Cutting Time-to-Market in Half and Lifting Online Assortment to Nearly 100% for Giant Tiger
July 11, 2024
USE CASE OVERVIEW
Manual Processes and Siloed Teams Were Slowing Giant Tiger’s Digital Growth
Founded in 1961 in Ottawa’s Byward Market, Giant Tiger is a proudly Canadian, privately held retailer with more than 270 locally owned and operated stores across Canada and roughly 10,000 members of Team Tiger. Built on founder Gordon Reid’s vision of keeping costs low and offering quality merchandise at the lowest possible price, Giant Tiger has spent six decades earning its place in the communities it serves.
As customer expectations shifted online, Giant Tiger’s e-commerce team began noticing the strain on a product workflow that had been built for a different era. Time from product creation to customer availability was slower than the business needed it to be. Teams worked in silos with no practical way to share assortment dates, manual copywriting led to inconsistent product content, and GS1 compliance was consuming hours of labor every week. Each individual issue was manageable; together, they were holding back the digital experience Giant Tiger wanted to deliver.
To centralize product information, accelerate online launches, and modernize content creation, Giant Tiger partnered with Sitation to implement Akeneo PIM and integrate Plezio Draft (formerly RoughDraftPro), Sitation’s AI-powered content generation tool.
Challenges
- Siloed teams with limited visibility into the online assortment
- Slow workflows that delayed time-to-market for new products
- Manual content creation that produced inconsistent product copy
- GS1 compliance processes that consumed significant labor hours
- Difficulty maintaining a consistent brand voice across product content
Goals
- Centralize product information to give every team a single source of truth
- Reduce time-to-market for online products
- Streamline content creation and protect consistency at scale
- Automate GS1 compliance to free up labor for higher-value work
- Integrate Draft to generate on-brand product content with AI
Approach
Working with Sitation, Giant Tiger implemented Akeneo PIM as the centralized foundation for product information and layered in automation, integrations, and AI-powered content generation to remove the manual bottlenecks across the workflow. Key elements of the engagement included:
- Centralizing product information in Akeneo to enable cross-team visibility and collaboration
- Streamlining workflows to accelerate time-to-market for online offerings
- Building automation through rules, reporting, and middleware integrations
- Integrating GS1 compliance solutions to replace manual procedures
- Configuring user-friendly interfaces and customizable features for the Giant Tiger team
- Integrating Draft inside Akeneo for AI-generated, on-brand product content
The combined approach standardized content creation, improved cross-team collaboration, and established a new baseline for data completion across Giant Tiger’s catalog.
RESULTS
Giant Tiger Cut Time-to-Market in Half and Lifted Online Presence Across the Catalog
- 50% average reduction in online time-to-market, improving agility and responsiveness to consumer demand
- 2X faster asset management through auto-linking rules and importing functionality
- Online assortment listing lifted from 60% to nearly 100% through newly developed onboarding reports
- Exceeded the original timeline to bring Akeneo to production-ready status
- Improved on-site product findability and customer experience through enriched, consistent product content
Conclusion
Giant Tiger’s partnership with Sitation and adoption of Akeneo transformed a slow, siloed product workflow into a centralized, automated foundation for digital growth. With time-to-market cut in half and online presence approaching full assortment coverage, Giant Tiger’s team is now positioned to move faster, publish more consistently, and continue elevating the shopping experience for customers across Canada.
Testimonials
Are Manual Processes Slowing Your Time-to-Market?
Siloed teams, inconsistent content, and manual compliance shouldn’t stand between your products and your customers. Discover how Sitation’s Akeneo implementation expertise and AI-powered content tools can help you centralize product information, accelerate launches, and elevate your digital presence.
