Executive summary

This paper explains how they achieved it—and why the same approach is increasingly becoming the standard for multi-country B2B expansion.

The Initial Challenge: Growth Without Complexity Explosion

Before transformation, the company faced common but critical issues:

• Product data scattered across ERP, Excel files, and local databases
• Country-specific catalogs manually maintained by local teams
• Each new market requiring:
  • Dedicated IT setup
  • Local product data duplication
  • Separate sales workflows
  • Vendor onboarding taking 6–8 weeks
  • New country rollout taking 5–6 months

With expansion plans covering Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, and Croatia, the existing model was not sustainable.

Projected cost using the traditional approach:

• €180,000–€220,000 per market
• 4–6 full-time employees per country
• High long-term maintenance costs

The Strategic Shift: PIM as the Core, Not an Add-On

Instead of scaling ERP complexity, the company redesigned its architecture around three pillars:

1. Centralized PIM (Product Information Management)

• The PIM became the single source of truth for:
• 48,000+ SKUs
• Technical specifications
• Safety documentation
• Certifications (CE, EU compliance)
• Marketing content
• Media assets

Localization was handled directly in the PIM:

• 12 languages
• Country-specific attributes (power ratings, packaging, regulations)
• Market-specific pricing tiers and product availability
• Result: Product data consistency increased from 82% to 99.6% across all markets.

2. Unified B2B eCommerce Layer

On top of the PIM, the company implemented a single multi-tenant B2B platform:

• One platform, multiple markets
• Central logic for:
  • Pricing rules
  • Discount structures
  • Customer segmentation
  • Market-specific storefronts generated via configuration, not code
  • This eliminated the need for separate systems per country.

3. B2B Agent Model: One Person per Market

The breakthrough came with the B2B Agent concept.

Instead of building full local sales teams, each market was assigned:

• 1 dedicated B2B agent
• Operating within the same platform
• With permissions limited to their market

Agents could:

• Manage local customers
• Create orders on behalf of clients
• Adjust market-specific pricing (within rules)
• Handle local communication and relationships

No local IT, no local product data maintenance, no duplicated processes.

Measurable Results

73%

Overall rollout speed improved

Cost Efficiency

58%

average cost reduction per market

€ 2.05 million

saved annually across 10 markets

Scalability: Scaling In and Out Without Risk

One of the most underestimated benefits was reversibility.

With the new architecture:

• A market could be paused or exited by:
• Disabling the storefront
• Reassigning the agent
• No sunk IT cost
• No stranded product data
• No contract dependencies on local systems

This allowed:

• Pilot launches in smaller markets
• Fast scaling where demand proved strong
• Low-risk experimentation

Organizational Impact

Beyond technology, the transformation changed how the company worked:

• Central product team reduced data maintenance effort by 42%
• Marketing campaigns launched simultaneously across all markets
• Legal and compliance updates applied once, everywhere
• Sales agents onboarded in days instead of weeks

Most importantly, the company shifted from country-driven complexity to platform-driven growth.

Why This Model Works

The key success factors were:

• PIM as the foundation, not an afterthought
• Configuration over customization
• Human presence via agents, not duplicated organizations
• One scalable platform, not many local ones

This approach aligns perfectly with modern EU expansion realities: regulatory diversity, language fragmentation, and cost pressure.

Conclusion

By combining PIM, B2B eCommerce, and a B2B Agent operating model, the company achieved what many enterprises struggle with:

• Faster expansion
• Lower costs
• Higher data quality
• Reduced risk

Most importantly, they built an architecture that supports growth without complexity—and contraction without damage.

For manufacturers looking to expand across Europe, this is no longer an innovative edge. It is quickly becoming the baseline for sustainable international growth.