Meet b-boo baby & lifestyle GmbH, a leading manufacturer of high-quality baby textiles that are sold throughout Europe with a focus on Benelux and DACH. As one of the top 3 brands of baby textiles in the Netherlands, b-boo provides its products to big stores here such as Prénatal and Baby-Dump. They also sell their products to/from Bol and Otto, while also focusing on international online marketplaces. Apart from delivering their products B2B, b-boo also sells their product directly to customers (D2C) from their webshop Meyco Baby, and they work with businesses to develop private labels. Their product range includes all kinds of baby textile products from sleeping bags, cocooning bags, baby bibs, baby-friendly hydrophilic cloths, and many more.
Why b-boo chose the Alumio integration platform
As leading manufacturers in high-quality baby textiles, b-boo baby & lifestyle GmbH has built its webshop meycobaby.com on Shopware, one of the most popular e-commerce platforms. Looking for a software solution to maintain and enrich all the product information that showed up on their web shop, b-boo decided to connect their e-commerce platform (Shopware) with Akeneo, a renowned PIM (Product Information Management) system.
Attempting to connect the two systems with traditional integration methods did not suit their specific needs. This led b-boo to discover the Alumio cloud-native integration platform for its extensive history of being used to build e-commerce integrations. In fact, when it comes to integrating Akeneo and Shopware, Alumio also provides connectors for both systems (as it does for other popular systems) to help integrate them even faster.
Thus, b-boo chose to implement Alumio as its central integration platform. To help them configure their e-commerce to PIM integration with Alumio, they employed Memo ICT as their integration partner. This is because apart from being experts in e-commerce integrations, Memo ICT is also an Alumio-certified integration partner that uses the Alumio platform to build integrations for brands like b-boo.
Building a future-proof commerce ecosystem for b-boo using Alumio
As an API-driven solution, the Alumio integration platform provides a user-friendly web interface to create, manage, and monitor two or multiple integrations, along with the flexibility to connect more systems without any loss of data integrity. Thus, apart from using Alumio to build their Akeneo to Shopware integration, b-boo chose to integrate three more systems. This involved integrating Exact, their ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system that helps manage all their financial information. It included connecting their Warehouse Management System (WMS) - MontaWMS. And, it also involved integrating ChannelEngine, a marketplace management software that helps manage b-boo’s product listings on popular marketplaces like Bol. Thus, b-boo used the Alumio integration platform to build, manage, and organize a full-fledged, scalable commerce ecosystem that integrated and enabled real-time data exchange between five systems.
The integration challenge b-boo solved with Alumio
Apart from integrating the five aforementioned systems, b-boo also needed to ensure that data flowed freely between all connected systems without the need for manual data entry. In terms of data exchange, orders from b-boo’s ERP (Exact) were already going to their WMS (MontaWMS), while inversely delivery details and invoices were getting picked up by Exact. However, while the product orders that came in from Shopware and ChannelEngine were properly reflected in their Warehouse Management System (MontaWMS), this data did not directly go into their ERP (Exact). While MontaWMS was their source of truth for which orders were opened and delivered, it wasn’t so for invoicing.
Thus, apart from using the Alumio integration platform to connect all their business systems, b-boo also used the platform’s advanced integration features to build an automated workflow. This workflow ran across all integrated systems via Alumio and involved automatically picking up all order data from MontaWMS, finding missing financial data from Shopware and ChannelEngine such as prices, VAT, discounts, etc., and delivering this enriched data for orders, deliveries, and invoicing to their ERP system (Exact). Centralizing all integrations and data on one dedicated cloud space, the Alumio integration platform is built to ensure real-time data exchange and synchronization between all connected systems.
“What we like about Alumio as a platform is that it’s flexible and that it can change or be modified to suit our evolving business needs. Instead of having to hear “This is how the system works, deal with it”, with Alumio whenever there are issues or roadblocks, they always get solved and that’s a good feeling to have.”
- Geert Smit, Chief Operating Officer at b-boo baby and lifestyle GmbH
The business benefits of the Alumio integration platform for b-boo
- Scalability: A central platform to seamlessly integrate multiple software solutions and data sources
- Enhanced visibility: A visual overview of data flows and automated monitoring and logging
- Operational efficiency: Real-time data exchange, automated data entry, and workflow automation
- Faster Time to Market: Faster integration deployments with Alumio’s rich library of connectors
Building a scalable commerce ecosystem with automated data control
The Alumio cloud-native, low-code integration platform enabled b-boo to seamlessly connect five systems with the potential to integrate even more systems in a scalable way. By delivering complete data control, enabling real-time data exchange, and providing the ability to automate workflows, Alumio works for b-boo as a fast, scalable, and future-proof integration solution that’s flexible enough to constantly adapt to their evolving business needs.
Endpoints connected
Shopware (E-commerce)
Shopware is an open-source, highly customizable e-commerce platform and CMS (Content Management System) that helps create and manage online stores. It provides a wide range of features such as product catalog management, order management, customer management, marketing tools, and more. It offers a flexible modular architecture that allows for the integration of additional functionalities and extensions.
Akeneo (PIM)
Akeneo is a PIM system that collects and centralizes product information from virtually anywhere. It improves team collaboration and productivity around product information enrichment and helps you deliver the most compelling omnichannel product experiences.
ChannelEngine (Marketplace)
ChannelEngine is a marketplace management platform that helps brands, wholesalers, and retailers sell on marketplaces and sales channels in a fully automated way. It acts as a central hub that connects e-commerce platforms or ERPs, with multiple online marketplaces like Bol, eBay, Google Shopping, and more.
Exact (ERP)
Exact is a proven ERP software that brings financial, logistics, project-related, and administrative business processes together in one system. It acts as a central information source for all your products, orders, and returns, as well as smart inventory management software.
MontaWMS (WMS)
MontaWMS is a cloud-based warehouse management system (WMS) that helps e-commerce businesses manage their inventory, orders, and fulfillment. Used by over 1,500 webshops, MontaWMS offers a variety of features that can help businesses improve their efficiency, including real-time insight into order flows and integration with webshops, carriers, and ERP systems.
