Transforming and simplifying the management of product content across channels

Problems to solve

BrandSync is a custom-designed product information management (PIM) platform for brands and retailers to share content and digital assets on an enterprise scale via one central hub. The product was built for a globally recognized brand GS1 - a worldwide non-profit organization, responsible for, among others, the standardization of barcodes. BrandSync itself supports worldwide brands e.g. Mars, Procter & Gamble, Carrefour, and Estee Lauder.

The product addresses the challenges of managing extensive product information and the demands of sharing this information with multiple recipients. The specifics of such a product came with some key issues to solve:

  • turning the vague project idea into the ready-to-implement scope of work,
  • designing the complex product that will meet users' and business goals,
  • also, three more specific ones concerning the data distribution i.e.:

1. Gathering and processing of a large amount of product information,   

2. Data standardization and unification for all of supply chain participants, 

3. Further data circulation within the internal and external scopes.

The client was on the lookout for a team with great competence in designing complex, human-centered digital products and developing a technically strong solution that is efficient, smart, and collaborative.

Highlights

5430

product categories in total

2

years of ongoing cooperation

10

development team members

100+

companies using the app

Solutions

Backend

RabbitMQ
Redis
Python
PostgreSQL
Elasticsearch
Django
Celery

Design

UX design
UX Audit
UI design
Scoping Session
Product Design Workshops
CI
Axure prototyping/wireframing

Frontend

TypeScript
RxJS 6
Redux
Jasmine
Karma
Angular

Tools

Postman
Jenkins
Docker
AWS

QA

API testing

Mobile

No items found.

The BrandSync application was built from scratch. The very first task was to plan out how to turn a 3-page brief of the project into a working solution in the best possible way. We began with an extensive scoping session with the client during which the team had an opportunity to understand both the needs of the users and the particular roles in a complex data exchanging processes, gather and clear out the requirements and understand the businesshuman-centred our partner. This let us have firm ground for further steps.

For the first 6 months, BrandSync app was developed following the Scrum methodology. With a growing team, established workflow and well-maintained communication, the team moved smoothly to Scrumban. Each three month period has its three major milestones and one goal to be achieved by software developers. Both aims and milestones were discussed and accepted by the business partner. 

One of the major challenges was to combine simplicity with flexibility and create as user-friendly tools as possible. The team decided to create custom-made designs what freed us from the limitations imposed by ready-made UI sets and frameworks. As regards the tech stack, we have decided to use Angular as one of the best solutions for creating such complex web applications as well as Python and Django framework. We’ve also chosen PostgreSQL for the database as one of the best Open Source database management systems that can handle high volumes of data and for its reliability and stability.  

Thanks to the deep understanding of the business goals, Merixstudio’s development team managed to combine a complex data structure with a user-friendly interface. The whole development process demonstrated the strengths of agile methodologies and highlighted the role of empathy during the product discovery phase. The combination of business acumen, designing skills and most modern engineering delivered a solution for entrepreneurs representing a variety of branches.
 

Key features

Status and workflows

keeping track of requests and updates from multiple sources; overseeing and managing all activities and their corresponding status

Review and approve

for resolving data gaps, enriching content, and verifying data so that the likelihood of error is reduced

Dashboards

providing an overview of the tasks, activities, notifications and messages

Role-based access control

possibility to delegate and define roles within the platform granting them different permission levels to reduce the likelihood of errors and miscommunication

Custom fields

customisation of products’ attributes; fields can be created and edited along with specific requirements

Data syndication

importing and exporting data in xml and xlsx formats and REST API

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