Making near-real-time publishing a reality

Xplore Group successfully designed a data syndication platform for Philips. The solution provides near-real-time publishing of product-related content to a multitude of output channels, reducing the throughput time from 12 hours to a couple of minutes.

In the summer of 2015, Xplore Group was one of several companies invited to a part in a hackathon set up by Philips. The goal of the event was to build a data syndication platform for the near-real-time publishing of product-related content to all of the company’s output channels, such as BazaarVoice, Amazon, the company website, leaflet rendering and more.

 

At the end of the hackaton, Xplore Group was selected to continue working on the Product Content Publication project. Xplore Group’s solid knowledge of the Amazon Web Services platform and middleware solutions eventually led to the successful launch of the platform in the spring of 2016.

 

Instead of making an export process within Philips’ PIM system for each output channel – causing heavy processing, performance loss and increasing costs on the PIM system – Xplore Group based the solution on creating an event-driven system using AWS DynamoDB and AWS Lambda. In the end, Xplore Group’s approach resulted in a throughput time reduction from 12 hours to just minutes. The full data export was brought back from several days to 16 hours.

Numbers

  • 200.000 events per day
  • Over 1,3 million products, features and assets
  • Reduced throughput time from 12 hours to minutes
  • Reduced full data export from several days to 16 hours
  • 4 million events for a full data export

Xploration

Build a data syndication platform that meets Philips’ needs, providing near-real-time publishing of product-related content to a multitude of output channels.

Our solution

A Product Content Publication system based on a single PIM system, acting as the single source of product data.

Integration

  • AWS DynamoDB
  • AWS Lambda
  • Stibo STEP (PIM)

Result

A solution, publishing product-related content to a multitude of output channels in near-real-time, reducing the throughput time from 12 hours to a couple of minutes.