case when customers come for specific tool such as DAM or PCM for their everyday needs, but it leads them to the full digital transformation of the entire landscape. In case of the Client, LAIKA played such role. As a result, this small RFP was converted into a big digital transformation program consists of 10+ projects where EPAM was responsible for all the parts of the landscape: DAM, PCM, DXP, warehouse management, storefront, e-commerce, integrations etc. In November 2022 team conducted offline workshop in London to extend project scope and identify points of growth.