Multi-Storefront & Akeneo

Katie Hoesley, Senior Developer Advocate at BigCommerce, sat down with Meredith Kivett, Sr. Technology Partner Manager at Akeneo, and Monika Guss, Product Manager at Akeneo, to discuss their experience with Multi-Storefront. Read some of our interview below to learn more about Akeneo’s experience with Multi-Storefront thus far!

Who is Akeneo?

Akeneo is a global leader in product experience management (PXM) and BigCommerce’s preferred technology partner for product information management (PIM), helping brands and retailers improve product data quality, simplify product catalog management, and deliver a compelling customer experience across all sales channels. Using the award-winning Akeneo App for BigCommerce, joint customers benefit from the ability to:

• Automatically collect product information from any source, including ERP systems, vendor portals, spreadsheets, and .csv files to improve team collaboration and productivity around product information enrichment
• Enrich product catalogs with a set of flexible enrichment capabilities, powerful automation, and actionable insights for building and enhancing contextualized product catalogs
• Work with a single source of truth with a user-friendly platform to import, manage, enrich and publish product data including images, videos, and media, as well as product variations
• Design compelling product experiences to distinguish brands and build loyalty, such as sharing inspiring stories and unique brand values

To learn more about Akeneo, check out Akeneo on BigCommerce Marketplace!

The Interview: MSF & Akeneo

Is your app currently designated as Multi-Storefront compatible &/or optimized?

Our app is MSF compatible. It supports both multi-storefront and older versions of BigCommerce instances. We are planning to progressively add the multi-storefront compatible features and follow BigCommerce’s MSF roadmap.

Why did you update your apps to be MSF compatible &/or optimized?

First of all, what was important was we knew it was an important release for [BigCommerce] and wanted to be a part of that.

We were very excited about this launch and it is a big step forward in terms of e-commerce flexibility. We wanted to make sure that our customers can use the full Multi-Storefront capabilities when using our app.

How was that process?

We started to get familiar with the MSF concept back in November 2021 through our Partnership contact and we immediately started to work on different ways of implementing it on time for the mid-March release. [We] had a few email exchanges with the product team in early January to make sure that we clearly understood the current stay and future releases planned on your side.

How much time did it take?

It took us about 3 weeks plus a week of scoping.

How high was the barrier to entry/how much lift was needed?

From 0 to 10, I would say 4. The most important thing was to make sure that it works with both new and existing BigCommerce instances. Also, we are planning to progressively add new features as MSF evolves, therefore the work is not really finished on our end.

Did you attend any of our MSF Enablement Hours? If so, what about them was helpful or not?

[Yes, we did attend one of the MSF enablement hours and were able to] ask questions regarding timeline and migration. This is where we have understood that supporting both versions (MSF and not) is crucial as the migration process is planned over longer periods of time.

What would you say to another partner who is considering updating their apps to be MSF compatible &/or optimized?

This was really quite easy. We know we have enhancements to come, and we’re looking forward to them. The documentation was great, we’re in general a big fan of your documentation. It was really clear for us, which is not always the case!

Go for it! It only takes a few weeks to implement and it is a real value added to your customers!

Want to Learn More?

If you’re interested in Multi-Storefront and want to learn more, check out our documentation here.

We’d love to hear from you! Comment your thoughts and questions below, or tweet at us @BigCommerceDevs!