Supermarket chain Jumbo recently chose the low-code platform of Siemens subsidiary Mendix. Jumbo developed an application with Mendix for the 'category management' of over seven hundred shops in Belgium and the Netherlands. The supermarket deploys the app to manage its items.
The so-called product initiative (pi) application was built in five months and represents a major efficiency gain for the organisation, Jumbo says. The app makes an important contribution to managing the tens of thousands of article mutations, ensures a faster time-to-market of new products and creates insight for the Category Management, Purchasing and Data Entry departments.
Jumbo adds around fifteen thousand new items to its range each year. In addition, forty thousand mutations are made in the data of existing articles. This includes data provided by suppliers, such as the product type and the EAN code (European Article Number). The Category Management department completes these and forwards the data in an Excel sheet to the Purchasing department. Once the price has been determined and both Category Management and Purchasing have given their approval, the Data Entry department can enter the article into the system.
Managing the data in the Excel sheet is a crucial task. If a product is incorrectly registered in the system, it cannot be purchased and sold. Jumbo wants to handle this process more efficiently. In fact, as many as 1,200 e-mails go back and forth between departments every month, lacking a central overview. The pi application, built by Mendix partner MxBlue, should put an end to this intensive e-mail traffic.