Rakennustieto

Product information service improvement

Solteq and Rakennustieto joined forces to improve Rakennustieto's product information service and customer experience with Adobe Commerce platform and exceptionally fast Algolia search engine.

Background for the project

Rakennustieto needed to develop their current online service to better support their customers and business.
The old service had many challenges and shortcomings that affected the functionality of the service and thus customer satisfaction.
The amount of product information, filtering needs and its relation to performance created exceptional requirements for the system, and required a modern, efficient search engine.

Expectations from the customer

It was very important for Rakennustieto to be able to offer its customers modern services that enable easy and quick search for products, concidering the needs of different customer segments. This included the possibility to search and compare products based on their technical attributes and carbon footprint.
One of the key requirements was ensuring performance. The new service should be fast, easy to use and fully scalable, ensuring good user experience.
The solution also needed to be future proof, consisting of over 185,000 products with over 200 attributes and related documents, with exceptional performance and capability to handle much more data.

New online service based on the latest Magento Open Source product

Problems and Objectives

New functionalities needed as well as agility and cost effectiveness for changes

Ensuring new functionalities are implemented in the new solution and setup build in a way that changes can be done through configuration rather than customization.

Inadequate search and filtering capabilities

Implementing an alternate solution to Elastic Search. Algolia chosen. Developing search and filter options based on customers requests.

Poor performance and stability

Identifying needed changes compared to the old solution to enhance performance and stability. Latest Magento Open Source and Algolia chosen to enhance the performance with big volumes of data.

Poor scalability on mobile devices

Ensuring the new solution would be fully scalable.

Challenges with integrations between Magento and Inriver PIM

Rebuilding the integrations to ensure that they work reliably.

Need for simplicity and updates on look & feel

Incorporating new design, removing all unnecessary functionalities, and focusing on simplicity for the end-user.

Solution

The customer felt that the current, highly customized Magento web service was not worth developing further, because it could not be guaranteed that it would lead to a better outcome than the current one. It had a lot of performance and stability issues and development required customizations. In addition, the current PIM integration also would have required a lot of changes.

Based on this, Rakennustieto, together with Solteq, decided to build a new online service based on the latest Magento Open Source product, which clearly enables better performance and speed than the current one. This would include new integrations from Inriver PIM with Solteq Connector and finding a solution to develop and enhance search and filtering capabilities with bigger volumes of data. The goal was to test the performance of the service and search as early as possible, after which a final decision would be made between Elastic Search and Algolia.

The starting point of the project was to proceed with Elastic Search, but after performance testing, it was finally decided to implement Algolia search engine. In addition to improving performance regarding search, overall performance needed to be top notch. Algolia met this requirement both regarding search and category pages and provided exceptional filtering capabilities. Initially, the plan was to use Magento's PWA frontend, but customer decided later during the project, that standard Magento layout with some adjustments would be implemented, focusing on simplicity for the end user and updated look & feel.

Laptop with haku.tuotetieto.fi site on screen

The project was divided into two phases

Phase 1 started in September 2022 with initial scope: latest Magento Open Source, PWA front, Elastic Search and initial integrations between Inriver PIM and Magento. After Phase 1 was completed, thorough performance tests were executed. After performance testing, customer decided to change the approach to further enhance the performance and simplify the requirements regarding Magento.

Phase 2 started with a redesign stage in January 2023, where the final approach was decided: latest Magento Open Source (without PWA front), Algolia search engine, integrations between Inriver PIM, Magento and Google Cloud CDN with Solteq Connector. Implementation of the new approach was started in February 2023 and the new solution was launched in May 2023. The release was followed by a 4-month hyper-care period.

The project was run as an agile project with weekly sprints. The communication and collaboration between Solteq and customer was very active and joint weekly meetings ensured that both parties were on track and aligned throughout the project.

Mobile phone with haku.tuotetieto.fi site on screen

Outcome

Fresh new Magento online service published, with updated look & feel.
Exceptional overall performance with vast amount of data. Search and filtering of over 185,000 products with over 200 attributes and resources within milliseconds.
Simple, easy to use and fully scalable solution, enhancing user experience.
Tailored, reliable integrations between respective systems.
Design that allows more configuration and requires less customization.
Future-proof solution that ensures that bigger volumes can be processed without compromising performance.
Great feedback from customers and users.

Customer feedback regarding the solution:

The quality of the solution was excellent.
Search activity in the service has tripled in comparison to the old solution.
Feedback from the end users of the service has been extremely positive.

About Rakennustieto

Rakennustieto is the Leading Provider of Construction Information in Finland. Their product and service range covers all information needs of the construction industry, from design and implementation to maintenance and infrastructure construction. The company was established in 1974 and its roots date back to 1942.

"We produce information, product information and environmental services for the needs of construction, infrastructure, building technology and property management. In our services you will find up-to-date and reliable real estate and construction industry regulations, instructions, general quality requirements (RYL), product information and environmental services to support high-quality construction. Rakennustieto Oy is owned by Rakennustietosäätiö RTS sr, whose committees are represented by the best expertise in the real estate and construction industry and the views of various parties in the industry. The contents of Rakennustieto's service products are created as a result of the work of the committees. Committee work guarantees unbiased and high-quality information. The comprehensive production of information in construction has been the red thread of our operations, starting from the post-war reconstruction period until today. With the help of construction information, you guarantee good construction methods, quality of life and the environment now and in the future."

About haku.tuotetieto.fi

The search for product information serves users in the search, comparison, and selection of construction products. In the search, you can find the products of more than 430 product suppliers included in Rakennustieto's Tuotetieto service. Product suppliers have brought more than 185,000 products to the service. There are a total of almost 3 million data fields for the products, which contain, in addition to structural product information, various documents related to the products. Structural product information in the service includes, for example, the products' technical properties, carbon footprint information and other environmental information. As documents, the service includes, for example, DoP performance level notification, type approval decision, verification certificate, safety data sheet, technical documentation, installation instructions, maintenance instructions, user manual, EPD environmental statement and BIM objects.

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