How does Akeneo deal with variants?

Photo by Joe Shillington on Unsplash

In our previous post of this series focusing on the modeling of products with variants, we defined them and the challenges related to managing them within softwares (ERP, PIM, e-commerce platforms…).

In this post, we introduce the possibilities offered by Akeneo PIM to manage complex products with variants, with their strengths and weaknesses.

In the latest version of Akeneo PIM, our clients were used to modeling their products with variants with:

• The “Variant Group”, available in the Community Edition and in the Enterprise Edition
• The “Inner Variation Bundle”, a paid extension for the Enterprise Edition

What is a Variant Group?

The Variant Group allows our users to gather products that have similarities and which vary according to some properties called the “variant axes” (ex: color, size, flavor, etc.).

In a variant group, you can enrich common attributes for the grouped products and fill them at once in the variant group form.

Let’s go back to our previous example of a t-shirt model available in 3 colors (grey, blue, red) and how it can be modeled in Akeneo thanks to the Variant Group:

• A product is created for each color of the t-shirt (a blue t-shirt, a red t-shirt and a grey t-shirt).
• A variant group is created for this t-shirt model to gather the products with a variant axis by color, and enrich their common attributes like the style, the care instructions, etc.

The products, blue t-shirt, red t-shirt and grey t-shirt, are linked to the variant group:

For all t-shirt colors, the style and the care instructions are the same and are enriched at the variant group level:

What are the strengths of the Variant Group?

1. Creating a variant group is easy, simply define a code and select the variant axes, it requires no settings.
2. The creation of a variant group is flexible, you can create it before or after creating the products.
3. The values of the common attributes, enriched at the variant group level, are inherited by the products, they can be displayed on each product and they are used to calculate the product’s completeness.

What are the weaknesses of the Variant Group?

1. Variant groups are not structured, you can’t define a template of attributes for a variant group. If all variant groups have the same attributes, you must add these attributes manually on each variant group. It’s very painful and time-consuming.
2. Variant groups are isolated, they are managed in a dedicated screen and the navigation between a variant group and its products is difficult. It doesn’t facilitate the enrichment of products with variants.
3. A variant group doesn’t offer the whole range of feature a product does, some features are missing. You can define common attributes, but you can’t define common categories or perform bulk actions (mass edit, sequential edit, etc.).
4. Variant groups are too restrictive, they can only be used with list attribute as variant axis, it’s not convenient on some use cases (ex: variants by metric attributes such as length, diameter, etc.)

Here is some feedback from our beloved partners about the Variant Group:

The variant groups are unusable, they are not in the product grid.

No family, no category, no bulk actions on variant groups.

Adding attributes for each variant group is painful.

What is the Inner Variation Bundle?

The Inner Variation Bundle extension was first created for our fashion retailer customers who wanted to manage variants by size and enrich some information on the size such as an identifier, EAN, or some technical dimensions. This bundle is now used by lots of our customers in different industries.

With the Inner Variation Bundle, you can create variations under your product according to variation axes and manage specific properties for each variation.

In our t-shirt example, a t-shirt color can be available in 3 sizes: S, M, L.

A variation is created for each size (a grey S t-shirt, a grey M t-shirt, a grey L t-shirt, a blue S t-shirt, etc.). Each size can have its own attributes (SKU, EAN, size, etc.) or categories.

In the variations tab of the product sheet, the sizes of the t-shirts colors are available: S, M, L.

What are the strengths of the Inner Variation Bundle?

1. A variation is a product so it benefits from the same features as a product. A variation can have its own attributes, categories, associations and be enriched by a bulk action.
2. The variations can be structured, you can define dedicated attributes templates for your variations with dedicated variations families.
3. The products and the variations are both displayed within the grid and can be managed in the same product form (with the “variations” tab).
4. The enrichment is top-down, to better fit some use cases, you can first enrich the attributes of the t-shirt color and then the attributes of the size.

What are the weaknesses of the Inner Variation Bundle?

1. The settings are complex to define the structure, you have to create 2 families (1 family, 1 variation family) and an inner variation type to link the families and define the variation axes.
2. The completeness is partial, each product and variation has its own completeness. So a t-shirt color-size can have a completeness at 100% whereas some information is missing on the t-shirt color.
3. For some use cases, the use of the Inner Variation Bundle isn’t relevant because you must create your variations after creating the products.

Some feedback from our beloved partners about the Inner Variation Bundle:

Too many families to create with the Inner Variation Bundle.

The ERP has not the information required to create the products before the variations.

What is the best modeling to manage products with variants?

Each modeling has its strengths and weaknesses. Depending on your needs, one or the other will fit your use case better.

In our 1st post, some questions were listed to correctly model the products with variants, hereafter more questions to choose the best modeling in Akeneo:

• Where do you create your products with variants? How do you create them?
• What information would you like to enrich?
• What information is shared or specific? At which level (t-shirt model, t-shirt color, t-shirt color-size)?

Let’s take two real customer use cases:

• A furniture retailer who manages products with variants by colors (sofas, chairs, etc.). The models of sofas and chairs are first created and then declined by colors. Most of the attributes are enriched on the model, few are enriched by color.
• A DIY retailer who handles many types of products. His suppliers only send SKUs without any notion of grouping products to create its products in the ERP. He wants to group the SKUs to ease the enrichment of common attributes and facilitate the navigation for his customers on the e-shop.

For the first use case, it’s better to use the Inner Variation Bundle because the main enrichment is applied at the model level, so all the enrichment features are required (mass edit, sequential edit, etc.) and those features are not available on variant groups.

For the second use case, the Inner Variation Bundle can’t be used, because the grouping of products is not known by the ERP. So the Variant Group will be used to gather in Akeneo PIM the products created in the ERP.

But in some use cases, these two modelings are not competing, they can be complementary and both used.

How Variant Group and Inner Variation Bundle can be assorted?

On the t-shirt example, if you want to handle properties for the t-shirt model, for each color and each size, you need 3 levels of enrichment in Akeneo PIM:

1. A variant group to manage the model of the t-shirt and enrich the common attributes (style, care instructions).
2. A product to enrich each t-shirt color (pictures, material).
3. A variation with the Inner Variation Bundle to manage the specific properties by size (EAN, dimensions).

However for our users, it’s a bit confusing and not convenient, because they have 3 different ways to enrich each level (variant group, product, variation) without the same features.

What is coming next in Akeneo PIM 2.0?

Even if we have already two existing modelings for products with variants, we decided to work again on this topic for the next 2.0 release, to better integrate them into Akeneo.

So, “How Akeneo will ease the management of products with variants for ALL?”

In the upcoming post, we will answer to this question.

If you want to know more about this new 2.0 version, register now to our webinar to have all the details.

To keep in touch, subscribe to our newsletter on www.akeneo.com.

Part 1. Offer choice with variants