Inriver transforms product information management with agentic AI on Azure.

Product information is one of the most complex and critical assets in modern commerce. Brands, manufacturers, distributors, and retailers must manage vast volumes of product data across channels, markets, and languages—while maintaining accuracy and speed.

Inriver, a specialist software development company based in Sweden, helps address this challenge through its product Information management (PIM) platform. Its solutions enable organizations to centralize, enrich, and distribute product data at scale. With customer expectations increasing, however, traditional approaches began to fall short.

“Imagine 25,000 products with 60 fields across 16 languages: that’s about 24 million data points,” says Rohit Goyal, CEO at Inriver. “Managing all of this content at scale was becoming impossible.”

For both Inriver and its customers, the consequences were clear. Product data was often incomplete or inconsistent. Content creation relied heavily on manual effort. Workflows—especially for tasks like translation and enrichment, in which product data is enhanced—were slow and fragmented.

“A typical data point from one of our customers was that completing a new product launch could take 12 or 14 weeks,” says Kjartan Olafsson, SVP Product Management. “You had maybe a four- to six-week period where the only thing you were dealing with was translations from external agencies.”

Building an AI-powered platform on Microsoft Azure

To address these challenges, Inriver chose to reimagine its platform with AI at its core, using Microsoft Azure as the foundation. “We decided to go with one single cloud provider,” says Göran Hanshammar, Chief Technology Officer. “We believed focusing on one cloud would help us deliver a better solution for customers.”

As a Microsoft Solutions Partner with certified software designation in the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program for Manufacturing AI, Inriver’s work is closely aligned with Microsoft Azure and Microsoft AI technologies.

Using Microsoft Foundry, Azure OpenAI Service, and Azure Document Intelligence, Inriver developed a set of AI-powered capabilities embedded directly into its PIM platform.

These capabilities, collectively termed Inspire, enable a set of purpose-built agents to eliminate friction across the content lifecycle. The Translate agent enables scalable multilingual content production, removing the bottleneck of manual translation across markets. The Generate agent automates the creation of product descriptions, helping teams produce high-quality content. And the Expression Assistant simplifies working with the platform's powerful expression engine, lowering the technical barrier for non-developer users.

Rather than operating as standalone tools, Inriver’s agents are integrated into workflows that streamline how product information is created, enriched, and distributed. “Tasks like these used to be human labor-intensive,” says Olafsson. “Now you have agents that ingest and transform unstructured content, validate content, enrich and translate, and ensure brand, legal, regulatory, and channel compliance much more efficiently.”

All data and AI operations remain within the Azure platform, supporting scalability, performance, and strong data governance.

“Staying within the Azure environment gives us a clear advantage in how we build security,” says Hanshammar, pointing to Azure’s networking capabilities and protections, such as Microsoft Defender for Cloud.

For developers, GitHub Copilot also helped accelerate efficiency and productivity. “We saw in the initial rollout almost a fourfold improvement in development throughput,” Hanshammar adds.

Creating a culture of rapid innovation

Technology was only part of the transformation. Inriver also focused on creating an environment where teams could experiment and innovate with AI.

Through its “Innovation Lab” sessions—intensive, multi-day workshops—employees gain hands-on experience with Microsoft AI tools and frameworks. These sessions encourage teams to explore ideas, test concepts, and build new capabilities quickly.

“It’s a two- to three-day event where we train everyone on using the resources inside Azure and then encourage them to hack a meaningful solution,” says Hanshammar.

Close collaboration with Microsoft has also helped Inriver stay aligned with the latest developments. “Microsoft has been engaged with us and our community every step of the way, from access to the latest AI models to consulting and training and even being part of our internal hackathons. We've built a trusted partnership over time,” says Goyal.

Inriver’s culture of experimentation is reshaping how it approaches problem-solving. “When we look at a customer challenge now, we immediately ask how it can be automated,” adds Goyal. “That shift in mindset is significant.”

Transforming efficiency and customer experience

The impact of Inriver’s AI capabilities is already visible across its platform and customer base. Manual workloads are decreasing, long-running processes are being automated, and teams can move faster, with greater consistency and control.

“With Inriver agentic AI, our customers are fundamentally transforming the speed and scale with which they onboard, create, manage, and distribute product content,” says Goyal. 

This translates to measurable improvements: product content workflows are up to 50% faster, time-to-market accelerated by 30%, and compliance issues reduced by 21%. Customers also report improved data quality and more efficient content creation.

“I would say it’s a shift from being an author of product content to being more of an editor or orchestrator,” says Olafsson.

Inriver’s AI capabilities are core to the platform and available to all customers, helping enhance workflows and productivity while deepening engagement with the company. Early adoption has been strong, particularly for features that support content generation, translation, and process automation.

At the same time, the Azure-based architecture enables the platform to scale as demand grows, while maintaining security, compliance, and performance.

With Inriver’s customers able to confidently manage millions of changing product data points across markets, the company is unlocking significant growth opportunities. 

“We’re focused on delivering value and outcomes for our customers,” says Goyal. “That’s what drives adoption.”

Accelerating the future of AI in PIM

Inriver continues to build on its momentum with a clear focus on AI-powered innovation. “PIM has traditionally been a system of record or a source of truth for product content,” says Goyal. “It’s now transforming into a system of work—and increasingly, a system of automation.”

The company plans to expand its use of AI agents, enhance customers’ ability to onboard both structured and unstructured data, and distribute content across more channels more rapidly.

At the same time, Inriver is maintaining a strong focus on governance, security, and trust to ensure AI is deployed responsibly at scale.

“Our vision is to build an AI engine that is able to drive intelligence across the entire product content lifecycle,” says Olafsson. “It should feel like a natural part of how people work.”

With Microsoft Azure as its foundation, Inriver is redefining product information management—helping customers move faster, work smarter, and unlock new value in the AI era.