StrikeTru has the best and fastest Akeneo PIM app for Shopify stores. It is a SaaS-based, self-service Shopify app that you can install, configure, and start using within minutes. You can find it on the Shopify and Akeneo app stores, as well as on our website. You can use it for free for 14 days. Whether you have one or multiple Shopify stores, you can use our app to automate and scale product listings on your Shopify stores.
Our best-of-breed solution is the ideal companion to Akeneo PIM to help control and scale your content and commerce operations, and maximize visibility into and performance of the Shopify product content transfer processes.
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been working hard to add more features to our app. Let’s dive in and take a closer look at the latest features and improvements included in the new version of our Akeneo PIM app for Shopify. (V 2.0.1).
You can now sync specific products and variants from Akeneo PIM to Shopify by specifying the product identifiers.
NOTE:
Product identifiers, if specified, will override the “Advance Search (JSON)” filter.
Refresh Button for Sync Status Dashboard:
You can now instantly refresh the sync status dashboard by clicking on the “Refresh Icon.” You will not have to wait for the dashboard to automatically refresh every 10 seconds.
License Agreement:
Our app now includes a screen that allows the user to review and accept the User License Agreement prior to using the app. This agreement, between you and StrikeTru, governs the usage of this app made available through the Shopify App Store.
Available as an Akeneo App:
Now you can connect our app to your Akeneo PIM from the Akeneo app store within your PIM and start using it right away.
Storing Sync Mappings to AWS S3 for Disaster Recover: We now perform a daily backup of store-specific sync settings to AWS S3 to ensure we can recover from any disaster scenario in a minimal amount of time.
Better Control Over Logger Levels: To help simplify troubleshooting potential issues, we introduced the use of environment variables that control log levels. It is now easy for our support team to increase or decrease log levels without involving developers.
These are some of our new capabilities in Akeneo PIM App for Shopify (V 2.0.1). Check out other great features in our app:
SKU level sync error report
Ability to abort sync jobs
Ability to delete and re-sync Shopify products
Ability to assign default product values for Shopify products
Images are now synced from Akeneo PIM to Shopify faster than before thanks to backend code improvements.
Handles/supports the HTTP URL-based attribute asset collections
Minor bug fixes & enhancements
In summary…we’re continuously striving to enhance the usability, functionality, and performance of our best-of-breed Akeneo PIM App for Shopify. We leverage Shopify’s GraphQL (not REST services), Java Rest Services, and Multi-Threading to deliver the best experience and performance when it comes to transferring high-quality product content from Akeneo to Shopify stores. Our app is compatible with all Akeneo and Shopify editions, and we encourage you to give it a try.
As the boom in ecommerce continues and becomes increasingly more competitive, it is no longer enough just to add your products to your website with a “buy now” button. Instead, it’s about creating a positive and consistent digital experience for customers. By showcasing high-resolution visuals, along with accurate product descriptions, details, and more, companies can increase customer confidence in purchasing their products online. With this in mind, while PIM is a great starting point for organizations, those that want to double down on their approach to visual media need a more robust solution for managing their assets.
Searching for the right technology can be challenging since there are so many options to choose from, but luckily we already know of the perfect solution: digital asset management (DAM). How can a DAM help your organization with its ecommerce success? Let’s take a closer look at exactly what DAM has to offer and why it is important in today’s world.
Where does Digital Asset Management fit into ecommerce
High-quality product images and engaging content are integral for retailers to build brand trust and drive purchase-ready behavior. But, as product lines and distribution channels expand, it can become challenging to manage product-related content effectively. A cloud-based digital asset management solution enables retailers to better manage their product and brand material, and distribute it across all customer touchpoints, such as ecommerce, social media, store locations, and more, reducing time-to-market and powering omnichannel strategies.
Here are some specific tasks made easier with a DAM:
Organizing: Store all your assets in one central location.
Searching: Find your digital assets faster with artificial intelligence and advanced search capabilities.
Downloading: Access and download assets in the exact file format and resolution you need.
Version Control: Save and track various asset versions and revert to an earlier asset at any time.
Sharing: Easily share your large files in a variety of ways.
Access Control: Ensure that your assets are only used by the right people at the right time.
Why Digital Asset Management is Important in ecommerce Today
The last two years, for marketers in particular, was a period where they were challenged to shift their mindset and experimented with new budgets, new channels, and new initiatives. Even now, we are still seeing the impact of these changes—particularly within the ecommerce space.
As we enter 2022, there are three trends that are driving the need for DAM:
1) Reprioritization of Digital
As teams were forced to experiment with digital channels over the last few years, they were pleasantly surprised with the ROI they achieved. Entering into 2022, many marketing leaders are reprioritizing their spend commitments to pure-play digital channels, saying goodbye to traditional.
2) Distributed Teams
As a result of many teams working remotely from home, leading organizations are reevaluating their existing processes and technology to ensure everyone on their team is supported, no matter where or when they’re working. It’s no longer a guarantee that everyone will work within the same four walls.
3) Less Resources
As we near the end of 2021, thelatest Gartner research has shown that marketing teams will continue operating within their newfound budget for well into the foreseeable future. As a result, marketing leaders need to reevaluate how to achieve results with fewer people, capital, and resources.
Marketing teams are investing more than ever in digital media but, with a reduced budget, it’s critical for them to ensure that each of their assets are used to their full potential – and kept safe, yet accessible for those that need them. With that being said, a digital asset management system has proven to be an ideal solution for centralizing high-value media into a secure cloud-based library and has quickly become a crucial part of many organizations’ eCommerce success.
While a PIM is designed to manage products and product information, a DAM is designed to store and manage digital assets.
How, then, do they work together and what are the benefits of integrating the two? A PIM and DAM integration:
Ensures product details and digital assets are always up-to-date,
Automatically links product descriptions with images,
Ensures an efficient process to align all product page elements with multiple channels,
Ensures all users can access all the resources they need, and
Streamlines brand consistency.
A fully integrated solution helps organizations bridge the gap between product data and rich media by creating automatic sync between PIM and DAM. This helps to eliminate content silos in your organization, plus optimizes the discoverability of assets for your team by offering a single-source-of-truth that everyone can access.
Don’t Wait to Integrate MediaValet and Akeneo
MediaValet digital asset management can be fully integrated with StrikeTru partner, Akeneo PIM. Integrating Akeneo and MediaValet can help you scale your eCommerce strategy, quickly and consistently delivering product and branded content across all marketing channels.
Many resilient merchants thrived through the pandemic using disruptive technology & automation to adapt to online-offline business models, maintaining their ability to change directions quickly.
How? Enter PIM. A PIM software is the conclusive tool for centralized, automated and error-free product catalog management for ecommerce merchants – the key block in your IT stack to take the pressure off, freeing up your time to focus on growing revenue.
If you run one or more Shopify stores now or plan to start in the future, this definitive guide will make a solid case for Shopify PIM integration, a scalable investment.
Let’s take a look at 7 important reasons why you need PIM to stand out and make your Shopify store absolutely drool-worthy for your customers!
1. High ranking product searches:
The goal is to get your products on the top of the digital shelf, among the first 20 search results. The digital shelf is where consumers interact with brands, discover products, search, compare and purchase them. When you deliver accurate, consistent, and higher quality product information, shoppers can find your products more quickly and easily. But how to achieve this? By leveraging PIM to boost your SEO strategy.
Complete & consistent titles, descriptions, category pages – PIM simplifies the task of creating high-quality, SEO-friendly product data that boost product findability and searchability
SEO optimized digital assets – Integrating assets (images, videos) with product information (by connecting PIM & DAM platforms) not only creates visually appealing buying experiences but also heightens your brand’s visibility, making your products more recognizable & findable.
Automate feeds to websites, search engines, and marketplaces: PIM lets you optimize and automatically export rich product feeds to Google, Facebook, Amazon, eBay, Walmart, etc. It also detects missing SEO data and addresses gaps in your product information.
No copy pasting from clunky spreadsheets. One of the biggest upsides to PIM integration is automation. Time saving, agile data enrichment rules that infuse products with critical data, titles and descriptions, filters, auto-linked assets, relationships, features, styles, collections, sale categories, URL keys, brand logos etc.
Some automation possibilities could be:
Content Enrichment/Generation: Titles, Descriptions, URL Keys, Bad HTML, Stripping (e.g. when copying & pasting data from Word), Categories, Color Families, Material Families, Translated Titles & Descriptions, Product Tags (e.g. “New” product), etc.
Product Bundles Setup: Kits, Sets, Bundles, etc.
Product Associations Setup: Related SKUs, Cross-Sell SKUs, Up-Sell SKUs
Digital Asset Management: Bulk Image Onboarding from DAM or Other Systems, Linking to Products & Variants, Image Optimization, Image Sequencing, Metadata Enrichment, Image Expiration, Image URL Calculation, Thumbnail & Other Image Generation, Bi-Directional Integration with DAM System
Promo Price Calculations: Sale Price, Bundle Price Determination, Future Date Price Changes
Product Status Updates: Enable/Disable Products, Variants, and Kits
Reference Data Synchronization (ERP to PIM, PIM to eCommerce): Categories, colors, sizes, brands, styles, collections, vendor codes, etc.
Ecommerce sellers need a place to keep their product data sane and its management efficient. With PIM, you get a single view of your product data so everyone across the enterprise sees the same information. Product data structures offer limitless possibilities to grow product assortments. PIM workflows foster tight collaboration between various teams in the organization; customer reps, product design, merchandizing, marketing, copywriters, photographers, translators, and finance teams working in a streamlined manner towards a unified goal drives powerful results.
Convinced that you need a PIM? Read on..
3. PIM makes ecommerce platform migration processes simple:
The significant advantages of compelling platform features following an ecommerce migration to Shopify cannot be overstated. Adopting a PIM system before you consider replatforming is all the more significant! According to Akeneo, ‘ecommerce platforms have a much smaller and less-developed set of product information management features than organizations need to be efficient and productive in delivering a unified commerce strategy. As a result, handling disparate product content from so many sources is a persisting struggle and has a negative impact on the migration rollout’. With a PIM in place, you can feed both, your legacy and new ecommerce platform, at the same time! Making sure the cut over is smooth & efficient without any hiccups for future expansion. What else do you get:
good data governance
increased productivity
increased sales
“PIM users have reported a 40% decrease in product returns, thanks to features such as automated enrichment rules, product completeness monitoring, and validation, which each work to ensure that shoppers are more informed prior to purchase.” – Akeneo
4. Multi-store synchronization:
Managing multiple Shopify stores without a PIM tool can result in several costly and complex scenarios like:
Duplicating product data sets for each store (think multiple spreadsheets/systems)
Duplicating catalog update processes across your stores
Duplicating system integrations with your Shopify stores
PIM makes managing multi-store data easy and keeps it organized and current. PIM is critical to scaling your efforts to manage product data shared across brands, stores, marketplaces, and regions.
StrikeTru’s Akeneo PIM Connector for Shopify
5. Ecommerce category page data management:
Shopify products are organized into what Shopify calls collections, not categories. Managing collections (which have no hierarchy) as hierarchical categories in PIM aligns well with how businesses and customers are used to navigating large product catalogs. Effective category data management can yield significant SEO and site performance benefits for Shopify stores, and enable you to respond quickly to latest trends and changing market conditions.
PIM can generate SEO related category metadata such as bread crumbs, category filters, category page titles & descriptions, images, etc. to help shoppers discover your products on their first search.
With PIM, you can create new categories and auto assign products easily. This lets you create a greater number of SEO friendly and performance optimized category pages on your site very quickly.
6. Reduced time to market:
Delays in getting your product to market translates to lost sales opportunities. The shorter your time to market, higher chances for consumers to discover & purchase your product instead of a competitor’s.
A PIM integration can enable organizations to move fast in highly competitive markets. Shopify merchants can get to market fast by leveraging these compelling efficiencies created by a PIM solution:
Centralized product data management: a single source of truth makes it simpler to manage a constantly growing product database with current and perfectly organized product information, that is shared easily across departments, creating agile delivery.
Eliminates manual processes: automation reduces the risk of errors, duplications and other inconsistencies, creating seamless workflows and shortening time to market.
Bulk edits: when launch deadlines have to match lightning fast market trends, a PIM let’s you make changes very quickly & efficiently so that you make a single update and all your catalogs are updated.
7: High quality data & improved customer experiences:
PIM is an essential tool for powerful merchandizing. Online sellers who want to be truly multichannel need to have complete, accurate, consistent, accessible and up-to-date product data. Customer acquisition, brand reputation and sales all hinge on ensuring your customers get extremely accurate and relevant product information in front of them.
Product structures and hierarchies in PIM significantly improve site navigation performance directly resulting in improved customer experiences, for e.g. a customer comparing a product in different colours
More granular data and consistent titles & descriptions result in highly specific return on customer product searches
High quality data nurtures trust in brands and helps customers with all the information they need to make a purchase decision, resulting in boosted conversion rates
Low quality product content are the major reasons for product returns and cart abadonments
Shopify has seen sales grew 97% as more merchants move shops online. It’s a great platform to sell your products. Not as much to manage and control your product data. A PIM integration is the (work smart) special ingredient that will transform your store and make you a top seller.
Properly connecting your PIM software to Shopify can get complex, we can help make it a lot easier and scalable! Get in touch to talk to our solution experts about best practices for integrating PIM with Shopify.
Discover More!
Akeneo PIM Connector for Shopify
StrikeTru’s powerful integration of Akeneo PIM & Shopify APIs is simple, reliable, and secure. Use our connector and make it to market faster.
Customer-centric companies know that conversion-driven product pages are critical to driving eCommerce growth. It’s no secret that beautifully structured product pages are a valuable piece of real estate in the digital retail environment. For online sellers, success is about maximizing visibility and providing a consistent product story tailored to a range of different channels that result in improved online sales and conversion rates. We live in a world where customers need all kinds of information; irrespective of the touchpoint they are at, from the moment they find and start interacting with your brand, all the way to clicking that ‘add to cart button.
Customers have many, many options when searching for products. The competition is fierce. So, how can you ensure that your product page attracts eyeballs and creates customer experiences that convert visitors into buyers? What do you need to get right to make the perfect product page? How can you make your customer feel more confident about your products? Read on to find out.
Upfront product story
A well-structured product page tells customers everything they need to know about your product and some more. It explains how it can solve the customers’ needs and gives them the smallest details that help them make a purchase decision. A good product story will help the customer easily understand the product’s advantages, and help them visualize themselves bringing the product into their everyday lives to fulfill a specific need. Beautiful high-quality images, videos, 360-degree views, close-ups, lifestyle shots, user-generated content are table stakes, a digitally empowered consumer will expect nothing less. These elements motivate your customer, making them confident enough to go ahead and make the purchase. It may be oversimplified, but a good (SEO optimized) product description and title will go a long way in boosting those conversion rates. Remember, the product name is Everything!
While it’s important to put an exhaustive amount of content on your product page, don’t make the mistake of having your customers dig for this information.
Pro tip: Offer a crisp, concise, to-the-point product story front and center for your customer to find the moment they land on the product page. Make it clear from the get-go what they can expect from the product and why it’s awesome! It’s likely that you’ve already persuaded the customer to spend more time on-site, often resulting in more purchases.
Purposeful call-to-action
Cut the clutter! Yes, it’s best practice to have complete and accurate product information like customer reviews, assembly instructions, user manual, environmental information, and other uses but it shouldn’t overwhelm the call-to-action ‘button’. A highlighted button that stands out from the rest of the text and design elements on your product page and easily catches the customer’s eye serves the purpose of moving the sale forward or completing a conversion. Decide what’s more important to convey about your product; must-haves, good to have and fun to have, to create a clutter-free and easy browsing experience for your customer. Remember, if your customer is confused, there’s a chance he will leave your site more frustrated.
Pro tip: Contrast is critical! Use a contrasting color for your button to ensure it draws enough attention making sure it actually converts.
Pro pro tip: Test test test! You may have got the colors right, the placement, text, the text surrounding the button, style – all extremely effective converters of traffic. But it doesn’t end there! A/B testing your CTA button can have dramatic results so don’t skip this step!
Dynamic Syndication
To succeed on the digital shelf, sellers have to take control of the customer experience they offer across a range of different eCommerce sales platforms, social selling platforms, and marketplaces. It is critical to provide customers with a consistent and unified product story irrespective of the platform they are on. This means that every element on your product page; titles, prices, descriptions, dimensions, images, videos, other digital assets, testimonials, and functionality have to be customized to each channel so your customers get a tailor-made experience to your products wherever they are shopping. Customers look for flexibility when they are browsing online. Probably why the majority of retail executives say their third-highest investment priority focuses on customer-centric investments like an automated product content syndication tool. Delivering a seamless product content distribution across multiple platforms that have different formatting requirements can be challenging. Especially when undertaken manually. It can often end up in turning off customers, potential loss of revenue, and high cart abandonment rates.
Pro tip: Embrace omnichannel selling with PIM (product information management) + PXM (product experience management). The benefits of replacing outdated legacy systems (spreadsheets) with modern eCommerce tools like automated product data onboarding, product information management, digital asset management, and product data syndication can be many:
More discoverable products
Faster speed to market
Restored trust in your brand image
Stellar customer and product experiences
Increased sales revenue
Always accurate, always updated product catalogs
Improving your product pages, can help your business not only acquire more traffic from search, but also translate that traffic into conversions successfully.
We hope this article has armed you with enough information to get you started on the path to eCommerce success!
Unlike eCommerce systems that are widely recognized and adopted globally, awareness about product information management solutions (PIM), and how a best-of-breed PIM solution can help small and mid-sized companies were still growing till about a year ago. That gap in awareness has exploded today, with physical channels practically evaporating more and more companies (including small and medium-sized businesses) are looking for affordable PIMs for eCommerce to stay relevant in the market.
According to an AT Kearney study, poorly maintained and synchronized product information can cause companies to lose about 3.5% of their sales each year, spend 25 minutes per SKU per year manually cleansing out-of-sync product information, and spend between $40 to $400 per erroneous invoice to reconcile more than half of the invoices they generate each year.
The pandemic forced many businesses to slow down or shut operations altogether. On the other hand, digitized retailers were prepared to move fast, from remote working to scaling multichannel efforts they scaled operations quickly. Ecommerce for everything is the new normal and for retail businesses still plagued with bad data and legacy systems, this is nothing short of a rude wake-up call.
B2B manufacturers and B2C brands that relied solely on retail channel partners find themselves with almost no visibility and control over the product life cycle. Businesses that previously did not have their own eCommerce site or direct-to-consumer models are rushing to develop digital shelf capabilities to stay relevant and competitive with their customer base. PepsiCo launched not one but two direct-to-consumer websites in May where shoppers can order an assortment of PepsiCo’s trusted and loved food and beverage brands. The best part? They offer a two-day delivery time. This example is a clear sign of the times;
Investment in technology and data management tools will differentiate brands online
Syndication to eCommerce platforms and digital channels is key to immersive commerce and contextual customer experience
More and more consumers are using eCommerce, and they need online alternatives to find and purchase the products they love quickly and easily
To meet rising demand and to put your product in front of the consumer where they shop, companies have to execute a watertight digital commerce strategy. PIM is a solid foundational building block to achieve this future. Let’s delve deeper into the reasons why successful eCommerce companies are already using PIM:
Poor product data management
Manual management of product information is counterproductive for retailers and costs a fortune in internal costs. Between sales, marketing, product management, manufacturing and other stakeholders accessing siloed spreadsheets, collaboration and productivity are far-away dreams. Other problems like high product returns, manual errors, customer complaints, marketplaces not hesitating to pull your entire product catalog from shelves if they aren’t optimized to their custom feed specifications, cart abandonment, incorrect prices, missing images, wrong dimensions to name a few. Now imagine launching a new product in a new channel using a legacy model. Legacy systems create data chaos within your organization, they make it difficult to create, manage, and distribute product data, especially if the catalog is large and if there are multiple suppliers who provide data. A modern PIM solution is purpose-built to offer you a single source of truth for product data automating time-consuming and redundant tasks so you get internal productivity, data accuracy, and high-quality product information. The tangible benefits of these are cost savings and revenue gains.
To achieve an ‘eCommerce everything’ model retailers need to eliminate data inconsistencies and poor data syndication, they should be able to scale SKU assortments, expand digital channels easily and provide exceptional customer experiences, all with low operating costs. A PIM solution does all this and more.
Delay in time to market
We’re living in a time when online sales are surging, creating a ripe opportunity for businesses to turn around rapidly to put products in front of a consumer. This is a crucial competitive advantage for eCommerce success today. Relying on manual or custom-built apps to manage high volumes can lead to a quick death. Customers want real-time product information, detailed titles and descriptions, rich media in the form of multiple images and video, stock availability, color options, size information, reviews and they want to consume this information seamlessly on at least three different touchpoints.
A PIM solution can drastically cut time wasted on duplicating efforts and processes each time you have to launch a new product or enter a new market. Imagine what this means for a growing eCommerce business; an expanding catalog is a key component of growing revenue and increasing market share. PIMs facilitate this transformation by streamlining data management processes and creating agile workflows that feed clean data into marketplaces and other sales channels. A PIM can easily be integrated with a company’s ERP system and simplify product data publishing to eCommerce platforms like BigCommerce, Magento, Shopify, Salesforce and to other digital channels like Amazon, ebay, Walmart, Google, Facebook, etc.
Poor digital presence, poor customer experience, drop in conversions
Shifts in customer buying behavior have happened overnight, leaving no option for businesses but to create a strong online presence. Add to this the pressure of beating competition that is more often than not just a click away.
PIM and optimized product data feeds are essential to both; creating immersive eCommerce environments and improving operational excellence. Retailers need to think about how these two components are crucial to customer retention and boosting sales.
Is it worth the effort and investment to explore PIM further? To make this decision simpler, we created a list of questions to help you understand the features and advantages of PIM better. If you answered yes to the questions below, we can help you close the gaps in your product data management, create a scalable eCommerce and grow sales.
Are you looking to:
Improve how product data is organized, managed, and shared to grow eCommerce sales?
Eliminate duplicate product data efforts?
Lower cost & complexity of managing product data?
Enable faster product updates and syndication to eCommerce platforms and digital channels?
Generate reliable data feeds to internal enterprise systems?
Enhance product content by adding categories, tech specs, features, benefits, digital assets, SEO info, etc.?
Achieve consistency across sales channels – products, content, prices, and inventory?
Eliminate the hassles of managing product data in tens of excel spreadsheets, or in clunky legacy systems?
As concerns over COVID-19’s overnight impact on shopping behavior and eCommerce continue, investment in automation and modernized data sharing tools are more crucial than ever. On Jul 16, Productsup, a leader in eCommerce data integration, hosted a webinar with Forrester, Facebook and StrikeTru on “Insights to successfully maneuver eCommerce in 2020”.
For merchants, particularly small and mid-sized businesses,
digital transformation and scalable eCommerce continue to be significant
challenges. They struggle with inflexible legacy systems, multiple disconnected
sources of data, poor data quality, and manual and duplicated processes that
result in time to market delays, serious breakdown in multichannel efforts,
poor customer experiences, and lost sales opportunities – and these challenges
are proving very costly. Tech savvy companies pivoted fast but for merchants
that have been slow in the last 5 years to get onboard with digitization or are
still in early stages are facing the brunt of this novel disruption – one where
physical channels have practically evaporated and there’s a surge to online
shopping like never before.
The pandemic has put a lot of pressure on retailers – small
and medium alike – to speed up digitization efforts drastically. They need to
find a way to get online fast and start selling before it’s too late. 10 years
ago, there weren’t many affordable tools to make this possible – fast forward
to today, platforms like PIM, Feed Management
and marketplaces like Facebook Shops are key to modernization and are available
at reasonable costs.
The webinar focused on eCommerce trends for B2B and B2C merchants and on finding a solution for merchants to navigate a world of digital channels, the latest addition to social selling trend; Facebook Shops and how it can enable small merchants to sell online and best practice tips for managing data for eCommerce success. Joe Cicman (Forrester), Alon Levin (Facebook), and Vik Gundoju (StrikeTru) shared their respective insights on why it’s all about accelerating efforts to stay relevant and compete on the digital shelf. The webinar clarified the path forward for retailers and the role of product information management (PIM) and Feed Management tools in creating a strong online presence today.
What are the future eCommerce trends for B2B and B2C merchants?
Joe Cicman from Forrester highlighted the effects of Covid19
on shopping behavior. “40% customers say they are buying more online than they
normally would.” He also said there is a reluctance to get back to physical
shopping adding that numbers suggest the new buying pattern is likely to prolong
even post lockdown. “82% of market growth came from marketplaces.” Data quality
is the secret sauce, for B2B and B2C merchants to offer seamless customer
experience. He said merchants must have the right approach to product data
feeds to turbo charge their ROI. Joe spoke about the benefits of a fully
integrated product data feed strategy, steps to achieve this and massive
consolidation in multi-tiered distribution.
Key takeaway: To avoid losing out to digitally savvy competitors, B2B merchants should start thinking like CPG brands and adopt new competencies quickly to achieve success. Inefficiencies in distribution will be eliminated by automation, embedded services and rising pricing power.
How can merchants leverage social selling?
Alon Levin introduced the latest offering from Facebook – a native,
frictionless digital storefront across all Facebook apps that operates with a
single data source product feed.
Facebook Shops is a result of analyzing customer behavior and how they
engage across these social platforms. It’s a great tool for merchants to offer
their customers a memorable and unified shopping
experience vs. the chore of buying. Facebook
Shops can help businesses sell more by enabling customers to find and purchase
their favorite products and brands easily – right from where they browse. So the
path to ‘buy now’ is a seamless journey without ever getting out of Instagram
or Messenger.
Key takeaway: Creating a Facebook Shop is free and customizable so sellers of all sizes can start selling online as soon as they want.
What are some best practice tips for managing data for eCommerce success?
How can eCommerce trends and evolving shopping platforms be
leveraged by businesses? Vik highlighted the urgency for small businesses to
accelerate their digital transformation and execute their digital commerce
strategy before it’s too late. He spoke about the critical role of
technology and data management as major value creators throughout the product
lifecycle. “Merchants can overcome many systemic weaknesses that Covid19 sharply
exposed by modernizing legacy systems, adopting new tech tools and implementing
agile data management practices.” He explains what PIM and feed management can
do for merchants, how they fit into an enterprise systems landscape and how
product data flows from source systems to internal & external destinations.
Key takeaway: Retailers that are struggling with scaling SKUs assortments, scaling digital channels, providing exceptional CX, and lowering operating costs have no option but to digitize and invest in modern PIM systems and feed management tools to excel on eCommerce.
Big or small businesses, if your content management is a pain
and its effecting productivity and customer experience, that’s when PIM comes
into play.
To watch the recording of the webinar, click here.
Q&A
Q – (Chris) Could you give some advice on what size considerations for when you would move to a PIM – is it driven by SKUs, market place demands, or supported channels?
A – (Vik) Few years ago only the bigger firms were investing in PIM, because of high costs and it involved a lot of process re-engineering. Now product data and digital assets are so important, even smaller companies have started doing it. Whether big or small – when content management is a pain and as a result business productivity is affected and customer experiences – that’s when they should invest in a PIM. Typically, it’s manifested by the fact that there are tons of spreadsheets, the data is bad, inconsistent across channels and they are not able to fix it in a timely fashion.
Q – (Chris) How should merchants approach channel rollout, is it big bang, 80 – 20, is it easy as first? How are they looking at expanding their digital/eCommerce channels?
A – (Vik) Many of them want to expand their digital channels – internal challenges and resource constraints hold them back. Depending on the industry, there are variations. We’ve worked with a Distributor in Industrial Distribution segment and the first channel they wanted to sell on was Amazon or probably eBay. They don’t have resources to do active channel management – they have a lot of stock sitting in their warehouse that they want to get rid of. They start small with excess products sitting on shelf, they pick products that are already listed on Amazon so they don’t have to do the hard work of entering data and they are selling that and converting sales from there to expand into other products and channels.
How can brands adapt to the future? What will define the consumer’s path to purchase in the post-Covid19 world? How to meet consumer demand on the digital shelf? How to accelerate time to market and drive sales? How to accelerate the shift to a new normal as customers surge to digital channels? How to overcome product data management challenges for eCommerce success?
We believe that structured product information and efficient product data management is the answer to all the questions above. It’s literally the backbone of online retail. It has become critical for retailers to ensure that they are delivering high-quality product pages with accurate, up-to-date information that convinces consumers to ‘buy it now’. Without an efficient product information management system in place, you’ll likely end up negatively impacting your customers intent to purchase, be unable to scale your digital channels or increase SKU counts, offer richer, consistent customer experiences, launch products faster; all of which will ultimately compound your inability to capture more revenue compared to your competitors.
Based on our experience supporting many eCommerce projects since 2010, we have closely followed the ever-growing number of product data challenges retailers face to get their products online. To help you overcome these challenges, we identified the top 7 potential pitfalls associated with product data management processes – and how they can be overcome.
In this article, we explore details
of these challenges and learn about StrikeTru’s recommendations to address them
for a smooth and profitable eCommerce project.
1.
Poor customer experience
Customers don’t have good self-service options online to search, select, bundle, and buy products
Customers can’t bundle products for preferred pricing online, but they can do that in stores
Improving online customer experience requires the ability to easily add and manage categories and attributes (e.g. sale category, style, collection, sub-brand) – we can’t do that in our system
Customers are confused by similar titles (e.g. wood chairs) as we can’t add more than 2 modifiers in our system
A customer returned a product multiple times – the eCommerce team fixed a bad image that caused the initial return, but warehouse continued shipping the wrong product as they were still looking at the bad image on their product lookup tool
Data management challenges delayed strategic initiatives like mobile app launch for store reps
Recommendations
Setup a central and trusted repository of high-quality
product data (PIM)
Simplify delivery of cross-channel consistency –
product selection, content, pricing, etc.
Boost online customer search and buying experiences by
leveraging granular data curated in PIM
2.
Bad data costs
Gartner estimates that poor data
quality costs organizations an average of $15 million per year.
Channel specific processes to collect product data, causing cross-channel content inconsistencies.
SKUs appear online with missing content. for e.g., packages go live with no prices.
Product images don’t show up online, and they sometimes disappear too.
We have manually assigned wrong brand logos, which has legal implications.
Instead of a part, we end up shipping the full package as our customer service rep can’t tell which box has what parts.
Recommendations
Centralize data management and governance processes in PIM to create/update/obsolete products consistently
Leverage validation and governance rules, bulk edits, and approval workflows to improve data quality
Make it easy to capture new categories, attributes, and images as needed to address data quality/completeness gaps
3.
Product launch delays
Takes weeks and sometimes months to collect, on-board, and complete one SKU
Would be great to get a daily report of incomplete SKUs, and missing data – will help us prioritize our SKU build efforts
Online, we sell only 40% of the SKUs that we sell in stores
When we discontinue a SKU, we spend a lot of time manually discontinuing all packages that contain that SKU
We routinely spend nights and weekends to try and meet our product launch deadlines
Recommendations
Leverage supplier portal to automate supplier data collection and onboarding
Consider outsourcing supplier data collection to specialized data vendors
Simplify employee tasks – give them a modern & intuitive PIM tool, with time-saving bulk import and edit features
Revise SKU setup process, and maximize product data curated in PIM for efficiency
Integrate ERP with PIM, accelerate collaboration via workflows and notifications
4.
Manual and duplicate work
Don’t know what data exists or how to use it. For e.g., merchants obsoleted many SKUs, the photo team report didn’t identify those, and the photo team wasted a bunch of time shooting unnecessary pictures for those SKUs.
Marketing CMS is unsupported, hard to use. Fixes and enhancements expensive to make.
Most products are variants, but we manage data at SKU level. Even simple changes require multiple SKU updates.
Our ERP doesn’t allow:
bulk edits – e.g. to assign styles and collections to products.
multi-value assignments – e.g. multiple colors or materials to products. This impacts product searchability online.
easy product data reporting for merchant decision making (they’d like to use PIM instead)
It is a manual and time-consuming process to:
setup merchandizing packages (so we don’t do it!)
create rich content by combining granular data – SEO friendly titles, descriptions, URL keys, image names, etc.
setup product relationships (e.g. related, up-sell, cross-sell) copy data from driver SKU (e.g. queen size bed) to variant SKUs (we don’t always shoot pictures for beds of all sizes)
Recommendations
Modernize IT stack, implement PIM to centralize product data and workflows
Integrate PIM with ERP, eCommerce, DAM, and other systems, eliminate re-keying
Implement robust data modeling, governance, and inheritance features in PIM
Train users extensively on search and bulk edit features
Increase user efficiency with powerful search & reporting, bulk edits, & validation & enrichment rules
5.
Manual asset operations
Image tasks are labor intensive – searching, importing , optimizing, linking, publishing, etc.
Assets are managed on local drives and are not searchable (e.g. search assets by vendor, product class, color, etc.)
Image validations (names, sizes, product links, etc.) are manual (e.g. don’t assign individual image to a kit)
Image file sizes are huge, and this affects SEO rankings negatively No systematic way to allow users to report bad asset issues so the photo team can track and fix those assets
Recommendations
Centralize and organize product assets in PIM (or DAM)
A typical BigCommerce customer sells thousands of products online. Each product has an ever-growing amount of data, including rich content and digital assets. Many don’t use a PIM to organize, store, and manage product data systematically. Retailers are looking for easy to use, scalable product management solutions that allow them to seamlessly integrate with their existing eCommerce IT landscape.
Whether or not a PIM is in place, preparing and transferring product data into BigCommerce and syncing them to all shopping channels is often a manual and error-prone process. A robust integration helps transfer product data easily from PIM into BigCommerce and other shopping channels. StrikeTru’s Akeneo PIM Connector for BigCommerce (a single-click app) does just that.
It combines the power of BigCommerce and Akeneo PIM platform capabilities. This Akeneo PIM Connector for BigCommerce allows BigCommerce users to quickly deploy a link to Akeneo PIM and reduce the cost and complexity involved in product data management and transfer processes.
Key benefits
Launch products to market faster
Lower investment in managing complex product data, assets and metadata – save time and money from carrying out manual operations
Simplify the process of importing and exporting product data from Akeneo to BigCommerce
Full control of all your product data and digital assets
Rapid deployment to sales channels
Consistent and accurate product information and catalogs across all online shopping touchpoints
Boost online sales
Better product data = better customer experiences
Deliver omnichannel experience
Why choose this connector
Retailers can end the struggle with managing complex product catalogs, error-prone data transfers and real-time product data syndication across channels
BigCommerce Akeneo Connector is compatible with Community Edition, Enterprise Edition, and Cloud Edition of Akeneo
Available as a native single click app on the BigCommerce Marketplace
The connector allows you to map product and product variations. Save time and money by setting all of your variations (example – products that can vary by color and size) in Akeneo and then sync to BigCommerce
It leverages Akeneo PIM and BigCommerce APIs for powerful data sync
Easy to install, easy to use
The app is developed and endorsed by Akeneo and BigCommerce certified partner, i.e. StrikeTru
Key features
Merge multiple category trees from PIM into one BigCommerce category tree
Map specific attributes from Akeneo as custom attributes in BigCommerce
Sync multiple images for products
Indicate product tax code
Mention SEO information – page title, meta description, meta keywords
Maintain and sync inventory information – current stock level and low stock level
Sync detailed pricing information – price, cost price, retail price, sale price
You can sync product dimensional information – height, width, depth
Indicate shipping flags like free shipping and specify fixed shipping price
Akeneo SKU mapping to BigCommerce product SKU field.
Sync other details like brand name, product UPC/EAN number, bin picking number
Mention search keywords for the SEO optimization
Control product storefront visibility – feature, visible
Mention sorting order of products
Maintain and sync purchase quantity limits – minimum and maximum
Sync updated products from Akeneo PIM again to gain efficiency for your web sync process.
Choose which products to export using various filters – category, family, completeness, time conditions, locale, and currency
Use identifier (SKU) for exporting specific products to BigCommerce store
Detailed error reporting
How to get started? Find us on the BigCommerce App Marketplace
Our goal is to create maximum value for our customers with high-quality product content delivered across all channels; and we help them achieve this with affordable product information management solutions, building high-performance eCommerce environments that wow customers, an array of data connectors and extensions and a robust ecosystem of technology partners combined together to help you boost eCommerce sales.
Choosing the right PIM solution for your business isn’t the end, you also have to choose the right PIM implementation partner. When it comes to PIM integrations, selecting the right partner is crucial. It’s Important to consider a PIM consultant soon after you decide to explore the benefits of PIM – this is ideal in the initial stages in order to ensure a smooth, efficient and cost effective project that ensures long term results. A PIM expert implementation partner like StrikeTru offers the right expertise and focus to implement a PIM solution best suited to your needs. Here’s why:
Proven expertise on the Syndigo (Riversand) platform: A partner like StrikeTru has years of experience working with Syndigo (Riversand) solutions since their 6x platform version. 30+ years of combined experience; this includes some of StrikeTru’s team members’ experience as part of the Syndigo (Riversand) professional services team. A dedicated team of solution and technical experts who know what it takes to successfully implement Syndigo (Riversand) Ascend PIM solution.
Cross-industry/cross-domain experience: Partners bring their experience working across multiple verticals working on various use cases. They know how to model /personalize the solution based on your specific needs. They bring industry best practices. Syndigo (Riversand) Ascend PIM implementation partners have years of experience working in the SMB segment and this itself is a big value-add given the cost sensitivity of SMB customers. They want quality implementations in a fast and very cost-effective manner.
End to end product data expertise: Syndigo (Riversand) Ascend PIM partners are familiar with the PIM landscape in an end-to-end fashion. Whether it’s the partner portal, ERP, eCommerce, Print, Feed Management tool or the sales apps, Syndigo (Riversand) Ascend PIM partners have a deep know-how of the entire product data landscape. This helps in doing the integrations the right way and in the right order.
Accelerators/Connected Apps: With their deep Syndigo (Riversand) expertise they bring the implementation accelerators to speed up the implementation and to provide value-add connectors/modules as needed. Infact, with StrikeTru customers can get access to affordable “Sourcing + PIM + Syndication” solution packages that are needed for high performing eCommerce.
Win-win implementation models: StrikeTru works with the win-win philosophy and can set up implementation contracts based on the needs of customers. Fixed cost with milestones vs. customers have the option to choose between Time and Materials (T&M) with milestones vs. a pure staffing-based model.
Lower implementation cost: With StrikeTru, you get expert Syndigo (Riversand) deployments and best practices at an affordable cost.
Support models: Syndigo (Riversand) Ascend PIM implementation partners are flexible and nimble and work with customers to setup the right support model post the implementation phase. This includes setting up of global support teams with continuous support and delivery model.
It’s essentially a true partnership model between customer, implementation partner and Syndigo (Riversand). Syndigo (Riversand) is focused on product innovation and vision, implementation partners are focused on the best implementation experience for the customer. Customers can leverage StrikeTr’s Syndigo (Riversand) partnership to solve product content challenges end-to-end .
The implementation approach to Syndigo (Riversand) Ascend PIM is fundamentally a game changer with an emphasis on speed and quick value realization via a “lightweight” model.
Rather than emphasizing deadlines to get projects started, it focuses on bringing the right players into the room to get the solution personalized in a few weeks. It’s about identifying the first set of products or items you need to onboard so you can syndicate to your sales channels quickly. Fundamentally, it is allowing customers to focus on growing the business without getting stuck in lengthy and costly implementations.
Launch – The system comes ready-to-use in 1-2 weeks. Customers can log in and start to review the default data structure, workflows, business rules, import/export profiles, user roles & security etc. This is the “launch” phase.
Personalize – After the launch comes the “personalize” phase. This is where the Syndigo (Riversand) Ascend PIM solution is customized as per the needs of the customer. Again, rather than implementing from scratch, it involves tweaking or changing the out-of-the-box configuration to tailor it to the customer’s needs.
Integrate – Once the “personalize” phase is done, additional tasks can be started – integrations, onboarding of additional users, additional data migrations, additional business rules, UI personalization etc.
Here are a few more details about the personalize phase:
Personalize, as the name suggests, is about personalizing the Syndigo (Riversand) Ascend PIM solution to your specific business needs. The section below gives an idea about the level of customization possible with the Syndigo (Riversand) Ascend PIM solution.
Content Workflows:
Disable/Enable workflows: Let’s say you only need the new product introduction, Item update and Item Discontinue workflows. In this personalization phase you can disable the other workflows and keep only the ones that you need. In case you need the other workflows in future you can simply enable those.
Change the step label: You can change the display label of the workflow step.
Change the roles configuration: You may want to have an additional role participate in a workflow step; you can do it.
Workflow task sequence: You can alter the task sequence as you see fit based on your business process.
Data Structures:
Change attributes groups
Attribute labels
Remove/Disable certain entities
Disable contexts not applicable
Add contexts
Governance Rules:
Disable the rules not needed
Add specific governance rules
Change the help text of rules
User security and role permissions:
Change the labels of roles
Change the role permissions
Add users
Here are a few more details about the Integrate/Extend phase:
This is an optional phase based on the client’s readiness and goals.
A PIM system is not much use unless it’s integrated to at least one of your channels and maybe at least one internal system. By integrating the PIM system to other applications /tools you truly realize the return on your investments.
We typically recommend connecting your ERP system to get the base product information into PIM. On the syndication /outbound side we recommend that customers integrate PIM with their eCommerce system. Integrations are discussed – data attributes, transformations needed, frequency etc. Based on the customer needs solution assessment is done and presented. In some cases, a ready-made connector solution is utilized.
Do you have questions about which PIM solution is the right one for your business?
Why is a PIM solution integral to your growth story:
A significant sentiment that has emerged recently among consumers is the realization of an ‘always shopping’ experience. Today’s consumers are more demanding of rich product information and are not shy about shopping around till they get the information they need.
The expectation of online ordering and seamless omnichannel experiences is the very basic that consumers expect from retailers today, in fact it is valued so much that 86% of shoppers say they are willing to pay more for a positive shopping experience, i.e. price transparency, detailed product information, personalization, free return, etc. They also engage much more deeply with brands and with so many choices available to them, the differentiator for their final choice is based on the product experience.
To keep up with evolving consumers, it is a strategic imperative to provide enriched, trusted and insightful product data to stay ahead in the marketplace. Since consumers rely on superior product content and detailed product information to make purchase decisions, business leaders depend on PIM solutions to provide rich, complete and accurate data to take key data-driven decisions on how to procure, sell and market products.
Product Information Management (PIM) is an application that provides trusted product content for unified commerce, relevant product information for micro-segments and product insights for improved customer loyalty. A PIM solution aligns the digital transformation imperatives of an enterprise by improving operational excellence and engaging with the customer throughout their purchase lifecycle.
Selecting the right Syndigo (Riversand) solution for your needs:
Syndigo (Riversand)’s solutions are offered as three distinct flavors – Ascend, Exclusive and Infinity.
Ascend is an offering that is designed as an out-of-the-box preconfigured solution for customers in a variety of industry verticals. It is meant for customers to be able to use right away, with minimal IT intervention.
Exclusive, in contrast, is a more configurable solution for businesses that want a solution customized according to their needs.
Infinity is similar to Exclusive, but it offers customers more control over their costs and gives them the freedom to scale up their usage and costs as needed.
What is Ascend PIM?
Syndigo (Riversand) Ascend PIM solution is an out-of-the-box PIM solution for retailers, distributors, brands and manufacturers. Ascend is a ready-to-go offering configured on the next-generation cloud-native Syndigo (Riversand) platform.
Ascend enables brands that are in high-growth phases to accelerate their growth by providing access to an affordable, cloud-native solution with quick deployment and minimal IT intervention. Companies obtain a solution that provides quick data onboarding, product enrichment and data syndication to third-party marketplaces and connectors. Ascend PIM means deployment in days as opposed to months/years.
This is made possible due to Syndigo (Riversand) Ascend PIM being a pre-configured PIM solution with all key solutions elements i.e. data model /data structures (attributes, drop/downs, taxonomies, relationships, entities/objects, workflows, business rules, import and export profiles, roles and permissions). All these solution elements are pre-configured based on industry best practices and decades of learning by product data solution and industry experts.
The biggest benefit of the solution is that companies can start small and grow their PIM use case without ever switching to a different software. Since the same software stack and foundation is used, it makes it easy for a customer who wants to switch from Ascend to Exclusive or Infinity.
Features of Ascend PIM
A native cloud-based SaaS PIM solution built on best-of-the-breed open-source technologies like Apache, Linux etc. However, it is not an open-source software product.
Very cost effective and competitive for the price you pay.
Built on the same software stack as Syndigo (Riversand) Exclusive and Syndigo (Riversand) Infinity multi-domain MDM.
A cloud-native solution as opposed to an on-prem solution or just a cloud hosting of a traditional on-prem solution.
It doesn’t lock you into a particular cloud provider. Though Microsoft Azure is the default, customers can choose others, like AWS.
A SaaS subscription with superior product support built into the license.
Who can benefit from Ascend PIM?
Businesses seeking a quick implementation with minimal modifications
Businesses with small IT organizations that don’t have resources to contribute to customization
Businesses that want to start with a more affordable solution
Businesses that don’t want to re-engage with a new solution provider at a crucial growth phase
Anyone who wants to get a much quicker return from their PIM investments will benefit from Ascend. This includes not only the small and medium (SMB) companies struggling with product content challenges but also bigger enterprise customers.
Custom uses of Ascend PIM
Syndigo (Riversand) Ascend PIM solution has a couple of variations/flavors. The difference is mainly in an additional feature set for retailers and distributors.
To better understand the Ascend PIM flavors it’s important to understand the flow of product data as explained in the picture below:
PIM DATA FLOW
Onboard & Ingest: This refers to the capabilities which allow the product data onboarding from suppliers or vendors. This includes use cases – supplier collaboration, dynamic data governance, integrated data and digital assets onboarding – all a part of the integrated supplier portal in the solution.
Enrich, Contextualize & Govern: This refers to the capabilities which allow Internal collaboration for enrichment and information updates, contextual data management – Seasons, Channels, Countries. Data governance extensibility, managing data in multiple locales and data visualization.
Publish: This refers to an ability to easily and seamlessly integrate with applications (upstream or downstream) within the customer’s ecosystem as well as data sources or endpoints and channels external to them. Default channels – Blob Store, Event Hub, SFTP. Multiple formats (JSON, CSV/DSV), REST API for data extraction, connectors for eCommerce, Marketplaces, e-tailers.
Variations of Ascend PIM
Ascend PIM solution for retailers/distributors: This variation of the Ascend solution covers use cases in all the steps of the data journey i.e. Onboard & Ingest, Enrich, Contextualize & Govern and Publish.
Ascend PIM solution for manufacturers/brands: This variation of the Ascend solution covers use cases in all the steps of the data journey except the Onboard & Ingest i.e. It covers use cases in the Enrich, Contextualize & Govern and Publish steps of the data flow.
Most companies are embracing the digital agenda today – there is a clear shift in retailer focus from supply chain to customer value chain. But what is the right path to digital transformation? The right path to transformation is one that results in long term operational efficiency, capturing new growth opportunities, increased revenue and assured delivery on business goals. Weighing cost & complexity as barriers to digital transformation against benefits like agility, flexibility, and speed is a no brainer in today’s fast-changing environment.
Syndigo (Riversand) Ascend PIM is an out-of-the-box PIM solution that can help you adapt your IT strategy to get the benefits of a cloud-based solution; solve business challenges, meet consumer expectations & thrive in a digital-first, always online economy.
A modern PIM solution like this one helps you manage the complete information lifecycle of a product. It is a data management solution that optimizes your digital shelf with technology that creates new ways to deliver customer outcomes across a range of touchpoints.
If you are looking for a solution that is affordable and gives you the choice to pay only for your current needs, with minimal IT intervention, immediate time to value, and default configurations that enable you to go live in days, with the freedom to grow and expand as your business grows – the Syndigo (Riversand) Ascend PIM solution will help you achieve this rapidly with easy implementation.
What are the features of Syndigo (Riversand)Ascend PIM ?
Digital Asset Management
DAM capabilities allow users to manage the digital content in the system like product images, product safety data sheets (PSDS) PDF, engineering specs documents, videos, audio files etc.
You get access to features like Digital Asset Linking, Auto-download, Integrated Digital Asset library that allows you to search by Digital asset by type, manage meta-data, system-generated image renditions and upload images in bulk by dropping the images to a cloud location.
Data Onboarding, Enrichment & Governance
Data can be onboarded into the tool in multiple ways.
Entity quick create – Manual entry in the UI one by one
Syndigo (Riversand)Smart Excel (RSEXCEL) – Category specific excel template which a user can download from the system. RSEXCEL comes pre-populated with the attribute group headers, attribute headers. Provides a list of valid values for drop/down type attributes.
CSV/DSV bulk imports – These are plain comma or any other delimited separated flat file formats. Users can also map the file columns to the PIM attributes.
API based integration from external systems like ERP, PLM, DAM etc.
Ascend PIM provides an advanced feature set for enriching the product data in the system. Within the entity editor page (also known as entity dashboard) users can see the summary of actions that they need to perform. This is populated based on business conditions.
Data governance is inherently built in the solution in various ways. First and foremost, many governance controls can be handled via the data model driven constructs/constraints. Examples include a valid list of values (drop/down values), required attribute, default value, UOM type, Allowed UOMs, Default UOM, Path type attributes, Precision, Min length, Max length, Regular expressions.
On top of the data structure/data model driven governance system provides a way to do more complex governance in the form of business rules.
Additionally, you have workflows in the system. Workflow mimics business processes related to product content operations – example New Product Introduction (NPI), Product Edit/Enrichment, Product deactivation etc.
Workflows include sequential or parallel steps across various user roles and system actions to achieve a certain business goal.
Attribute Management & Taxonomy
What are product attributes? They are data elements that define the details of a product and categorization.
Data attributes can be organized in the form of groupings called attribute groups, these are logical groupings like Descriptions, Logistics, Pricing, Classification and Hierarchy etc. Various attribute data types supported – example: String, Date, List of values, Nested etc.
Taxonomy
No limit to the number of categories, no limit to the depth/level of the categories.
Assign a product to one or more product classification structures, for example you want to assign an item to one internal merchandising taxonomy or want to assign to multiple web taxonomies or multiple paths. Mapping between two taxonomies (example merchandising taxonomy & web taxonomy) to automatically classify web based on selected merchandising hierarchy.
Contexts & Languages
What is a context?
Think of context as something which when applied to the data changes its meaning. Think of context as a sauce when applied to the base food item it changes its flavor. Your food will taste different when a different sauce is applied. It’s exactly like this. Context changes the meaning of data. Few examples will help illustrate this concept.
Product description is different for eCommerce vs. mobile channels. Why? Because you want a bigger description on eCommerce vs. a smaller description for mobile. Here channel is the context.
There are few common contexts that already come out of the box with Ascend PIM solution. Examples – Country (or Geography), Channels and Seasons & Events.
What is locale or language concept?
Locale concept allows you to manage the data at a particular language in a particular region.
System comes prebuilt with approximately 140 plus data locales that you can manage your data in. Example – You can have French description, copy and other attributes for your French eCommerce site vs. US English data for US eCommerce sites.
A context and language combination system allows you to have an almost unlimited combination to manage your data for all of your needs, whether it’s by channel, by region, by brand, by season, by language.
Visual Analytics
Visual Analytics is an inbuilt app in the Ascend solution which provides data insights so that users know the state of data and perform actions.
Currently, there are three types of analytics and they are:
Entity Summary – You can draw various insights from this, including count and distribution of data by entity type, by product categories, by users.
Workflow SLA – Provides how many total workflows, how many items in each activity/step of the flow, which users are loaded more in terms of number of items etc.
Data Quality – Gives you a snapshot of what kind of issues exist in your data. It gives you a complete report on what all kinds of issues exist in the data, examples – required attributes not filled in, drop/down attributes that are empty.
Connector Apps
Syndigo (Riversand) Ascend PIM comes with optional add-on apps and connectors plus a fully functional set of APIs and a variety of integration options.
Onboard & Ingest – Out of the box (OOTB) formats: Out of the box, Syndigo (Riversand) Ascend PIM comes with CSV, DSV, JSON and RSEXCEL options to import the data. Data export profiles can be set based on various filters and inputs can be stored on SFTP, Azure Event Hub, Azure Blob Store etc.
Publish/Syndication – Well defined REST APIs are available to perform various operations on the data. These APIs can be used to extract the data and syndicate based on the customer’s custom needs.
Add-on apps can also be used; examples include Print App for the print catalog automation. Other apps include syndication to eCommerce platforms like Magento, Big Commerce and data pools like GDSN/1WS.
One of the key challenges of a BigCommerce merchant or agency is how to collect and setup product data in BigCommerce product catalogs. This is not a one-time exercise, rather an ongoing operation and is core part of your eCommerce content operations.
PIM is the solution for all of your product content challenges but the key challenge for BigCommerce store owners is how to integrate Akeneo PIM tool with BigCommerce online store. This exact challenge is solved by our ‘end-to-end product content solutions for eCommerce’ offering. Made possible using the Akeneo PIM connector for BigCommerce by StrikeTru.
The integration process is simple and intuitive. All you need to do is import your product data into PIM, sync the data in a few clicks and you’re all set with a configured product data command center; ready to shine on the digital shelf!
The Akeneo PIM Connector for BigCommerce is a key part of the affordable PIM for eCommerce solution package by StrikeTru. It solves your product content challenges and accelerates sales, including “Product Sourcing + Cloud PIM + BigCommerce Syndication” and is especially designed for the mid-market businesses.
StrikeTru provides end-to-end PIM consulting services (hosted PIM Community Edition + various proprietary and 3rd party automations + BigCommerce connector). StrikeTru is also a key product content partner for Vesta to solve product data sourcing challenges. Vesta to cloud PIM integration is also available via Vesta Akeneo connector by StrikeTru.
Why use StrikeTru’s Akeneo PIM Connector for BigCommerce?
It’s compatible with all Akeneo editions including Akeneo’s Serenity cloud Edition offering
The connector is deployed as a true multi-tenant SaaS tool. It is built as a true middleware architecture as opposed to installing on top of the BigCommerce or Akeneo, though it’s also available as a native BigCommerce native one-click app.
Support for BigCommerce V3 stores.
Support for product and product variations sync
Support for Brand sync
Support for PIM Enterprise PAM module i.e. syncs Asset collections type attributes from Akeneo to BigCommerce
Support for publishing to multiple BigCommerce stores from one Akeneo instance.
Support for price list sync (we work with distributors and wholesalers also)
Better performance (esp. for large catalogs or multi-site integrations)
Product roadmap investments
SaaS licensing with regular support and availability of SLA based support
Discover how to unlock rapid omnichannel growth with BigCommerce & PIM here.
BigCommerce is one of the world’s leading cloud eCommerce platforms for established and rapidly-growing businesses. However, efficiently managing product data that creates real-time sync between sales channels and internal systems is challenging without an innovative eCommerce integration solution.
If your product data is managed manually or on a legacy system, chances are you are not meeting your customer’s demands due to inconsistent and error-prone product data managed very inefficiently across different departments. It’s cumbersome to deal with and can poorly affect overall business performance and ability to scale. BigCommerce product catalogs serve as a great destination for your product data – but what happens when you want to make changes to the product data, onboard new vendors, upload product data stored in different formats, make bulk-edits or manage digital assets? This is why a PIM solution is a must-have for online stores.
We built this configurable PIM integration for BigCommerce to make it easy and affordable for retailers to take full advantage of their product data from Akeneo PIM. With the Akeneo PIM Connector for BigCommerce, you can syndicate your product data in a few clicks and get your products to market quicker and more accurately.
The module enables Akeneo PIM to BigCommerce integration by seamlessly onboarding product data from Akeneo PIM platform to your BigCommerce store. With the help of this connector, you can manage your entire product catalog in Akeneo PIM and then sync the data to your eCommerce platform. This allows store owners to sync all product data and product meta-data i.e. products, product variations, categories, options, attributes, custom fields, images and videos from PIM to BigCommerce.
Key Features
True SaaS – True multi-tenant SaaS connector. This means all customers get the latest version and no need to deploy any software by customers
Native BigCommerce App –The connector is available as native BigCommerce one-click app in the BigCommerce marketplace. This allows a one-click install and no need to enter your store credentials again
Detailed configuration –You can configure every aspect of your connector
Test connection – You can test connectivity to your Akeneo and BigCommerce instances before you start to configure
Product and product variations mapping (Product Model and Product) –The connector allows you to map product and product variations. This saves time and money by setting all of your variations (example – products that can vary by color and size) in Akeneo and then sync to BigCommerce.
Attributes mapping –Map all of your BigCommerce attributes mappings from a user-friendly interface. Map BigCommerce normal attributes, map custom attributes. Specify the fixed value (default value) for any BigCommerce attribute
Category mapping –You can sync any portion of the Akeneo category tree to BigCommerce categories. You can also merge multiple Akeneo category trees to one BigCommerce category tree
Options mapping – Map any Akeneo option attribute (drop/down) to BigCommerce options
Image Mapping –The connector supports all types of image upload options. You can specify Akeneo image type attributes or Akeneo Asset Collection attributes or even a normal text attribute containing URLs to sync images from Akeneo to BigCommerce
Data Filtering –Store owners are in control of what data they want to sync. They can indicate each part of the product catalog to sync or not to sync. Example – Indicate if you want to sync just product or product and meta-data (categories, options, etc.). For product data sync you can also indicate which data you want to sync. There are all possible combinations to indicate what data you want, examples – Akeneo channel, family, categories, attribute-based filters, enabled/disabled etc.
Data sync scheduling –Store owners can run the sync on-demand via the user interface or can schedule to run at a predefined frequency
Logging & notifications –The connector allows you to capture all types of log messages – info, warning, error and also allows you to setup email notifications
Support for all Akeneo editions –Compatible with all Akeneo editions- Community, Serenity, Flexibility
Support for Akeneo versions – Compatible with Akeneo Serenity, and versions 4.0, 3.2, 3.1, 3.0, 2.3, 2.2, 2.1, 2.0, 1.7.
Default currency mapping – Specify which currency is the default currency from the configuration API
Other Features:
Merge multiple category trees from Akeneo PIM into one BigCommerce category tree.
Map specific attributes from Akeneo PIM as custom attributes in BigCommerce.
Sync multiple images for products.
Indicate product tax code
Mention SEO information – page title, meta description, meta keywords
Maintain and sync inventory information – current stock level and low stock level
Sync detailed pricing information – price, cost price, retail price, sale price
You can sync product dimensional information – height, width, depth
Indicate shipping flags like free shipping and specify fixed shipping price
Akeneo PIM SKU mapping to BigCommerce product SKU field.
Sync other details like brand name, product UPC/EAN number, bin picking number
Mention search keywords for the SEO optimization
Control product storefront visibility – feature, visible
Mention sorting order of products
Maintain and sync purchase quantity limits – minimum and maximum
Sync updated products from Akeneo PIM again to gain efficiency for your web sync process.
Choose which products to export using various filters- category, family, completeness, time conditions, locale, currency.
Use identifier (SKU) for exporting specific products to BigCommerce store.
Native BigCommerce one-click app
Attribute Mapping
Filter products
Our goal is to create maximum value for our customers. StrikeTru’s Akeneo PIM connector for BigCommerce streamlines your business by unlocking the potential of product data and helps you quickly meet consumer demand and deliver exceptional product experiences. This connector includes Product Sourcing + Cloud PIM + BigCommerce Syndication; and is a key part of our affordable PIM package for SMBs.
Mid-market firms in a growth phase find themselves struggling to scale their businesses when they’re confronted with complicated product data management requirements. Those that are still managing a large number of SKUs on legacy systems (“manual” PIM) and have to revise their product catalog at a rapid pace end up being the most counterproductive. This fuels further costs and complexities like inefficient workflows, siloed information, missing digital assets, overlapping operations, inconsistent formats and more. Needless to say, this has a bigger impact on overall business performance such as:
Drop in conversion rate
Delayed time to market
Increase in rate of returns and cart abandonment
Increase in order and delivery errors
Bad customer experience and brand reputation
Inefficient internal workforce
With eCommerce outpacing overall retail growth and a sea of competition, even a small hiccup in operations can be a big setback. A modern PIM tool working together with an eCommerce platform will result in streamlined operations in the back-end and create engaging user experiences in the front-end.
Let’s examine the reasons why an innovative eCommerce integration like this one gets you results:
the drawbacks of setting up a product catalog on BigCommerce
the benefits of BigCommerce and PIM working together
At a high-level BigCommerce has a fixed number of product attributes, with an option to add custom (name/value) type attributes. It offers a fairly standard product category concept. It allows you to have a custom price list and a special attribute for brand management. There is a concept of configurable products (products which vary by color or size).
From a product catalog perspective, BigCommerce consists of the following.
Product Attributes
Product Categories
Product Variations
Product Options aka shared variant options
The following sections explain each of these at a high level:
Product Attributes
BigCommerce offers a fixed set of out of the box attributes in various logical groups as you can see in the below screenshot. Attribute groups are – Basic Information, Description, Images and Videos, Product Identifiers, Pricing, Inventory, Variations, Customizations, Inventory, Storefront Details, Custom Fields, Related Products, Dimensions & Weight, Shipping Details, Purchasability, Gift Wrapping, SEO and Open Graph Sharing.
Product Categories
Merchants can create categories and category trees. This is a pretty standard feature with actions available. The challenge is that you cannot create multiple category trees or multiple catalogs, for example you want to create a sales catalog and a master catalog. You cannot have two base category nodes; all categories need to be part of one root.
A product can be assigned to one or more categories.
Product Variations
Variations are used for products that are available in different colors, sizes, or styles. A common use case for variations is for clothing that comes in several colors and sizes. Variants can have their own image, price, and weight, and they typically have their own SKU and track stock.
Variations are created via adding a variant option or a shared variant option to the product.
Stock keeping units, or SKUs, are codes that are used to tell variants apart and track inventory. When you create a new variant option, SKUs are automatically created for all your new possible variants. You may edit the automatically generated SKUs if you want to assign your own identifiers. The variant can have their own image (example – blue color shirt image). By default, variants will use the product’s main product image. Only one image can be assigned to a variant.
Product Options aka shared variant options
If you have several products that use the same variant options and values, you can save time by using shared variant options to set up the option once and reuse it across multiple products.
Shared variant options cannot be edited or customized on the product-level.
Editing a shared variant option will update every product to which it is applied; variants with unique SKUs will be automatically regenerated.
Shared variant options cannot be deleted if they are currently associated with a product.
Why should BigCommerce & Akeneo PIM work together?
Though BigCommerce is a very flexible and popular eCommerce platform, it’s not a proper PIM tool when it comes to the product catalog part of the platform. Its product catalog is a destination for the product data and not a place to manage the product data. Today’s eCommerce needs are much more sophisticated and cannot be handled in BigCommerce backend.
Here are the key reasons why BigCommerce merchants need a proper PIM solution :
Product data collection challenges
First and foremost, there is a need to centralize all product content in one core central repository. Data collection step of the product data journey has its own set of challenges – data volume, data variety, data velocity, data quality, data onboarding.
Your product data is sourced from your suppliers and other internal and external systems and needs a proper product information management (PIM) tool which allows all kinds of data attributes, images, documents, etc. to be stored in the PIM tool. PIM allows you to tackle all these challenges and is a scalable system designed for this very purpose.
Product Information management challenges
In this digital age, your product information is your product, as today’s customers are searching and shopping for products all the time on a variety of devices and pods. Before they actually decide to buy the product, they want to see rich, informative, compelling product data on all of your digital channels.
This requires an intentional and dedicated effort to manage product data. Key challenges are data centralization, flexible data modeling, multi-channel and multi-locale data, data quality rules, data enrichment rules, bulk edit, searchability, workflow automation, language translations, data access controls, SEO data management, pricing and promotions management.
PIM is a flexible tool to manage your product data, repair and prepare data, approve the data and then integrate it to the BigCommerce Product Catalog. PIM features tackle the challenges listed in the above example – business rules, bulk edit, completeness, channel and language level data enrichment, data security, meta-data management, etc.
Product data syndication challenges
Multiple product data destinations
Though your BigCommerce store is one of the key destination systems for your product data, the product data is needed by all of your digital channels like mobile, print, marketplaces, data pools, and others (Agencies, internal tools etc.). PIM is the central tool that is best suited for syndicating your product data to all these target systems. Your BigCommerce store is one of the destination systems, rather a central repository of the product data.
eCommerce web sync issues
Your current legacy tool is having sync issues, there is no predictability on when your eCommerce product data load will be updated. In many cases, this sync process is a legacy tool and no one knows how to change or make modifications and you are stuck.
Meta-data sync
Your BigCommerce store rich meta-data in addition to the core product record. This includes product categories, product options (drop/down), brand data, custom attributes, custom price lists, etc.
StrikeTru’s Akeneo PIM Connector for BigCommerce gives you a solid eCommerce technology stack at an affordable price. It puts your product content center stage in the eCommerce ecosystem and redirects your brand’s focus on creating omnichannel shopping experiences that drive sales. Find out what makes StrikeTru’s PIM integration for BigCommerce unique.
A potential client wants an eCommerce site, your agency wins the pitch, you set the estimated scope and budget for the project and the client agrees. At this point, you discover their product data horror story. Typically digital agencies are not system integration specialists nor have platform-based capabilities to manage complex product data.
Delivering eCommerce projects can be challenging in themselves, combine that with mining fragmented product data, cleansing it, discovering inconsistencies, removing corrupt records and optimizing it to create a successful online sales model – in the absence of a structured framework, smooth operations and cost-efficient delivery these projects can quickly become unprofitable.
Rich product data is a competitive differentiator for retailers today. So it’s obvious that an integral part of delivering a successful eCommerce project involves addressing and solving product data challenges systematically with best-practice solutions. But when agencies are not able to undertake this task efficiently it can put them in a bad light, making them look unprofessional & unreliable. In such instances, it is not uncommon for clients to replace the agency altogether. Often times agencies are in charge of broader high-cost digital projects including eCommerce and omnichannel initiatives and by not solving product data management challenges in the early stages, they risk jeopardizing bigger deals.
On the other hand, when clients are ignorant of the impact bad data can have on sales and the overall profitability of business they look for shortcuts like outsourcing the task of cleaning up their messy data to hasten the eCommerce project. This means data quality issues are resolved by ill-equipped agencies using manual and semi-automated ways – leaving the data at best; invalid and inaccurate. Many times agencies themselves don’t understand the complexity and cost involved in product data management and project low budgets in order to avoid losing the client, ending up hurting their margins. The flipside is that charging the true cost of a PIM project to a client who isn’t convinced about product data management will likely put them off and lead them to contend with bad product data. Even if the agency absorbs the bulk of the cost, the project becomes low margin or unprofitable from their perspective. All these scenarios will lead to unsustainable projects in the long run or even failure to launch.
Think of a PIM solution as the bedrock of an agency-client relationship. We champion the tremendous impact high-quality product data has on productivity, agility, reduced costs, improved efficiency and the ability to compete with early adopters of PIM technology. By creating a combined offering with StrikeTru that includes deep domain and PIM deployment expertise you can deliver exceptional product content and commerce solutions that can transform your client’s product data quickly, help your client grow their business, accelerate sales and give you measurable results.
Read more to find out how we solve product data challenges for digital agencies.
If you’re a digital agency looking to solve your clients’ product data management challenges or complement your e-commerce service offerings, we can help.
Contact us for more information on how we can partner.
Are you a digital agency that provides eCommerce solutions but are often faced with complex product data challenges? Turning your client’s messy data into rich high-quality product information that is market-ready doesn’t have to be a lengthy and expensive process.
Do you understand product data?
The first step is to get a thorough understanding of the current state of your client’s product data and how this information is stored. Usually the client is getting the job done by manually managing multiple versions and formats of product data across different systems and departments over hundreds of spreadsheets. In some cases they may be clueless about this and will not understand the impact of an extensive product data cleanup on the scope and budget of the project.
The challenge is to develop a product data implementation roadmap by accurately identifying the time and efforts required to cleanse the data, import and enrich it and finally publish the data to different marketplaces – having a clear understanding of the work that needs to be done can avoid gross underestimation of budget requirements that can lead to unpleasant shocks for your client. This is where partnering a PIM implementation expert can help.
How can a PIM solution help your client stand out on the digital shelf?
Modern PIM platforms can ensure product content directly supports the KPIs that drive success across all sales channels and has an impact on increasing conversion rates, average order value, stickiness, SEO, & profitability while decreasing return and cart abandonment rates.
StrikeTru makes cloud-based product data solutions affordable for clients. We specialize in end-to-end product data solutions for eCommerce using Akeneo open-source PIM and Syndigo (Riversand) Ascend PIM, both of which are ideal for small and mid-sized businesses and cost less than traditional industry benchmarks for PIM solutions.
We understand how setting budget expectations with your client for eCommerce projects can be a nightmare. Add to that asking them for additional investment in the form of a separate PIM project budget –this can mean the loss of an important client. PIM is a relatively expensive solution to implement, and making the business case and securing a budget for it might require time. Industry benchmarks peg a PIM solution cost of ownership at 2% of annual sales.
Small and mid-sized companies may have a hard time justifying this spend, and that is another reason why agencies may not actively promote a product information management (PIM) platform even if they understand its importance. Alternatively, the client may end up outsourcing the task to a competitor agency (at a cheaper cost) that don’t have deep understanding of PIM tools, workflow integration, product taxonomy, product data modeling and syndication capabilities.
StrikeTru routinely partners with eCommerce digital agencies to deploy modern PIM and DAM capabilities to boost eCommerce and digital transformation programs. Click here to find out more about the benefits of PIM and how we can add value to your service offering.
Read more to find out how we solve product data challenges for digital agencies.
If you’re a digital agency looking to solve your clients’ product data management challenges or complement your e-commerce service offerings, we can help.
Contact us for more information on how we can partner.
If your business involves working with a retailer, it’s safe to say that eCommerce solutions are a big part of your service offering. With changing consumer preferences, traditional brick-n-mortar players are quickly embracing the industry shift and looking for quick and affordable ways to leverage the potential of online sales. Not just this, they want to think and act like their digital native competitors that have made this model a huge success with omnichannel, mobile commerce and heavy focus on delivering great customer experiences. In fact, the online share of total retail sales in the US has steadily been on the rise—with e-commerce penetration hitting 16.0% in 2019, according to Digital Commerce. In order to thrive today companies must furnish an ever-growing number of touchpoints with optimized product information at every stage of the customer journey.
The expectation from digital agencies today has got a broader implication involving eCommerce solutions that complement branding and marketing strategy. The primary factor that determines the success of an eCommerce project is undoubtedly a high-quality, centralized product information database that translates into a wide range of tangible benefits like:
1. Increase in traffic to the online store
2. Meaningful customer experiences that positively impact customer
stickiness
3. Increased conversion rate
4. Streamlined internal operations and automated processes
5. Faster time to market
6. Increased product searchability
7. Up-skilled employees and increased productivity
Most digital agencies recognize the importance of an optimized product database but are hesitant to advocate this solution to their clients due to various factors; heavy cost & complexity, project timelines or as in majority of cases; due to insufficient in-house skills to support such projects. The biggest reason is the lack of the right business & technical skills that require careful planning and great execution.
Consider this scenario, where even your client understands the sales benefits of a well-managed product database and requires a PIM deployment as part of their eCommerce strategy – how do you ensure a successful PIM implementation? Without core system integration skills and proven implementation expertise developing a clear and actionable roadmap could prove to be frustrating and costly for both parties involved. Even a few missteps can be painful to deal with & cause duplication of efforts. On the other hand building in-house skills may not be profitable for agencies unless there are multiple PIM projects in the pipeline ensuring a steady revenue stream to offset the investments.
Implementing PIM for eCommerce smoothly needs a deep understanding of product data and proven implementation expertise that represent complex legwork and big investment for agencies whose core service offering are focused on front-facing creative & strategic marketing services. Partnering with a digital services firm like StrikeTru in such cases is a good way to move forward
StrikeTru is a digital services company helping small and mid-sized businesses drive their eCommerce sales. From product data collection, to product information management, to product data syndication, StrikeTru is a one-stop-shop for affordable cloud-based product data solutions.
Read more to find out how we solve product data challenges for digital agencies.
If you’re a digital agency looking to solve your clients’ product data management challenges or complement your e-commerce service offerings, we can help.
Contact us for more information on how we can partner.
Retailers are looking for agencies that can help them move fast; to stay ahead in an age where Amazon is transforming eCommerce at an incredible pace. Hiring digital agencies for end-to-end eCommerce solutions has become a trend as they combine strategic, creative & technology services to help retailers grow their online business.
But what goes into creating a successful eCommerce model for these retailers? Consumers are driving the advancement in technology through their evolving behavior & expectations from brands. How they prefer to consume information, interact with eCommerce sites, shift seamlessly between interconnected devices and purchase products and services over what period of time, is essentially defining the way retailers approach their physical and online eCommerce strategy. There’s no denying the ground shift from trying to sell the ‘best product’ to selling the best ‘product experience’. According to a report by PWC the ROI on ‘great experiences are tangible: up to a 16% price premium on products and services, plus increased loyalty.’ There is 0 room for error with consumers having no tolerance for less than 100% accurate, consistent results, ‘one in three consumers (32%) say they will walk away from a brand they love after just one bad experience.’
So what does it really take to make a retailer stay one step ahead of competition and make the most of their online store in the current marketplace?
What happens when as a digital e-commerce agency you are faced with questions such as:
1. Why is my full inventory not showing up on the site?
2. Why are the product listings not optimized with high-quality images?
3. Why is my eCommerce site not achieving the conversions it should?
4. Why is my eCommerce site not getting enough traffic?
5. Why is my online store flagging?
Worst case scenario – you have a stalled eCommerce project on your hands.
The answer lies at the very root of eCommerce – lack of a modern product content management platform.
Digital eCommerce agencies often work with clients that don’t have a product information management system (PIM) in place – they manage their product data manually on ERP and messy spreadsheets that exist on different systems, sometimes in different formats. This bad product data situation is discovered by the agency themselves at the start of the project resulting in unpleasant surprises for the client in terms of 1) extended timelines to complete the project and 2) big investment required to put product data integration systems into place.
Trying to manage huge volumes of fragmented product data manually is bound to lead to errors that can not only harm the clients brand but your relationship with them as well. Clients are most concerned with how fast and easily they can get what they want from their vendors – agility and personalization is crucial – a situation like this means bad customer experiences and lost market share.
Challenges like messy product data, delays in onboarding supplier product data, inability to centralize and manage product data at scale, inability to syndicate product data to sales channels efficiently and limitations in eCommerce platform data management capabilities that lead to delayed eCommerce projects can all be addressed by implementing a PIM solution that streamlines your product content operations quickly and ultimately leads to conversions.
By collaborating with a partner like StrikeTru you are prepared for situations exactly like this and can tackle the problem head-on with end-to-end PIM solutions for eCommerce, get your client to market fast in a quick and affordable way with no unwelcome surprises or budgeting issues for the client.
Read more to find out how we solve product data challenges for digital agencies.
If you’re a digital agency looking to solve your clients’ product data management challenges or complement your e-commerce service offerings, we can help.
Contact us for more information on how we can partner.
This is the most commonly asked question when it comes to eCommerce players considering implementing PIM for digital shelf success and transformation. We decided to unpack this question in the simplest way possible. By working backwards from your business goals, we can get a clearer understanding of what it takes to achieve those goals in a multi-channel, always connected, SaaS PIM environment.
If these are your top 5 business goals for 2020, implementing PIM is the only way to stay competitive in the coming years.
Manage and distribute product content for thousands of SKUs
Offer your products across channels in multiple languages
Have a low rate of product returns
Value add to strategic areas of business especially employee productivity
Raise the ante on customer experience
Manage and distribute product content for thousands of SKUs
Handling 500 – 1000 SKUs is an easily managed task with a detailed excel carrying product information and associated digital asset references. But what happens when you have to manage thousands of products with their descriptions and rich media with an aim to offer extensive product depth & breadth to end customers? A traditional ERP is simply not designed to manage the pace and complexity of consumer demand for data today. Inflexibility is only one of the reasons why an ERP model can prove crippling to your brand. Digital commerce in 2020 demands flexible and transparent workflow capabilities, rich digital assets, the agility to add an ever increasing number of data attributes and consumer facing data that is dynamic. On an ERP, this is impossible – due to lack of flexibility and extensibility, audit and digital asset management capabilities; teams inevitably end up with disparate databases of product data that don’t speak to each other leading to inconsistencies and additional costs. A lot of the marketing data ends up living on spreadsheets, so the lack of visibility into a growing number of SKUs can blindside product managers and turn off buyers. This means lost sales and bad reviews. That’s where a modern PIM comes in. A cloud based PIM lets you centralize all your product information in a single repository, making sure your brand tells consistent product stories across every channel.
“A few years ago, it could take weeks for us to onboard a new SKU. Now, thanks to Akeneo PIM it typically takes a day.”- Petra Industries
Offer your products across channels in multiple languages
The modern day shopper is channel agnostic, they want to be able to shift from one channel/device to another seamlessly and get access to current, accurate information on every search. Studies show that omnichannel campaigns earned a 250% higher purchase rate than single-channel campaigns. Meaning that customers were not only more receptive to engagement through multiple digital & offline touch-points but it also impacted their purchase decision positively. Similarly, when it comes to international expansion – localization & translation is key to making sure your customers are able to find, evaluate and purchase your product very easily. An ERP does not allow management of multi lingual data. Managing and enriching product information can be a pain every time you are entering a new market. With Akeneo2GlobalLink, a translation connector tool by StrikeTru that connects Akeneo PIM users to Translations.com’s GlobalLink, this process is highly simplified. From organized workflows to integrated translation tools, your business is equipped to grow quickly and capture larger market share in every location.
“Our people are spending an enormous amount of time translating product data and managing that data in multiple spreadsheets. Leveraging the Akeneo2GlobalLink solution will drive significant value for our content and commerce teams, and for our customers.” – Pierce Global
Lower rate of product returns
Have you ever had a situation where your eCommerce platform displayed an image that caused a return because warehouse repeatedly shipped the wrong product as they were looking at an older image on another product lookup tool? You can only imagine how damaging this can be to your brand image. 57% of retailers said that dealing with returns has a negative impact on the day-to-day running of their business. When working with inflexible legacy tools including an ERP, 20-25 people and 8 different systems are involved in servicing a retailer or customer request for product data – the total time this would take and high chances of manual error is mind boggling. With a good PIM, you can dramatically enhance your data quality. Excellent data quality means customers searching for your products get intelligent results every single time on any device.This is crucial to product searchability, conversions and customer satisfaction.You gain content control, visibility, flexibility, and dissemination capabilities that result in personalized customer experiences leading to higher satisfaction levels making them come back for repeated purchases.
“PIM users have reported a 40% decrease in product returns, thanks to features such as automated enrichment rules, product completeness monitoring, and validation, which each work to ensure that shoppers are more informed prior to purchase.” – Akeneo
Value add to strategic areas of business especially employee productivity
Increased employee productivity is a top priority for management. In the above points we examined how a modern PIM solution can significantly enhance business and customer oriented goals. However, internal employee-productivity related goals can also be addressed by gaining control over and centralizing your product data by automating 30-50% of redundant manual operations, increased efficiency, doing away with silo headaches, transparent workflows, more focus on customer innovation, greater collaboration between teams, easier goal mapping and performance measurement and streamlined operations resulting in next generation CX.
“Updating product content in Akeneo PIM takes 10 minutes compared with the 30 minutes it took in the old system.” – SHOP.COM
Raise the ante on customer experience
Meaningful customer experiences are everything; it is the leading differentiator today, with customers putting even more emphasis on rich product information. According to a study by Gartner, 89% businesses are expected to compete mainly on customer experience in 2020. On the other hand a bad customer experience can cost you heavily – 95% of customers tell others about a bad experience. To compete with giants like Amazon, you need to raise the ante on customer innovation by implementing a cloud based PIM to anticipate customer needs, understand preferences through buying patterns & seasonality resulting in a highly responsive and seamless experience.
In conclusion, an ERP system may be able to manage small amounts of product data but as your product and attribute counts increase only a PIM solution can create compelling product content for next-gen customer experience.
A PIM solution can help brands & retailers rank their products highly on the digital shelf – going beyond a basic keyword search. It is a great tool in the hands of product managers and merchants to accelerate time-to-market and an asset to always-connected consumers for intuitive shopping.
Brands and retailers often face the consequence of lost revenue thanks to bad product data. In the last decade, there has been a revolution in the way we manage product content. Today, customers look beyond product features & shipping information. They respond to 360-degree immersive narratives that include multiple brand images and video, AR generated lifestyle images and rich product copy. Today, at the heart of a successful ecommerce strategy lays product content that can make or break a sale.
The key is to evolve to meet the demands of today’s connected shoppers. How can you do that? By making the shopper feel empowered with all the information they want, when they want it & on a platform of their choice. With a modern product information management (PIM) solution this is possible. From product discovery to syndication, a PIM solution collects, cleanses, enriches, and adapts your content to meet specific channel requirements for a seamless omnichannel experience. This is even more important in the Amazon-age, with nearly 66% shoppers (2/3 of US shoppers) beginning their search for products here; brands and retailers have to ensure they have the capability of updating their product data quickly to meet the ever changing and ever increasing product content guidelines.
Let’s look at some of the typical challenges faced by ecommerce players that are still managing product information on excel files and shared drives and legacy systems:
Product horror story – companies that don’t have access to a centralized repository of trusted product information struggle with easily finding and publishing content in a timely manner that ultimately lead to higher return rates. Never mind poor customer satisfaction levels.
Manual syndication – manually managing multiple versions of product data across different departments and channels over hundreds of spreadsheets is near impossible for brands that wish to stay competitive by continuously optimizing their products to capture a larger market share. When the customer expectation is to buy anything at any time, the last thing retailers & manufacturers need is to get stuck with troublesome errors and brand and cross-channel inconsistencies that are fully visible to customers.
Zero scalability & delays in launching new products – the ability to list and manage tens or hundreds of thousands of new SKUs is essential to executing an endless aisle strategy to compete with Amazon and other players. Manual methods and legacy systems often fail to accomplish this, hurting a business’s agility in the marketplace.
Damaged brand reputation – all of the above situations negatively impact purchase decisions and lead to an irreversibly damaged brand reputation.
So how can you ensure exceptional product data quality, i.e. completeness, timeliness, conformity, consistency and accuracy in collaboration with suppliers & partners? By integrating a cloud based PIM solution in your marketing technology stack. This core solution software aggregates content (including rich selling content) from all data sources, transforms it, creates a harmonized data set, and synchronizes all content to your eCommerce website and various 3rd party digital marketing and sales channels including search engines, social media, and marketplaces. It supports content syndication both in terms of product mix and completeness and format of data, including multilingual content adaptation, needed by the various digital commerce channels.
New platforms like PIM can ensure product content directly supports the KPIs that drive success across all sales channels and has an impact on increasing conversion rates, average order value, stickiness, SEO, & profitability while decreasing return and cart abandonment rates.
Cloud deployment in eCommerce is a default in 2020. Driven by digitally influenced consumer touch-points like social media, online marketplaces and mobile search, cloud native innovation has become main-stream.
Adapting to a cloud-first approach is not an easy one. Understanding cloud capabilities and the new ways it can transform your business is the first step. That’s where we come in. Here’s how you can adapt your IT strategy to get the benefits of cloud-based solutions – to solve business challenges, meet consumer expectations & thrive in a digital-first, always online economy.
TruPIM – StrikeTru’s cloud based product information management (PIM) solution is an affordable, flexible, fast to deploy SaaS solution powered by Akeneo PIM Community Edition. TruPIM specializes in helping retailers, distributors, and manufacturers visualize & understand how they can acquire, onboard, manage and distribute their product data more efficiently. Product data is the lifeblood for fast growing commerce – now imagine having a product information truth source that puts all your product information in one place streamlining your operations, saving valuable time for employees, increasing collaboration and creating a true omnichannel experience for your customers.
Our belief is that product-selling B2B & B2C companies should spend less time sorting through messy data & managing multiple spreadsheets and more time building capabilities to hold the attention of digitally connected consumers through different stages of their shopping experiences to unlock eCommerce success.
Deliver consistent, high quality product information across channels, get products to market faster, boost product discovery & conversions.
No infrastructure to manage: A traditional on-premise PIM solution is associated with high overhead costs. With Cloud PIM you lease the infrastructure you need and expand as you need.
Scalable: Cloud PIM provides a great deal of scalability to expand in tandem with your growing needs instead of provisioning excessive and unused on-premise infrastructure
Automate manual content and IT processes to eliminate errors and let your team focus on strategic areas like customer innovation.
Instantly available: Cloud PIM gives you the flexibility of easy access from anywhere, anytime and from any device. Give access to partners, suppliers, employees breaking down silos, improving data workflow & making workloads more portable. Perfect for huge volumes of ever-changing data.
Low total cost of ownership: With a pay per use model and turnkey features, there are no expensive investments in on-premise infrastructure and support staff.
The cloud computing market is omnipresent and will reshape the competitive landscape in 2020. This is especially true for eCommerce players who must evolve & embrace the next generation cloud model to stay relevant.
Millennials are changing the way brands are doing business, from catching onto contextual advertising trends to becoming early adopters of latest marketing channels (like Instagram) – it’s no surprise their purchasing power is projected to reach $1.4 trillion in 2020.
In this blog we’ll examine tomorrow’s trillion-dollar demographic and provide insights on how to engage the largest group of category killers across industries.
Online search
E-commerce made up nearly 10% of all retail sales in the last quarter of 2018, but that doesn’t necessarily point to the fact that all shopping is happening online. Online shopping statistics are vital for retailers to understand why a large chunk of purchase decisions still happen at the shelf. Other than shopping, digital has a huge influence on how Millennials reach the physical store – digital helps them search and find products in real-time,stay in tune with thousands of product reviews, prices, and best deals both online and offline, and gather updated product information they need to find the best products& shopping experiences.
The key is a seamless shopping transition from smartphone to personal computer to store. This also explains why this generation prefers the BOPIS (Buy Online Pick in Store) experience.
Impulse buying
Most millennial shoppers indulge in unplanned shopping – ‘throw extra items in the cart while you’re there’suggesting a demand for instant gratification and convenience over saving money on product price. Marketers have understood this and are developing millennial versions of the in-store ‘SALE’ signage that make the consumer not think twice about making a spontaneous purchase. Like related products, free shipping, or first-time buyer discounts. For example, grocery e-tailers convince shoppers to add items they might have forgotten at checkout based on items in their shopping cart.
Influenza economy
Almost three-quarters of consumers say that there has been a direct link between watching a video online and making a purchase. (Source: Adweek).
We live in a sharing economy and ‘Influencers’ have emerged as the game changers in the ecommerce space. “In 2018, 72% of major brands stated that they were outsourcing a significant portion of their marketing resources to online Influencers. Followers feel as though they’re getting a product recommendation from a friend, making them more likely to buy quickly.” (Source: weforum) Successful brands have quickly adapted their marketing strategies to include Influencer collaborations that leverage their massive following resulting in an online buzz about the brand, product information, and updates. From brand discovery to purchase drivers, online mentions and reviews will be paramount to uplifting brand & sales in 2020.
Retailers and brands are redefining their strategies as the digital landscape and shopping behaviors evolve every day. If they are to capture the purchasing power of this segment, some organizations may have to modernize their legacy systems to keep themselves from falling behind. Two things: marketing technology. The right marketing technology, combined with the right data, people, processes & partners can enable retailers and corporate brands to deliver a consistent and elevated customer experience across all sales channels, including eCommerce, mobile, social, print, and retail points of sale.
Check out our Services page for more information to get started with mapping your ideal marketing technology stack.
Most
Americans shop online. A majority of these online customers start their product
search on search engines, market places, and retailer websites. Visibility and
discovery are two of the most critical elements when it comes to competing for
mindshare of potential customers online, hence companies must make the
necessary investments in modern technology to ensure great product content is
continuously fed to the right sales and marketing channels, at the right time.
Effective product feed management involves providing complete, accurate, and
timely product data that meets the individual requirements of various channels.
Channel-specific data requirements keep evolving, companies continue to adopt
more channels to sell through, and enterprise product data is constantly in a
state of flux (i.e. new products are introduced, current ones are updated or
obsoleted). Legacy operations typically used to manage product feeds involve
high cost and complexity and often slow down a company’s ability to provide
relevant product feeds to sales channels. Specialized product feed management
tools and service providers play a key role here helping companies overcome
many of those challenges resulting in a shorter path to purchase – leading to
more conversions. It is also a best-practice for digital winners to leverage a
modern Product Information Management (PIM) tool that helps them master and
share product data efficiently with employees across the company and with feed
management tools and other consumers of product data.
In this whitepaper, we discuss in detail the importance of optimized product feeds, outline common product feed management issues and review how a product feed management tool like Feedonomics helps overcome these challenges. We also review key features of a Product Information Management (PIM) tool that helps create consistently high-quality product data at scale so it can be shared with sales and marketing channels. Finally, we propose a reference solution architecture that combines PIM and Feed Management tools to maximize content and feed management related task automations as well as orchestrate multi-channel order management.
The Importance of
Optimized Product Feeds
Product data feeds are an essential part of eCommerce. It is
the method in which your data is sent to shopping channels and marketplaces
where you want your products listed and found easily by consumers when they
need it. The figure below illustrates just how many consumers look up product data on their devices even when
they’re shopping in a store.
There are many crucial elements that make up a successful
shopping feed. If you have 20 total products, you could of course optimize your
products one by one manually, but what if you have thousands or millions of
products? Therefore, a comprehensive feed management platform is the only way
to truly manage and scale up your eCommerce campaigns.
Optimizing your product feeds is a critical part of
succeeding on Amazon, Google Shopping, Walmart or on an auction site like eBay.
Why? At the highest level, search algorithms often match the keywords users
type into their search against your product attributes, giving extra weight to
your title, category and description. Product feed optimization is key to a
higher CTR, raising the average order value, increasing attachment rates, and
ultimately getting the best performance out of your campaign.
The recipe for online product listing success:
An
optimized feed – You want to ensure your online ads stand out with clear
understandable wording that ticks all the boxes based on what the person
shopping is searching for. Your ad copy must contain attributes that paint a
picture of what they will be purchasing, such as color, size, material, gender,
price, brand, and more.
SEO
friendly – Whether it’s Google, Amazon, Facebook, Walmart, or eBay, all
these large online shopping platforms want to give their shoppers the best
possible user experience. An optimized product feed often comes with huge
rewards for the advertiser such as higher impression share, a lower cost per
click, and a higher conversion rate.
A healthy
account – If you have ever encountered a Google
Merchant Center disapproval or error, you will understand the frustration this
can cause. Every online marketplace adheres to a strict set of rules. Amazon
uses Order Defect Rate (ODR) to measure a seller’s ability to provide a good
customer experience. Of course, Amazon sellers will want to avoid receiving a
high ODR, which could lead to a suspension or even termination. Being able to
flag, diagnose, and resolve errors quickly helps maintain a consistent revenue
flow. Example – Having an account suspended over Black Friday weekend could be
catastrophic for your company.
Responsive Shopping
Campaigns
An ad campaign will suffer if you do not have an optimized
product feed. A product feed is the cornerstone of any successful campaign.
Without proper feed optimization, it’s unlikely your products will show up at all,
and if they do show up, it’s often at the expense of very high bids, because
your products are not seen to be as relevant.
Best Practices:
When you structure your product attributes
similarly to the words and phrases that users are looking for on different
platforms, it increases your ad’s relevancy.
Product title, description, and categorization
are critical here. You’ll want to ensure that your product titles contain
attributes like brand, name, size, and color so that your item surfaces in
product searches.
Provide high-resolution images and make sure to
use the optimal height and width for the platform where you’re advertising. A
white background to make your images pop is best.
For some products, you’ll want to provide
additional images of the item from a different angle to capture special
details.
Ensure the product specs associated with the
item are described accurately and thoroughly.
Categorization is key. For example, Walmart
assigns products to specific categories, and within each category, there are
sub-categories. Also, attributes for products are required. Make sure that
product categories, sub-categories, and required attributes are set up
correctly so there are no errors or unpublishing issues. Customers who browse
or use filters when shopping won’t be able to find your products if you’ve
miscategorized them.
Better Return on Ad
Spend (ROAS)
An optimized feed allows you to enhance the core component
of a Shopping campaign, which is relevancy. A relevant campaign needs to meet or
exceed the associated platform’s algorithm. This will influence the amount of
impressions share one advertiser will receive over another, as well as the cost
per click and more importantly, the number of clicks the ad will receive.
With regards to Google Shopping, if your campaign “pleases”
the Google algorithm, it can lead to:
Higher impressions
share
Increased
click-through-rate (CTR)
Lower costs
Similar to Google Shopping, pleasing the algorithm on
marketplaces such as Amazon, Walmart, and eBay require the following
considerations to get the most out of your marketplace SEO:
Better product data for relevancy
Competitive price point
Product availability
Quick turnaround on order fulfillment
Low or free shipping
Customer reviews
Combining your traditional PPC optimizations with
marketplace best practices, should give you the edge against your competitors.
Faster order management and fulfillment can help with the
above best practices situations. How so? Product prices are updated constantly,
new products will be added in, and old or seasonal products are discontinued.
If you don’t revise your product feed, then you are at risk of receiving feed
errors or disapprovals.
Common Product Feed Issues
Some common product feed issues include:
Duplicate titles
Titles with missing
information
Whitespace issues
Rogue HTML
Not listing full catalog (e.g. only top sellers listed)
Missing alternate image angles/views
Poor image quality (resolution, size, etc.)
No associated products
When your product data is clean and optimized, there are no
rogue HTML or missing values, and it is correctly mapped to the specifications
of each channel.
The following is a list of common Google Merchant Center
errors:
Automatic item disapprovals due to policy violation (e.g.
“Dangerous Products” policy violation where a site sells guns, gun
parts, and explosives)
Product pages cannot be accessed
Missing images
Invalid price data
Incorrect product identifiers
Missing GTIN
Missing shipping information
Temporary item disapprovals due to incorrect
availability
Missing required attribute: color
Missing required attribute: size
Multiple sizes for one item
Incorrect shipping costs
and so on…
Unresolved Google Merchant Center (GMC) errors and disapprovals can result in thousands
of dollars of lost revenue per day. For a company that lists and sells hundreds
or thousands of items, it is a daunting amount of work to monitor product
listing errors and warnings on those channels on a daily basis. Furthermore,
those errors due to bad data on Amazon could result in a delisting of products,
fine or even suspension. Updating price, inventory, and other content for those
items routinely also requires a significant amount of work. Another big
challenge is the task of orchestrating orders coming in from multiple sales
channels. Companies often struggle with timely entry of channel specific orders
into internal systems (online store or ERP or OMS) and timely update of order
status on various sales channels – these operations are typically manual and
error-prone.
Even if product feeds are optimized, there are other data
challenges that companies routinely deal with:
Incorrect data: For example, wrong price, availability,
or dimensional data. These will contribute to wrong product shipments,
excessive returns, customer dissatisfaction, and lower profits. Other issues
include poor image quality, insufficient number of product images, etc.
Delayed product introductions: It’s not uncommon for
companies to list only a subset of their catalog online due to data
availability and setup issues. For example, inability to launch new products or
promotions in time for a Black Friday leads to lost sales.
Inconsistent data across channels: Customer expect
omni-channel consistency and will avoid or punish companies that don’t deliver
it.
Inconsistent data across brands or categories: In the
same company, titles and descriptions across brands and/or categories are often
constructed differently. The availability of commonly searched product
specifications and digital assets also varies widely across product categories.
This makes it harder for customers to find and purchase products online.
A lack of visibility into these data issues and control over
what data gets distributed to specific channels is a common issue. These
challenges result in a variety of problems including lost sales, stockouts due
to poor inventory and availability management, and costly operations.
Feed Management Tool to
Tame Cost and Complexity
A product feed management tool like Feedonomics can address many of these problems. The tool streamlines the creation and management of optimized product feeds to help save time and money. It will also sync the latest price and availability data with all channels on a timely basis. With Feedonomics’ proprietary tool (FeedAlerts™), you can receive notifications for Google Merchant Center errors and warnings daily. Feedonomics can also help with automated order management. The platform will automatically pull orders from each marketplace channel and deliver them to your system in one dashboard. Everything is synced to your online store (or another system like ERP or OMS) so that you can efficiently manage Marketplace inventory. This will prevent oversold situations and ensure that product availability is accurate.
Many companies don’t have a centralized repository of
product data. So, preparing product feeds, including via getting the data from
your website, can be tricky. Feedonomics can pull product data from any feed
file, shopping platform, product content platform, or custom site with any kind of schedule. It is a low-cost way to
ensure your products are at the “eye-level” on the digital shelf.
Data Ingestion: We can
pull data into our system in nearly any format – SFTP, FTP, URL, JSON, Google
Sheet, or custom API if needed.
Data Joins and
Mapping: We can join any dataset together with a common key (i.e., ‘product_id’). This allows us to merge data from
disparate systems, like inventory, margin, or performance data, into the main
catalog. We can then map these datasets to any field required by a channel. For
example, we can create rules in the feed to map product categories that map to
channel specific product categories.
FeedTelligence
FeedTelligence™ is a powerful
keyword recommendation tool. It will automatically compare your Google Shopping
feed to actual converted search terms and allows you to see missing words for
title and description optimization on a per-SKU basis.
FeedAlerts™
FeedAlerts™ is an easy way to receive notifications for both
Amazon and Google Merchant Center (GMC) errors and warnings. Unresolved Amazon
or GMC errors and disapprovals can result in thousands of dollars of lost
revenue per day.
Feedonomics can set up FeedAlerts™ to:
Monitor import/export errors
Automatically check your Google, Amazon, and other accounts
twice a day
Set thresholds on an overall and individual error basis
Send a notification when you exceed an error threshold
FeedAlerts™ is a game-changing tool that will save your
company time and money – fewer errors will result in more active products and
higher sales.
You’ll receive an email with a detailed report listing the
errors with links. If the errors are feed-based, Feedonomics’ 24/7 support team
will fix them.
“Feed Optimization and Order Management helped a retail client achieve a 260% increase in revenue on Amazon and a 290% increase in revenue on eBay.” – Feedonomics
PIM, For High Quality
& Consistent Product Feeds
As discussed earlier, poor quality product data is a huge
problem in the digital world. Data inconsistencies across channels makes the
bad data problem worse. Disparate legacy systems and spreadsheets typically
used to manage product data leads to a variety of product data management challenges.
Centralizing product data in a PIM system can help feed clean and complete data
to sales channels. A modern PIM provides the necessary data visibility,
control, and scalability to create great product feeds that can be leveraged by
multi-channel shopping campaigns to deliver a better ROAS.
A PIM (Product Information Management) is an enterprise data
management solution that:
Centralizes product data
required to support commerce operations
Simplifies generation of
compelling, consistent, and high-quality product data
Synchronizes product data
with internal systems, marketing and sales platforms, customers, and partners
Scales up data acquisition,
enrichment, and publishing efforts
Noted below are some key benefits of a PIM solution:
Single source of trusted data: PIM creates a single source of trusted product data by
aggregating it from multiple sources, and by cleansing, enriching, governing,
and maintaining it consistently.
High-quality and consistent data: Product and variants management, data inheritance, data
validations, quality checks, completeness checks, bulk edit features,
rules-based auto-enrichment, approval workflows, and role-based permissions
ensure you create and deliver consistently high-quality data.
Integrated digital assets: PIM helps you onboard, link, control, and share product
assets with digital channels. PIM simplifies the task of associating imagery,
videos, PDFs, and other digital assets with product data.
Support for product feed management: Great product feeds to search, social media, and retailer
websites will ensure customers find and purchase your products. PIM holds
high-quality and SEO friendly data that can then be fed easily to product feed
management tools to help drive traffic and sales from multiple digital
channels.
eCommerce accelerators:
Manage rich product data systematically to enables navigation and exploration
features critical for conversion on eCommerce sites. These features include
intuitive categories and sub-categories, helpful product names, facet
navigation, cross-sell compatible products, comparison, etc.
Business agility: By
integrating PIM with other enterprise systems, trusted product data can also be
shared efficiently with internal analytical and operational systems, thus
reducing manual and redundant efforts. This will also make the enterprise more
agile and responsive when it comes to implementing new digital initiatives (for
e.g., launching a mobile app).
Reference Architecture
for Agile Feed Management and Order Orchestration
Product feed management combines the creation of product
feeds, optimizing feeds to meet channel specific requirements, syndicating
feeds to multiple channels, and reporting and recovering from feed listing
errors with the key goals of maximizing online leads and sales. Additional
scenarios include automatically managing inventory levels across channels,
aggregating orders and inputting them into an internal order management system
for processing, and sending out order statuses to various digital sales
platforms.
A best-practice reference solution architecture combines the
power of a PIM and a feed management tool for optimal product feed management
and multi-channel order orchestration tasks. Although an eCommerce platform is
a convenient option to provide product feeds to a feed management tool, it is
not the best option. Often times, data in an eCommerce site is wrong,
incomplete, or dated. Add to that the fact that not all products may be listed
on the eCommerce site for technical or data quality related issues. An
eCommerce tool (and an ERP system too) is not suitable for proper data
management and this means that product data issues are not fixed in a timely
manner. A PIM is the right tool for product data management, and hence an
integration between the PIM and a product feed management tool like Feedonomics
is a better solution architecture for digital success.
Listed below is a proposed reference solution architecture
for efficient product feed management and order orchestration.
This integrated solution provides many benefits:
delivers high-quality product
feeds consistently to multiple sales channels
feeds latest price and
inventory data sourced from ERP or other system
speeds up creation of product
feeds that contain correct, complete, and SEO friendly data (via completeness,
content automation, bulk edit, workflow, and other features)
provides product data
intelligence (e.g. keyword suggestions, listing errors, catalog level
analytics) and alerts to maximize active product listings, findability, sales,
and ROAS
automates various manual
tasks typically associated with multi-channel order management
provides greater visibility,
control, and agility over product feeds, orders, and channel analytics
“Retailers need to be more aware and responsive than ever
to when and where their potential customers are making decisions throughout
their ‘always on’ shopping journey.”- KPMG
Every industry is getting disrupted, and eCommerce is here
to stay. Digital winners are using technology and integration to improve their
core business and break into new markets and new customers. They’re
streamlining user journeys, telling better product stories, optimizing for
mobile ecommerce, personalizing customer relationships, getting products to
market faster, and driving operating efficiencies across business support
functions. Are you going to be a digital winner?
Contact Us
The Feedonomics and StrikeTru teams have a track record of successfully
implementing Product Feed Management and
PIM solutions across industry verticals. For more
information or to discuss how we can help, please contact Brian Roizen at [email protected] or Vik Gundoju at [email protected].
Customers need to make informed decisions before they buy any commodity. Before a purchase is made, a customer wants to know how the product will be of benefit to him or her. They want to be sure of the features and they are keen to know if it will truly solve the problem they are purchasing this product for. They also want to be sure the product specifications meet their requirements. Providing rich product information is key to converting sales and keeping loyal customers.
Unfortunately, most companies struggle with managing and providing the right product information that customers demand today. Bad or inadequate data results in poor customer experience and lost sales opportunities. For example, with a shabbily written product description, a company puts its designers, merchants, marketers, sales managers and product managers at risk of misinterpreting the product details. When product information is not properly synchronized across the enterprise, different departments interpret it wrongly and customers might end up buying a product which is not exactly what they wanted or thought they’re getting.
Product Information Management (PIM) is a direct and modern solution to tackling the issues raised above.
Why you should use PIM to organize Product Information
Traditionally, product information has been managed using software like Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems in large firms or in excel spreadsheets or home-grown systems in smaller firms. A PIM (Product Information Management) is a more detailed, focused and targeted means of managing product data for company operating efficiency. PIM enables the centralization of product data from internal and external sources to help provide an exceptional experience for the buyer. Legacy systems are inflexible and often prevent a company from creating rich product data experiences for its customers.
Consistency in product information is key to acquire and keep loyal customers. With advancements in internet and stiffer competition, it is easy for customers to go to the next online shop if they observe inconsistencies or gaps in information such as product descriptions and features. Managing product information using PIM is the modern way of organizing business online. PIM provides consistent details, better quality and provides all the answers that will keep the customer glued to you. PIM is best used for when there is a high quantity of products and product data, diverse marketing funnels and sales channels, lots of suppliers and a large volume of product data management needs on an ongoing basis.
PIM also harmonizes the information between different sectors of the business. It keeps team members, stakeholders, partners and customers informed as the status of products and services change. PIM communicates these changes fast so as to increase efficiency, decrease time to market, and increase sales. PIM is easy to use and integrate and eliminates over-reliance on spreadsheets. It is very scalable and centralized at the same time and it helps produce accurate product data that stays consistent over time as it establishes a central source of information which stays true. Also, by using PIM, a company can provide a compelling product and customer experience that can accelerate sales.
PIM is a modern way of doing business efficiently as it helps better manage risks and lower costs. This increase in efficiency makes work a lot more fun, increases worker’s productivity and creates more wealth for the company.
In a world of digital revolution, businesses all over the world are doing more with less. Digital Transformation for your business literally means adopting the use of new digital systems to aid your business processes, and ace your sales! This could be you, only if you knew how. Guess what? You are about to find out.
A system called PIM, which means Product Information Management, is one of the most recent and effective systems used to collect, polish and distribute content (which could be anything related to all kinds of products or services), to various parts of the world using the internet. A unique feature of the Product Information Management system is its compatibility with all kinds of data sources and systems, both online and offline. Deploying it is literally a Digital Transformation for your business.
The Product Information Management system provides centralized data and a general facelift for the buying experience of your customers.
Here’s why you should consider using Product Information Management for your business
The number of sales that happen on the internet every day is on a continuous and swift rise. The best time to take advantage of the rise is now. Most businesses are now operating on a digital platform, but that is not enough to stand you out above competition. Automation is key, so you need to the right systems working for you. With Product Information Management enabled commerce platforms, you will take every prospective buyer that visits your website through a detailed and user-friendly buyer journey, maximizing the chances that the prospects are converted into buyers!
Many of the existing systems used to organize and keep data are not fit for agile business processes. This rigidity and complexity make it very difficult for businesses to use alternatives such as multiple excel spreadsheets and legacy systems, to provide an impeccable customer experience and drive incredible sales. Spreadsheets could be difficult to collate and edit especially when you are preparing your products. However, a Product Information Management system allows you to do mass editing, data validation, and much more through the use of a centralized system that collects and collates all kinds of data from different sources. This digital transformation will definitely lead to Customer Satisfaction, and with ease!
The amount of time it takes to take a prepared product through ERP, sales and marketing systems for approval, before it is considered ready for marketing and selling is always long. Sometimes, it takes weeks! Say hello to PIM, who is going to speed everything up. Product Information Management system reduces your product’s time to market.
PIM can increase your product count, take you global, and even reinforce the credibility of your brand. When the process of preparing your products and giving customers an impeccable, high quality presentation is made easier, you can take on as many products as you want.
The adoption of a modern Product Information Management system in your business will not only make your processes easier, but also put your business in the forefront of companies that are taking advantage of the Digital Transformation wave sweeping the business sector.
The webinar “3 Tips for Launching & Enriching Global Product Content” was held on Sept 19th, 2018.
How can companies “right size” their product content localization strategy? How can they provide customers a compelling product experience on the web and other channels? What do companies need to do to accelerate the deployment of localized content globally?
This webinar explores approaches to taking product content global, discusses how PIM and Translation automation platforms can be used to accelerate content localization and deployment across global sales and marketing channels, and provides tips that companies can use in their own content localization projects.
StrikeTru will be co-hosting a webinar “3 Tips for Launching & Enriching Global Product Content” on Sep 19, 2018. Harry Singh will co-present this webinar with our partners Nick Panagopoulos from Translations.com and Frank Verdeja from Akeneo.
Below is a copy of the official webinar abstract.
3 Tips for Launching & Enriching Global Product Content
Nick Panagopoulos, VP Global Strategic Alliances, Translations.com
Harry Singh, Partner, StrikeTru
Frank Verdeja, Customer Success Manager, Akeneo
In today’s global economy, offering product content in multiple languages is a necessity. Simply having and translating product content is not enough. To compete globally successfully, you must have a strategy for your global product content. Join this webinar to learn more about:
– Rightsizing Your Localization Strategy
– Delivering a Compelling Product Experience
– Accelerating Your Global PIM Deployment
This webinar is designed for marketers and product managers who are responsible for authoring, managing, and distributing product content in multiple language for multiple regions across the globe.
StrikeTru markets and sells a Translation Connector (Akeneo2GlobalLink) that links Akeneo PIM to Translations.com’s GlobalLink Technology. This connector helps global manufacturers and retailers accelerate the translation and deployment of high-volume product content stored in a PIM system to multiple regions across the globe.
For more information on the translation connector, click here.
Digital assets are everywhere on websites; these could range from images, to videos and PDF documents. Nowadays, being able to manage them correctly is critical in an eCommerce world. A perfect way to have control over such important information is through the use of a DAM or Digital Asset Management system. Now you may be asking yourself, what is Digital Asset Management?
What is Digital Asset Management (DAM)?
DAM is a system that allows your business to organize, enrich and distribute digital assets from a centralized location by applying metadata. Digital Asset Management solutions come with features such as powerful imports and exports, as well as powerful searches.
Why DAM?
When considering a Digital Asset Management system you should consider these questions: Do you typically have images stored on desktop files and struggle to find them? Is it a challenge for you to include them on the website? Is it causing you product launch or sales delays? As a company, you definitely do not want to sell a product online without a picture or video or spec sheet and you want to be able to find digital assets quickly so you can use or reuse them. Within a DAM, you are able to set up folders, filters and permissions that allow different groups in your company to collaborate more efficiently in managing and distributing digital assets. When enriching data, you can decide on different digital asset characteristics that makes them be easily searchable. All in all, a DAM helps make your products more attractive to the customer and provides them the best shopping experience out there.
Benefits of a DAM
A Digital Asset Management system allows you to:
Centralize your assets for easy access
Reduce asset search time
Increase efficiency and team collaboration
Source: GlobalSpec.com
Product Information Management and Digital Asset Management
What is a PIM?
A PIM helps a company manage all of its product information and allows them to decide how to present products to the public. PIM can feed hiqh-quality product content to store, eCommerce, mobile, print, and social media channels. PIM systems are an excellent fit for retailers, manufacturers, and distributors that find it hard to extract and combine the right information to present products easier. Lastly, PIM minimizes inaccuracies and gives your customers an easy and trusted purchase experience.
What is a DAM?
A DAM focuses on digital assets and associated data, and not on product data as in the case of PIM. With a well established DAM system, images and operations are easier to manage and control. DAM systems are critical for companies with a lot of digital assets that need to be accessed by multiple groups within the company and also shared with customers and trading partners. It may be typical for your Marketing or eCommerce manager to spend hours looking for the right digital asset; which can cause process delays. With a DAM, you can cut down this time spent searching for assets (or re-creating them) and use it for better purposes.
PIM and DAM Integration
Why should I use both PIM and DAM?
While a PIM and a DAM share some similarities, they differ greatly and are a smart investment for companies that want to improve their business performance. PIM is designed to manage and centralize all product information; DAM manages and centralizes images, logos and videos, PDFs etc. It is important to note that such images, logos and videos are also part of the product information that is useful to customers to help them search, evaluate, and purchase products. The combination of both will dramatically decrease the time it takes to prepare product data for selling across channels. A decrease in such time spent will decrease the time to market your products and increase your marketing ROI.
Source: FinancesOnline.com
For best practices and assistance with how best to integrate PIM and DAM systems, feel free to reach out to us. We are here to help! StrikeTru has a history of positive outcomes and customer satisfaction. We look forward to assisting you and helping you take your business to the next level.
Product Information Management (PIM) refers to collecting and polishing product content and distribution of that content. PIM can be considered a strategy or a solution to several companies. The basic concept of PIM is to store data regardless of where it comes from (Excel spreadsheets, internal systems like ERP and PLM, external systems like 3rd party data pools, digital asset drives, etc.) so that it can be centralized and maintained to provide a better buying experience to the customer.
Why PIM?
If you want to sell a product you need to present it well and consistently. Poor quality, missing details and unanswered questions will direct your customer to the competition. Nowadays, with technology all around us, individuals tend to do some prior research of a potential product on their own. In fact, a research made by CEB Marketing demonstrated that an average customer completes at least ½ of purchase decisions before engaging with a sales representative. Due to this, PIM helps you gain competitive advantage with an effective eCommerce platform that your customers will enjoy visiting again.
Benefits
Expand your product offerings:
It is said that in the business world Excel is extremely critical and helpful when managing data, but how many of you have felt frustrated and overwhelmed with so many spreadsheets to use or manage? Preparing products can become a nightmare when there is too many information to take into account. Thankfully, with Product Information Management (PIM), we are capable of centralizing every aspect and detail of a specific product by importing data from different platforms like Excel or an ERP. Centralized information with PIM allows one to perform actions like bulk edits and data validations that result in a better and richer product presentation to the customer.
Decrease time-to-market:
Decrease time to market refers to the time it takes for a particular product to be recorded in your company’s ERP and sales and marketing systems so that it is then ready to be marketed and sold. Unfortunately, it can take up to weeks with legacy systems causing you to delay sales. In addition, within an ERP or an Excel spreadsheet it can sometimes be difficult to locate and include every detail in order to have a high quality product. In the business world, it is sometimes said that time is currency; thankfully, PIM speeds the process up.
Build a uniform & high quality product experience across channels:
When dealing with a plethora of products and product characteristics, it is common for businesses to have channel specific teams. For instance, there could be a team that focuses on the website, another team on Amazon and finally another one on Ebay. Such teams are managing the same data but no one really knows which one is right or which one is more important than the other. This can translate into inconsistencies like images and descriptions that can potentially confuse the customer and have him/her walk to the competition. With a Product Information Management (PIM), everyone gets their hands on the same data allowing consistency to take place. Once you establish consistency, then you are capable of enriching that data and turning your customer’s experience into a high quality product experience across channels.
Go global:
Have you ever thought about expanding globally? Sharing your great business with individuals from other countries? Operating a website or an Amazon store in Germany, Canada or any other country is made easy with PIM. If selling in Europe, you want the right localized information (language, currencies, units of measure, etc) for your target audience; which ties back to building trusted, high quality product data for use across channels and geographies. PIM helps you create, manage, and port localized product content with ease.
Increase your sales:
When tying everything that was previously discussed together you will definitely notice an increase in your sales. Best practices like consistent titles, description and pictures make a big difference. If your customer’s search process is easy and consistent, you will accelerate their path to a sale. In addition to rich data, PIM helps provide relevant recommendations (upsells, cross-sells, etc.) to the customer which increases product attachment rates and average order value. Lastly, a Product Information Management (PIM) will help you to rank well and have good visibility on search engines. As we all know, more visibility equals more traffic, which equals more sales.
To learn more about PIM and how StrikeTru can help you visit us here!
Source: https://pim-auswahl.de/en/
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Source: GlobalSpec.com
Source: FinancesOnline.com
Source: https://pim-auswahl.de/en/
