Building a Governed Product Data Foundation for Digital Retail
We designed and delivered a cloud-based product information management platform that gives a supermarket retailer greater control over the quality, enrichment and distribution of product data across Shopify and its wider digital ecosystem.
Our Customer’s Challenge
A supermarket retailer relied on a network of AWS data feeds to move product information from its operational systems into Shopify. While these integrations supported the basic movement of data, they did not provide the central governance, validation and enrichment capabilities expected from a dedicated product information management platform.
Product records could contain missing or zero prices, conflicting product identifiers, duplicated information and inconsistencies between source systems and Shopify. Descriptions and images held only within Shopify also needed to be protected when records were updated from upstream systems. Resolving these issues required manual investigation, with limited visibility of which products needed attention or why.
The retailer also wanted to improve the richness of its product catalogue and prepare the underlying data for enhanced search, product discovery and recommendation capabilities. Any transformation needed to be introduced without disrupting live product updates or creating avoidable risk for the e-commerce operation.
Our solution
We designed and developed a purpose-built product information management solution within the retailer’s existing AWS environment.
Rather than immediately replacing the live product-data flow, we branched the existing feeds and used a secondary AWS Glue job to populate the new PIM database in parallel. This allowed the platform to be developed, validated and refined using real product data without affecting the live Shopify store.
The solution introduced automated data-quality controls that identify products requiring attention, including:
Missing or zero current prices.
Conflicting product identifiers and price relationships.
Duplicate or inconsistent product records.
Missing enrichment information.
Product descriptions and images held only within Shopify.
Retail-specific information such as freshness guarantees.
Data-cleansing alerts were incorporated into the platform so that known issues could be identified systematically rather than discovered after they had affected the storefront. The solution was also designed to support automated cleansing where appropriate while retaining a managed workflow for exceptions requiring human review.
We created a separate Shopify development store and tested enriched product feeds end to end before planning the transition of the live store. This provided a controlled environment in which the retailer could validate data, user journeys and integration behaviour without introducing disruption to customers or trading operations.
The platform was extended to preserve Shopify-specific descriptions and images, flag pricing and identifier anomalies and support future automated product enrichment. We also produced the integration design for publishing governed product data from the PIM into Algolia, establishing a foundation for stronger search, merchandising and product recommendation capabilities.
To support adoption, we delivered a walkthrough of the completed solution, provisioned access for nominated users and produced an operational user guide. We also investigated the retailer’s product-duplication issues, identified the root cause and provided recommendations to reduce the risk of recurrence.
The Results
- Centralised product governance: The retailer gained a dedicated control point for reviewing, validating and enriching product information before it reaches customer-facing channels.
- Improved data quality: Missing prices, duplicate identifiers, inconsistent records and other known Shopify data issues can now be identified systematically and routed for resolution.
- Reduced operational risk: Parallel data feeds and a separate Shopify development environment allowed the solution to be tested thoroughly without disrupting live trading.
- Protected digital content: Descriptions, images and other information held only within Shopify were incorporated into the PIM model, reducing the risk of valuable storefront content being overwritten or lost.
- Greater operational visibility: Data-quality alerts give users a structured view of the products requiring attention and the specific issues that need to be resolved.
- Foundation for product enrichment: The platform supports the addition of richer product attributes, retail-specific information and external product data as new sources become available.
- Search and recommendation readiness: The Algolia integration design created a clear route for supplying governed product data to enhanced search, merchandising and recommendation services.
- Improved business ownership: User access, walkthroughs and supporting documentation enabled the retailer’s team to begin testing and operating the platform directly.
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