Automating variant detection for Staples.
Sector
Office Suppy Retailer
Products
100,000+
Employees
400+
Staples is the largest company in its industry, serving customers in 30 European countries and an additional 20 markets worldwide. Beyond selling office supplies, Staples aims to support customers in achieving their goals by providing a user-friendly webshop. With PowerRelate, they can automate the detection of product relationships, eliminating unnecessary manual work and enhancing the shopping experience.
Background
Staples is a leading provider of office supplies, workplace solutions, and business services. With a strong presence across Europe and beyond, the company focuses on making office shopping efficient and accessible through its digital platforms. By offering a seamless online experience with product variants and alternatives, Staples ensures that businesses can easily find what they need. Their commitment to innovation and automation helps streamline operations and reduce manual effort, making them a key player in the office solutions industry.
The challenge.
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Wide product range
Staples offers a vast selection of office supplies and aims to make them easily accessible to customers. A seamless shopping experience includes the ability to view product variations in one overview. For example, when a customer views a desk, they should also see the same desk in different sizes and colors.
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Manual product linking
To provide this functionality, Staples needs to record variant relationships in its Product Information Management (PIM) system. However, this is a complex and labor-intensive task, requiring extensive manual effort to link related products correctly.
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Need for automation
The challenge for Staples was to automate the process of detecting and recording product relationships without excessive manual work. Finding a scalable and efficient solution was crucial to improving the webshop experience while reducing workload.
Our solution.
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AI-powered clustering
PowerRelate uses advanced artificial intelligence techniques to automatically create clusters of similar products that are variants of one another. This process identifies related products based on characteristics such as size, color, type, and more.
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Validation portal
The automatically generated product relations are displayed in an administrator portal for Staples employees to review and validate. This allows for human oversight to ensure accuracy before any product relations are finalized.
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Integration with PIM
Once validated, the related products are exported to Staples' Product Information Management (PIM) system. This data is then used to enhance the various e-commerce environments across different countries, ensuring consistency and accessibility for customers worldwide.
The result
PowerSuite has empowered Staples to...
Improve product navigation
Automated variant detection made it easier for customers to view all product variations in one place.
Enhance product visibility
Automatically linked variants boosted product discoverability, offering more choices to customers.
