Akeneo PIM for product/catalog management (PIM)

[marcopaul]

Hey guys, anyone played with Akeneo at all for PIM (Product Information Management)?

http://demo.akeneo.com/ <http://demo.akeneo.com/> (admin/admin)

Looks like it would complement OFBiz very nicely for managing large complex catalogs. Wanted to see if anyone had any experience here with it or had recommendations for similar tools. It’s open-source, but unfortunately it’s a PHP stack.

—P

[Michael Brohl-3]

Hi Paul,

thanks for sharing!

I have no experience with this software and only had a brief
click-through, so my opinion might be inaccurate: I think that OFBiz
already has most of these features, and much more, in the catalog manager.

The only drawback is the UI, which is very complex and not so clearly
arranged. But it is easy to slim down the catalog manager and hide all
the stuff you don't need or rearrange the screens/forms to build a
better UI. Plus, you have full access and can change any process as you
like.

For example, we did some projects to build specialized catalog
management systems for spare parts, both frontend and backend on top of
the strong data model and using a lot of existing services (see [1], [2]).

I'm pretty sure that it is worth to evaluate the OFBiz catalog manager
if you are looking or a good and integrated PIM solution.

Regards,

Michael Brohl
ecomify GmbH
www.ecomify.de

[1]
https://www.gigant-parts.com/control/category/~pcategory=10108/~category_id=10144

[2] https://www.krone-trailerparts.com/brems-und-luftanlage/modulatoren


Am 13.06.17 um 18:18 schrieb Paul Mandeltort:

> Hey guys, anyone played with Akeneo at all for PIM (Product Information Management)?
>
> http://demo.akeneo.com/ <http://demo.akeneo.com/> (admin/admin)
>
> Looks like it would complement OFBiz very nicely for managing large complex catalogs. Wanted to see if anyone had any experience here with it or had recommendations for similar tools. It’s open-source, but unfortunately it’s a PHP stack.
>
> —P
>
>
>
>

[Rishi Solanki]

I also spend some time on PIM and linked shared by Paul. Agree with Michael
that PIM + more features already available in the catalog manager of OFBiz.
Also agree on the point of complex and difficult to understand UI.

Many conversation I have seen for the responsive UI with change in the UX
design, also I have also started similar conversation in past. Hopefully,
we would be able to see better UI in OFBiz soon which is as per the user
expectations.

Finally, OFBiz is able to manage more complex catalog structure then PIM.
So if we have the better UI that would be great as it will follow the
Universal Data Model for which OFBiz is committed for.




Rishi Solanki
Sr Manager, Enterprise Software Development
HotWax Systems Pvt. Ltd.
Direct: [phone]
http://www.hotwaxsystems.com

On Wed, Jun 14, 2017 at 1:42 AM, Michael Brohl <[hidden email]>
wrote:

> Hi Paul,
>
> thanks for sharing!
>
> I have no experience with this software and only had a brief
> click-through, so my opinion might be inaccurate: I think that OFBiz
> already has most of these features, and much more, in the catalog manager.
>
> The only drawback is the UI, which is very complex and not so clearly
> arranged. But it is easy to slim down the catalog manager and hide all the
> stuff you don't need or rearrange the screens/forms to build a better UI.
> Plus, you have full access and can change any process as you like.
>
> For example, we did some projects to build specialized catalog management
> systems for spare parts, both frontend and backend on top of the strong
> data model and using a lot of existing services (see [1], [2]).
>
> I'm pretty sure that it is worth to evaluate the OFBiz catalog manager if
> you are looking or a good and integrated PIM solution.
>
> Regards,
>
> Michael Brohl
> ecomify GmbH
> www.ecomify.de
>
> [1] https://www.gigant-parts.com/control/category/~pcategory=101
> 08/~category_id=10144
>
> [2] https://www.krone-trailerparts.com/brems-und-luftanlage/modulatoren
>
>
> Am 13.06.17 um 18:18 schrieb Paul Mandeltort:
>
> Hey guys, anyone played with Akeneo at all for PIM (Product Information
>> Management)?
>>
>> http://demo.akeneo.com/ <http://demo.akeneo.com/> (admin/admin)
>>
>> Looks like it would complement OFBiz very nicely for managing large
>> complex catalogs. Wanted to see if anyone had any experience here with it
>> or had recommendations for similar tools. It’s open-source, but
>> unfortunately it’s a PHP stack.
>>
>> —P
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>

[marcopaul]

Agreed. The reason I shared this particular PIM is that it shows a “good” UI for managing products especially when a lot of business users are involved.  I am intimately familiar with the ofbiz catalog manager - we manage a catalog of over 50,000 SKUs, kits, assemblies, etc. However the OFBiz UI is very very difficult to train new users on and it has a lot of shortcomings for managing large catalogs. Most of them on the UI side.

Is anyone working on using a modern framework/toolkit for the UI?

These guys seem to be the most promising in this space and their core offering is
https://vaadin.com/home <https://vaadin.com/home>
https://vaadin.com/elements <https://vaadin.com/elements> is Apache 2.0 licensed!

Vaadin Grid, on its own, would fix a huge chunk of OFbiz UI issues since most of he problems revolve around interacting with tabular data and views.
https://cdn.vaadin.com/vaadin-grid/2.0.0/demo/ <https://cdn.vaadin.com/vaadin-grid/2.0.0/demo/>

—P

> On Jun 30, 2017, at 4:04 AM, Rishi Solanki <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> I also spend some time on PIM and linked shared by Paul. Agree with Michael
> that PIM + more features already available in the catalog manager of OFBiz.
> Also agree on the point of complex and difficult to understand UI.
>
> Many conversation I have seen for the responsive UI with change in the UX
> design, also I have also started similar conversation in past. Hopefully,
> we would be able to see better UI in OFBiz soon which is as per the user
> expectations.
>
> Finally, OFBiz is able to manage more complex catalog structure then PIM.
> So if we have the better UI that would be great as it will follow the
> Universal Data Model for which OFBiz is committed for.
>
>
>
>
> Rishi Solanki
> Sr Manager, Enterprise Software Development
> HotWax Systems Pvt. Ltd.
> Direct: [phone]
> http://www.hotwaxsystems.com
>
> On Wed, Jun 14, 2017 at 1:42 AM, Michael Brohl <[hidden email]>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi Paul,
>>
>> thanks for sharing!
>>
>> I have no experience with this software and only had a brief
>> click-through, so my opinion might be inaccurate: I think that OFBiz
>> already has most of these features, and much more, in the catalog manager.
>>
>> The only drawback is the UI, which is very complex and not so clearly
>> arranged. But it is easy to slim down the catalog manager and hide all the
>> stuff you don't need or rearrange the screens/forms to build a better UI.
>> Plus, you have full access and can change any process as you like.
>>
>> For example, we did some projects to build specialized catalog management
>> systems for spare parts, both frontend and backend on top of the strong
>> data model and using a lot of existing services (see [1], [2]).
>>
>> I'm pretty sure that it is worth to evaluate the OFBiz catalog manager if
>> you are looking or a good and integrated PIM solution.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Michael Brohl
>> ecomify GmbH
>> www.ecomify.de
>>
>> [1] https://www.gigant-parts.com/control/category/~pcategory=101
>> 08/~category_id=10144
>>
>> [2] https://www.krone-trailerparts.com/brems-und-luftanlage/modulatoren
>>
>>
>> Am 13.06.17 um 18:18 schrieb Paul Mandeltort:
>>
>> Hey guys, anyone played with Akeneo at all for PIM (Product Information
>>> Management)?
>>>
>>> http://demo.akeneo.com/ <http://demo.akeneo.com/> (admin/admin)
>>>
>>> Looks like it would complement OFBiz very nicely for managing large
>>> complex catalogs. Wanted to see if anyone had any experience here with it
>>> or had recommendations for similar tools. It’s open-source, but
>>> unfortunately it’s a PHP stack.
>>>
>>> —P
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>