Adam Hall Group is a globally recognized manufacturer and distributor of high-quality event technology solutions, headquartered in Germany. The company provides an extensive and diverse portfolio of professional audio, lighting, stage, and hardware equipment through its well-established and respected brands such as LD Systems, Cameo, Gravity, and Palmer. With decades of experience and a strong commitment to innovation, Adam Hall continually develops cutting-edge products designed to meet the evolving needs of professionals in the live entertainment, broadcast, and AV installation markets. Supported by a global network of partners and distributors, Adam Hall Group has built a solid reputation for reliability, performance, and customer-focused service across more than 100 countries worldwide.
On-Premise PIM and Data Publishing for a Manufacturer of Event Technology Solutions
Challenges
Adam Hall faced several key challenges in managing and optimizing their growing and complex product data ecosystem:
Difficult Data Migration from Akeneo: Migrating from the Akeneo Enterprise PIM posed significant challenges, as not all structured and unstructured data could be exported cleanly. Manual rework and transformation were necessary to ensure data integrity in the new system.
Highly Complex Data Structures: Adam Hall’s product portfolio includes a wide range of product types, each with unique attributes, technical specifications, and multilingual marketing content. Managing this variety required a highly flexible and extensible data model.
Inefficient New Product Introduction (NPI): The process for introducing new products was not optimized. Product data often needed to be released in phases. Technical specs, marketing content, and digital assets were ready at different times, yet the system lacked support for staged publication.
Goals
To address these challenges, Adam Hall set out to:
Implement an On-Premise PIM Solution: Replace Akeneo Enterprise with a more flexible and secure on-premise solution tailored to their internal workflows and infrastructure.
Enable Automatic Datasheet Generation: Automatically create high-quality, up-to-date product datasheets using structured data and assets stored in the PIM.
Optimize Product Lifecycle Management: Improve the NPI process by enabling staged publication of product data, allowing technical data to go live first, followed by enriched marketing content and images over time.
Lay the Foundation for Syndication Automation: Prepare for future automation of product data syndication to multiple Amazon marketplaces and other digital sales channels.
Solution
To meet these objectives, a modern, on-premise Product Information Management (PIM) system was implemented. This new platform was designed to meet Adam Hall’s high standards for flexibility, security, and scalability.
Key solution features included:
Customized Data Model Support: The new PIM was configured to accommodate complex data types, multilingual content, technical specs, and multimedia assets across multiple brands and product families.
Advanced Content Workflow Management: A flexible workflow system supports staged content creation and publication, allowing technical teams, marketing teams, and media specialists to work in parallel while releasing product content in phases.
Automated Datasheet Generation: Integration with templating tools enabled the automatic creation of product datasheets directly from structured PIM data, reducing time-to-market and ensuring accuracy. Thanks to the use of ghostscript, watermarks are automatically added to selected PDFs.
Use of Cloud Storage: All digital assets stored on Amazon AWS S3 storage have been indexed by the system. Users of the system can use these digital assets, along with those added directly to the system, to enhance product content.
Started to Use AI: Customer started to use OpenAI ChatGPT-4o to automatically tag selected images, which are relevant for the online store.
Future-Ready Architecture: While ERP integration was not required, the system was architected to support downstream integration with marketplaces such as Amazon, enabling future automation of data syndication processes.
Results
Streamlined Product Content Management: The new PIM platform enables faster, more efficient management of Adam Hall’s extensive and diverse product catalog. The use of AI makes it possible to automate certain tasks and speed up the translation of content into different foreign languages.
Optimized New Product Introduction (NPI): Staged content release allows product data to be published as it becomes available, improving agility and reducing bottlenecks.
Automated Datasheet Generation: High-quality, branded product datasheets can now be created automatically, saving time and reducing manual errors.
Enhanced Data Consistency and Reliability: Centralized data management, combined with validation rules and automated checks, ensures accurate, consistent, and up-to-date product information across all systems and distribution channels.
Scalable Architecture for Future Growth: The PIM solution lays a strong foundation for future digital initiatives, including multichannel syndication, digital asset management enhancements, and further automation.
