Control cost and generate rapid ROI with Akeneo PIM

Controlling costs is a major goal for businesses in good times and in bad. But when markets are unpredictable and the future of your business is in jeopardy, it’s more crucial than ever to keep expenses in check, and only invest in areas that can improve your results.

This need to cut costs is particularly challenging when you’re also working to keep up with rapidly changing market demands and ensure your business continues to operate during these uncertain times.

Many companies are taking rapid steps to reposition their business. Some are beginning to offer new products by changing their assortment. Others are seeking new suppliers to replace those who are shut down or located too far away for a timely delivery. Those who have not yet gone through a digital transformation to eCommerce are rapidly seeking to sell online. And according to a survey done last month by Gartner, 100% of CFOs are cutting costs while preserving budget for technology that can help their company survive the current crisis.

It can be tempting to simply deploy an eCommerce platform to be able to sell online. But the only way to ensure customers will find your site, and to ensure they’ll have a good experience once they reach your new site, is to make sure your product information is complete and accurate. Without a tool to help, your teams will resort to manual efforts to collect, enrich, and deliver good product data. This can be even harder to do if current cost control measures have resulted in reduced staff.

The good news? PIM streamlines the process, uses automation to replace manual work, and makes your remaining team members more efficient so you can get to market fast. And, with the rapid ROI from PIM, you can even begin putting money back into the business.

PIM helps you deliver high-quality product information to each and every one of your channels easily and efficiently while helping you control product enrichment costs and deliver a significant return on investment. Akeneo PIM accomplishes all of this and more by offering you better flexibility and adaptability, giving you the power to enrich, add to, and edit your product catalog with ease.

The results? Dramatically reduced costs for product enrichment and product information management, massive spikes in team collaboration and productivity, and rising sales.

Let’s take a look at a few examples where PIM generates rapid, positive ROI.

Accelerate time-to-market and reduce enrichment costs

Product enrichment often takes a long time and demands a lot of resources — but market trends demand you be quick and agile enough to keep up with ever-changing customer behaviors.

You can accelerate your time-to-market and conserve valuable budget and resources with PIM. Akeneo PIM allows you to easily and efficiently adapt your product catalog and product assortment, allowing you to respond to new and shifting market demands more quickly while reducing enrichment costs.

Take the example of Akeneo customer Midland Scientific. The scientific instruments and lab equipment manufacturer was able to reduce the cost of product enrichment by 5 times — from $5/SKU to $1 SKU — and accelerate product catalog production speed by 50% after using Akeneo PIM to take control of their product information processes.

Expand to new channels and locales efficiently

Shifting market demands can also cause you to look to new channels or geographic markets to sell products.

Expanding to a new locale, however, requires translation and localization of product information, a tedious, time-consuming, and resource-intensive task. Adding a new channel to your omnichannel offering isn’t exactly an easy process either — you’ll need to put your product content into the proper context for the new channel or marketplace you’re selling on. What’s more, remote teams often do not have access to the proper information they need to localize or contextualize product information, costing you even more time and money.

But with Akeneo PIM, you can automate these manual tasks and processes, accelerating the expansion process and saving valuable resources in the process. You can also more easily and efficiently enable remote work and outsourcing, and provide automation and workflows to help smaller or scattered teams do more with less. Akeneo customer Pierce, for instance, was able to expand to new locales and ease translation management thanks to Akeneo PIM. Cox and Cox, meanwhile, is using Akeneo PIM to improve their product data enrichment processes, creating a more compelling experience for customers in the process as they work to increase sales by 20%.

Onboard suppliers with ease

If your supply chains are disrupted due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic or other shifting market trends, you may need to add new manufacturers or distributors to your list of suppliers.

But adding these new relationships can be time-consuming, and lead to delays in shipments to you and your customers, slowing down your time-to-market, increasing costs, and possibly losing valuable revenue. What’s more, a lack of resources can make it harder for you to add accurate, consistent, and compelling product information about your new suppliers’ offerings to your product catalog.

But, with the Akeneo PIM and the Onboarder, you can easily and efficiently add new product information, even new products, to your catalog by working directly with your suppliers. This way, you get the information you need, in the format you need, when you need it, accelerating time-to-market and increasing sales. Just ask our customer Myer, a leading Australian department store used Akeneo to enable suppliers with an easier method for uploading product descriptions and assets, streamlining processes, and getting products to customers more quickly.

Ready to cut costs and boost efficiency? Check out the podcast below to learn more about how Akeneo can help you get a notable return on your product information investment, or contact us today and we’ll you walk through our ROI calculator to show you the business case for PIM.