SUCCESS STORY
Managing millions of e-commerce image requests with ease
Benefits
- One source of truth for all assets across ecommerce and marketing teams.
- Automated product image import from various sources and suppliers.
- Enhance ability to collaborate with external partners.
- Robust backend for online and mobile storefronts, websites, and digital marketing.
About the customer
Finnish retailer S-Group is present in the lives of the majority of Finns thanks to their diverse commercial portfolio.
The customer-owned cooperative has five supermarket chains in their stable – Sale, Alepa, S-market, Prisma, and Food Market Herkku – totaling 900 stores. Whilst mostly in Finland, they have some shops in Russia and the Baltics too.
They are also involved in department stores, service stations, hardware, cosmetics, hotels, restaurants, and their own S-Bank, which boasts 3.1 million customers. In total, they have 1,800 outlets and employ 40,000 staff.
As a result of their extensive operations, S-Group has a large online presence. This includes numerous ecommerce stores, providing online shopping and featuring a vast array of fast-moving commercial goods.
Challenge
S-Group’s asset management needs were evolving.
They had an existing media solution but it lacked flexibility and scale. They needed a single source of truth for their growing library of digital assets, so that staff could confidently access and reuse images, video, and artwork across a range of print and digital media. In light of increased working from home, and the use of external agencies, it was important that the solution was accessible online, wherever contributors were based.
The growth of their e-commerce activity also meant that S-Group needed a solution that would allow them to create multiple renditions of assets – such as high-res images for print and lower-res images optimized for digital use - with the ability to sync metadata and product details.
Like many retailers, S-Group needed to be able to receive and process 100,000s of images from suppliers. Furthermore, they needed the ability to optimize and deploy these images to multiple e-commerce sites without slowing download speed or negatively impacting on user experience.
They also wanted a solution that would integrate with Adobe Creative Suite and other software that they use to produce creative collateral, as well as facilitate a range of process automations.
"Our preceding media bank was really outdated. You certainly couldn’t plug it into any Adobe processes. So we were doing a lot in Adobe that was completely separate from our media bank. There was no reusing assets in multiple collaterals because we couldn’t connect them together."
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Evaluation
S-Group was attracted to WoodWing Assets due to its flexibility and scalability. They were impressed by its integration with Adobe and the possibilities to integrate with other solutions. As a large retailer managing millions of digital assets and complex workflows, scalability was a key consideration and one that WoodWing Assets could meet.
"We have so many chains, so many branches and brands, all needing marketing collateral. We have 110,000 InDesign files in the DAM at the moment, with roughly 2,000 more getting added every month."
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Implementation
The organization first rolled out WoodWing Assets for marketing collaterals, and then for ecommerce too.
Since implementing WoodWing Assets, e-commerce has become the main user of the system, effortlessly deploying millions of assets across multiple e-commerce sites and online storefronts.
Due to S-Group’s complex requirements, the implementation includes several software integrations, working seamlessly together.
- For data input, a number of integrations work to import new assets and keep current product images up-to-date. Images are automatically imported from magazine and book delivery services, GS1’s SynkkaMedia system, as well as a custom supplier portal where they can import and manage product images manually.
- WoodWing Assets is also integrated with the organization’s PIM system, ensuring any product information updates are synced with materials in production.
- For images and content creation, the organization is making extensive use of the integration with Adobe Creative Cloud, both for internal and outsourced media production.
- A number of custom image processing automations have been implemented, to standardize stored formats and image profiles.
- A custom CDN (Content Delivery Network) ensures availability and performance for a large number of online and mobile sites and storefronts. It processes an average of 45 million requests for assets per day.
S-Group is also pleased with the flexibility and control they have during collaboration with external partners.
"Being able to bring in external production partners is very important. As is the ability to change production partners. There’s no problem getting the assets back or getting past partners to delete assets. S Group controls all the data, all the images, all the layouts, all the PDFs. They can end a contract and engage easily with someone new."
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Results
S-Group is seeing a range of benefits from working with WoodWing Assets, including:
- Huge time savings in workflow through automations and the Adobe integration.
- Better ability to collaborate with external parties.
- More control over their assets, processes, and creative partnerships.
- A single source of truth across their ecommerce and marketing teams.
- A more robust way to serve assets to their ecommerce websites.
Partner
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