Holiday season is here and the end of the year is fast approaching. For many organizations, 2022 has been a year of growth and a return to normalcy. As we chart our paths and create roadmaps to 2023 digital success, let’s take a look at what recent surveys reveal are on the wishlists of ecommerce, marketing, IT managers and their teams.
1. Well organized product information
Scattered data is both an annoyance and a problem. Often composed of crucial details that live throughout the company, it is common for that information to be siloed without visibility. Marketing managers and ecommerce specialists alike report that scattered data is a pain they would love to solve. A Product Information Management (PIM) software solution provides a single source of truth. While product specifications may need to be determined and managed by different divisions, housing those details in one location allows for easy access and visibility.
2. High integrity data
Another solvable pain point that tops survey results is error prone or poor quality data. This troubling issue is often repaired by the same single source of truth that cures scattered data. Information living throughout the company, sometimes on separate drives or even on different servers leads to constantly sending files to be manipulated by others. This is a prime opportunity for accidental error to occur. At times the changes aren’t incorrect as much as they fail to maintain the formatting structure. PIM solutions can help you eliminate the need to correct this data downstream and gain confidence in the information you store.
3. Less manual touches
Automation is a goal for nearly every partner we interact with and for good reason. Frankly, manual processes are why well organized and high integrity data top the digital goals wishlist. Unintentional errors from manual processes cause more manual touches for correction later in the to market process, but even more easily measurable is the impact on time. PIM solutions implement company wide automated workflows that ingest your current spreadsheets but can also connect with future incoming sources to avoid the need to create tedious excel docs in the future.
Jim Starr, Director of Content Services at Revalize shares how PIM changed their manual needs. “Working with the premier out of the box functionality of Akeneo allows us to reduce the human process in massive updates and decrease the manual product creation lift by 50%. Not only is that a resource saver, it improves our ability to deliver accurate product data and that is our ultimate value to our customers.”
4. Faster time to market
Your products being available to sell is the ultimate goal of many of your internal teams. A robust product information management system is crucial for achieving this more swiftly and efficiently. Pat Haley, Senior Account Manager at Hudson & Canal shares the measurable impact of a Sitation led Salsify implementation. “In terms of building an individual SKU, we have seen at least a 50% reduction in time. Time efforts for getting new SKUs on to retailers has reduced by 50 to nearly 100%.”
5. Direct channel syndication
One of many ways that PIM solutions can aid in faster time to market is the ability to directly connect or to use Sitation to custom build connections to syndicate to retailers. Let the software manipulate your data to fit the costume required formats of retailers. Channels like Amazon, Walmart, or Home Depot all have different requirements for listing on their online ecommerce sites. An understandable wishlist request is to be able to achieve positioning on the digital shelf at scale without attempting to manage it manually, risking sendbacks and punitive fees for errors.
And a partridge in a pear tree…
While these top the wishlists of many manufacturers for future ecommerce success, a number of other benefits can arise from Product Information Management intentionality. Sitation is eager to help you create a solution based roadmap with the right PIM software solution for your company’s specific needs.
