Akeneo PIM: The Best PIM

Requirements: Ease of Use, Customizability, Integrations

Any PIM that claims to be the best in the market needs to handle the big three PIM requirements with aplomb.

Easy to Learn and Use

Ease of use is critical so that your team can increase productivity rather than getting bogged down by complicated and confusing tools. As marketers and eCommerce teams are the experts on the products and know how to best describe and display product information across all sales channels, it’s critical that these users have a business application that makes them more productive and agile – and not have to work using overly technical interfaces or rely on support from IT to get the job done.

“The intuitive user interface and well thought-out workflows reduce the training effort and allow for a very short ramp-up phase for new users.”
– Matthias Ackeret, Online Marketing Manager / PIM Project Manager at Axon Lab

Customizable to Suit Your Needs

Create the perfect solution for your organization’s specific needs. We understand that every catalog is unique, so our solution has been built to support all types of catalogs – from simple to complex, defining how families are set and which attributes apply, what associations are made between products, and how you categorize your products – for the utmost in flexibility.

“We were looking for a simple and intuitive solution that gave us total freedom in the way we wanted to present our products.”
– Amandine Marousez, Project Manager and Business Analyst at Zodio

Integrates with Your Existing Infrastructure

The purpose of PIM is to centralize product information and streamline the process of collecting, enriching, and spreading your product data to all your sales channels. Therefore, it is critical for the PIM to be able to easily connect to other systems and tools. We’ve worked with numerous technology partners to develop an ecosystem of extensions to simplify integration with the other tools and systems you are already using.

“The PIM, a valuable tool for a fast digital transformation!”
– Renaud Montin, Marketing & Digital Manager at Eram

What Does the Best Product Information Management (PIM) Software Include?

Here are a few of the attributes of Akeneo PIM that make it the best option for managing product information.

Product Information Flow

Akeneo PIM helps your organization by helping marketers to collect, enrich, and distribute product information to your sales channels.

Collect: With a range of customization and integration capabilities, you can import data from multiple heterogeneous data sources. What’s more, you can prioritize data sources to ensure that you’re collecting from the most trusted source information.

Enrich: Once all basic product data is imported your team can enrich product data with technical data, usage data, rich marketing descriptions, and other media. Product information completeness widgets combined with built-in validation controls ensure that all necessary product information fields are complete and consistent before items are exported to your website or marketplace. As part of the enrichment process, products can be classified into one or multiple catalogs based on your unique catalog organization.

Distribute: Once product information is enriched you can easily manage your products throughout a variety of sales channels (print, mobile applications, point-of-sale systems, eCommerce websites, etc.). You have complete control over product distribution with the ability to select the products and relevant attributes that you want to include in each channel. Or, if you want to distribute your products via print you can use one of our connectors to create beautiful print catalogs.

The best product information management software will help you throughout the entire product enrichment and data publication process.

Features That Matter

Akeneo PIM’s standard and advanced feature set further supports this flow of product information.

Standard Features: included in all versions of Akeneo PIM

Import and Export Data: Akeneo PIM simplifies the import and export of all types of data. Our solution allows you to pull and use data from virtually any source—from your ERP to Excel.

Organize and Classify Products: Every product catalog is different, which is why we give you the power to organize and classify your products however you choose. With Akeneo PIM you aren’t restricted to a specific format or stuck using predefined attributes; you have the flexibility to make our solution work for you.

Edit and Translate: Once information is imported into Akeneo PIM you can effortlessly edit or add new products to the catalog. You can define the attributes, complete product sheets, add media, and more. Plus, extensions make it easy to translate product information into the languages you need for your various channels and markets.

Completeness Widget: Inaccurate or incomplete product information negatively impacts sales, returns, and brand equity. Akeneo PIM helps you ensure that product information is complete for every single item with an easy-to-view completeness widget.

Extension Ecosystem: Our extensive marketplace of extensions continues to expand the functionality of Akeneo PIM. It includes integrations with a range of well-known marketplaces, print catalog design tools, and more.

“The out-of-the-box features of the PIM formed a solid basis to realize visible results quickly and early.”
– Matthias Ackeret, Online Marketing Manager / PIM Project Manager at Axon Lab

Advanced Features: included in Akeneo Enterprise Edition and Cloud Editions

Versioning & publication: Our versioning feature allows you create duplicate versions of your product catalog so you can easily revert back to an older version as needed or to create seasonal and specialty catalogs. You also have an audit trail of product information changes over time.

Advanced Rights Management: Akeneo PIM gives you complete control over what users can access and what permissions they have to work on product enrichment. Whether users are internal employees or external freelancers you can specify exactly what product information they can or cannot view and edit.

Rules Engine: Fully customize our PIM using the rules engine, which allows you to create your own automatic actions and triggers. You can define rules to automatically classify products based on attributes or transform technical data into more comprehensive information for consumers. This rules-based automation speeds the process of product data enrichment and onboarding new products.

Product Asset Manager (PAM): Simplify media management for all of your products. Quickly localize, adapt, and attach every image, video, and document that you want to include.

Teamwork Assistant: Teams can easily manage enrichment projects with the teamwork assistant. This easy-to-use interface is personalized for each team member and displays exactly which enrichment activities need to be completed. The teamwork assistant even helps keep your team on track by automatically generating notifications as deadlines approach and further improves workflows by helping them focus only on the relevant information that they need to complete.

Validation Workflows: Organizations want to maintain control and consistency across catalogs, but there is no way one person can be responsible for enriching every product. Approval workflows make it easy for managers to view and approve or reject all of the product information that contributors have added to the catalog.

Advanced product management tools make Akeneo the best PIM to keep your team on track across multiple product enrichment projects.

Akeneo: The Best PIM Offered 4 Ways

We understand that PIM is not a “one-size-fits-all” type of product. Every organization has unique needs which is why we offer the best product information management software in four different setups.

Community Edition

Get all of the standard features of Akeneo PIM, including access to our marketplace of extensions. This version is perfect for people looking to explore everything the best PIM has to offer with full functionality. Plus, it’s FREE, and our active online community can assist you throughout your implementation process and with any technical challenges you may face.

Enterprise Edition

Get everything included in the community edition plus all of the advanced features. This enterprise PIM provides your organization with numerous customization options by giving you full access to the open source PIM code & web API. Maintain complete control over software updates and manage your own technological infrastructure when you use the Akeneo Enterprise Edition.

Cloud Edition: Flexibility Mode

Flexibility Mode is exactly like the standard Enterprise Edition except we handle the technology infrastructure. Store your information on our network of servers and let us take care of the maintenance. You still get all of the standard and advanced features including customization options and control over software updates.

Cloud Edition: Serenity Mode

Serenity Mode means that we take care of everything for you. Want all of the amazing features without having to manage updates or maintain servers? Then Serenity Mode is the perfect solution for your organization.

Best PIM Benefits

Utilizing all the amazing features of a best-in-class PIM benefits your business by:

• Making it easy to add new products to the catalog: Our solution makes it easy to manage your products and their information more efficiently. This makes it possible to quickly add new products (including technical specifications, descriptions, and media) to your catalog.
• Increasing sales and reducing returns: When product information is accurate more products are purchased and less are returned since customers have a better understanding of what they are buying before deciding to purchase.
• Scalability: Besides making it easier to expand product offers, PIM can also help scale your business geographically. Streamlined translation and localization workflows make it easy to prepare product information for numerous global markets.
• Making the product experience consistent across all channels: Forget incomplete or inconsistent product information between channels. PIM allows you to enrich product information once and then distribute it to whichever channels you select. This ensures that your products look great no matter where.
• Increasing team productivity: Your teams are no longer stuck completing an endless list of repetitive enrichment tasks and can instead focus on more valuable activities.

Akeneo PIM helps you expand your business and increase sales.

Ready to use the best product information management software?

Utilizing the best PIM software allows your business to grow and flourish. Using the best tools, your teams can increase productivity and get products to market faster. What’s more, by having complete product experiences you can increase conversions while decreasing returns. Akeneo PIM is the solution you need to scale your business and improve product experiences.

Contact us today to schedule an Akeneo PIM demo – the best PIM available.