Use automated processes to structure categories and technical data for your products. This will help sales partners a great deal in product data maintenance.
What is the ETIM standard?
ETIM stands for European Technical Information Model. Today, the ETIM data model is an industry standard in Germany, Europe and beyond. Over 300 companies in Germany use ETIM, and there are many more throughout Europe.
ETIM defines all technical characteristics for items ranging from electrical to plumbing in order to describe them precisely. This standardized structure makes it easier for all parties involved to exchange product-related data.
The standardized and classified data is uploaded to media-neutral databases such as ERP, WMS or PIM and can be used in online marketplaces, print/electronic catalogs and other e-commerce channels.(Source: https://e-pro.cat)
Advantages of ETIM
Since the structure and description of technical product information is the same, there is no need for data formatting and customization. This enables smooth and fast product data exchange between manufacturers and retailers. Manufacturers who provide their entire product range in ETIM format actively support their sales success with business partners and wholesalers.
The use of classification systems such as ETIM offers several advantages, which can save you a lot of time when importing, editing and updating your data.
- You do not have to create your own system of categories and technical data to describe your products.
- You simplify the provision of your product data to resellers and distributors by exporting the category and technical data of a product into the standardized ETIM format.
Simple, efficient, consistent - thanks to ETIM.
Example: If your reseller buys products from other suppliers in addition to your products, he is confronted with a multitude of manufacturers' own systems of category formation, which he has to standardize independently and transfer into his own system of categories and technical data attributes.
ETIM simplifies this process by providing standardized classes. Once you have defined the ETIM classes for your own systematics, you can automatically assign the products of different suppliers to your own categories and technical attributes in the future. So the initial mapping effort is done only once, instead of each time you import product data from a supplier.
Structuring technical data
Similarly, the new Data Director command simplifies the structuring of technical data: For example, one supplier offers T-shirt sizes M, L, XL, 2XL, while another carries M, L, XL, XXL, and a third carries the size breakdown Medium, Large, Extra Large, Extra-Extra Large.
If a seller wants to offer a size filter in his store, he has to transfer the different size subdivisions of his suppliers into his own system. If his suppliers provide the technical data as ETIM characteristics, this simplifies the process of the entire allocation. This is because it only has to be completed once for all suppliers who support ETIM.
You have already maintained technical product data in Pimcore? No problem, because Data Director allows you to automatically populate ETIM fields from existing fields, so nothing changes for your data maintenance.
The ETIM import command for the Data Director
This bundle provides a command to automatically create and update Pimcore classification stores based on the ETIM classification system. It automatically creates classification stores based on ETIM releases, group collections based on ETIM groups, groups based on ETIM classes, and key definitions/fields based on ETIM features.
You can also filter classes and fields to be created. This will import only classes and fields that contain somewhere in their names, descriptions or other elements the term set as filter. This way, only ETIM classes relevant to your business area will be included. When you run the command again, all matching fields will be updated with the current data from the ETIM API.
You can get the new bundle from Pimcore Marketplace or directly from us.
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