Build a Business Case Based on User Experience for Your Next Generation of PIM

Each year, we see all sorts of digital solutions predictions, trends, and themes. This year, we are likely to see even more commentary about the power of content in the continually rising sea of blog posts (yes, this is indeed another drop in that sea). Content that drives product visibility, understanding, and sales conversion continue to be an ever-present priority in our pursuit of strategic digital success.

Web content relating to products takes many forms. Basic specifications, like dimensions or colors, are essential. Visual communication elements, such as product images and video, provide greater detail. Written features, such as product stories, testimonials, and thought leadership relating to product categories build credibility and search engine visibility. All of this content becomes digital product data.  Digital commerce businesses can always be certain that their success is led by the effectiveness of their data and their users’ interaction with it.

The data we put into our commerce ecosystem affects the results we get out of these channels. Are you measuring the success of your data with your customers? If not, start. Measurement will spotlight both areas of strength as well as opportunities for improvement. Those are important factors as you make the case for investing in specific areas to promote growth.

Imagine, for a moment, a couple of scenarios that may mirror the way you and your business manage the product content that goes into your commerce ecosystem.

• Scenario One. A business builds out product assets as part of back-office processes. Those assets may be developed by a product team or retail team. From there, the product data is entered into an enterprise resource planner (ERP) to be mixed in with business processes like supply chain, sales, financials, and more. Within a vast ERP system, the end-user experience with specific product data is often lost or unknown.
• Scenario Two. A business builds a spreadsheet of product information to disseminate to various teams. These teams then update and alter product information to suit their purposes, using it in their various channels. In this scenario, version control, accuracy, consistency, and basic data governance become virtually impossible.

These are just two of many management scenarios that our team sees regularly. Upstream from ultimate ecommerce transactions, we consistently identify product data fragmentation that can be crippling to ultimate sales success. These two scenarios highlight the need for consistent data flow, content/data governance, process management, and optimized infrastructure for the dissemination of product information to a storefront (digital or otherwise) where we can measure the performance of our merchandising tactics and build a case for better operations.

Akeneo, as a market-leading product information/experience management (PIM/PXM) solution, provides consistent benefits to sophisticated businesses.

For Business Operations, Marketing and Sales:

• Raise revenue due to stronger data consistency and (possibly) multi-channel selling
• Reduce returns because users are more informed about the products they’re purchasing
• Reduce product time-to-market to help increase organizational velocity
• Increase productivity and efficiency of product and retail teams, eliminating inefficient practices
• Improve product data quality to enrich your enterprise
• Manage complexity easier with an intuitive interface and robust functionality set
• Adaptable and flexible to support change through business controls that allow users to adjust products on the fly
• Mitigate the hidden costs related to managing customer experience (CX) at a local level everywhere products are referenced

For Information Technology:

• Governed data management to eliminate tribalism and system dependency
  (see above – productivity)
• Centralized product information to minimize fragmentation and total cost of ownership when considering multiple systems
• Intuitive interface to help business users self-serve
• Deployment options such as SaaS or PaaS reduce capital overhead
• Robust API and events framework for up/downstream connections
• Open-source (based on edition) marketplace
• Getting help is easy with a large partner ecosystem

You can forecast many specific ways that optimizing product management can drive revenue and operational efficiency. For example, using some hypothetical scenarios and round numbers:

• 1 employee manages products
• 25% of their duties are tied to product management
• The enterprise pays this employee $50k
• An employee takes 4 products to market per quarter
• Measurement outcome A: Employee maintains 25% allocation but can get 6 products to market per quarter. This employee’s salary now produces greater product-specific results.
• Measurement outcome B: Employee only requires 15% allocation but can still get 4 products to market per quarter. This employee’s salary now produces the same outcome but offers diversified value to the organization.

Using similar equations as the above, you can very quickly monetize the ways PIM/PXM tooling can help to drive not only a return on investment but also revenue and operational efficiency. Make it your trend in 2022 to work smarter within your commerce ecosystem. Consider all of the ways your business can optimize your product management processes. By driving a better user experience with your products, you can advance the bottom line for your organization.

Wes joined the Americaneagle.com in February 2011 as a project manager and has since become the leader of Americaneagle.com’s Akeneo’s practice where he provides oversight and direction to a team of project managers and helps execute priorities alongside development resources. He is the leading subject matter expert for Akeneo within Americaneagle.com where he works with personnel to train and innovate. He continuously works with clients and teams to provide daily communication, project updates, guide budget management, production forecast, and strategic direction.