Long Term ROI from Product Information Management Solutions

Introduction

For most successful business initiatives, major investment comes down to potential return vs risk. Product Information Management (PIM) solutions and thus Product Experience Management (PXM) are significant, organization changing, ecommerce driving solutions, but they are also costly investments. The solution licensing and the implementation and enablement process often have separate substantial costs. It is easy to question the value of new software and technology solutions, but for leading providers like Akeneo, who is approaching a decade in business, having a multitude of successful clients helps to speak for investment return.

Much of the Return on Investment (ROI) evidence can be broken down into these top four improvements driven by PIM:

1. Speed: Faster Time to Market

A common and accurate attraction to PIM solutions is speed. Faster product information creation, faster data updating, and ultimately faster time to market are primary value drivers. Much of this speed, designed to give teams their time back as well as improve overall efficiencies is due to simplified processes and team visibility. The ability to enter and standardize data across departments in your organizations means less wait time to generate accurate information. Working within a PIM solution also means your content and assets are stored in one location; a single source of truth, rather than siloed on various spreadsheets, servers, and desks. Complete product information no longer needs to be shared with marketing as they are already accessing it and contributing to the completion process.

Mobile Technologies Inc.’s Chief Technologies Officer, Travis Hooper shared that “Akeneo has been a game changer, making it possible to use data to simplify new product introduction; succinctly publishing products globally.”. The ability to begin or expand your international ecommerce initiatives without time efficiency loss is a gain from PIM investment.

Partnering with Sitation in winning the Akeneo Experience Award 2022, Revalize’s Director of Content Services, Jim Starr says that with the help of the platform “We can take something that used to take hours of time and just run a single rule within that specific data set to say what the product description should be.”  He gets right to the heart of it; “We’ve been able to reduce the time spent manually creating product descriptions.” which brings us to the second improvement.

2. Effort: Reduction in Manual Processes

Less investment and greater return is the goal. It signifies impeccable efficiency, often driven by intelligent advancements. This is a major PIM value when it comes to the effort and processes required for data and content creation as well as updates. Not only do solutions like Akeneo help you do many business functions faster, it helps you do them with a reduction in manual processes.

Sitation client, Nationwide Marketing Group, through Chief Digital and Technology Officer, Aaron Bundschuh weighs in on Akeneo’s ease of use, directly contributing to lift reduction, saying “We loved where the focus was on the development roadmap. We are really looking at somebody who is investing in core technology and making it operationally easy to use. It is very aligned with where we are going, as far as the role data plays in our future.”

That reduction means you can accomplish the same goals with minimal training and in less touches. That decrease is not only in creation but also in how much backend correction is required. Manual processes are error prone as they often rely on humans with different organizational processes to collaborate.

“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.”- Jim Starr, Revalize.

3. Cost: Decrease in Operational Expenses

If we pause to examine the powerful effects of increasing speed and reducing effort, we begin to see an exciting contribution to return on PIM investment. This graph demonstrates Revalize’s decrease in cost to enrich product content per sku and we begin to see it very soon after their May 2021 Akeneo adoption. We can see the steady and consistent decline in the number of resources the organization needs to provide to maintain equal productivity, or even improved production rates.

4. Engagement:  Improved Customer Interaction

Akeneo’s Check Your PX Before You Wreck Your CX sheds some light on the value of driving customer engagement through product data. “In our 2021 Global B2C Survey, we talked to 3,500 consumers from France, Germany, the UK, Australia, China, Canada, and the US. We learned that 50% would pay a premium (10% or more) for a better product experience consisting of more accurate product information.”

This survey shares similar results to those of independent surveyors as well as studies conducted by other PIM solution providers. Enriching content and product information through PIM is efficient and can be done systematically.

Customer engagement isn’t just about your ecommerce listing but also about how PIM solutions can help create catalogs and connect to customer portals for suppliers or distributors.

Conclusion

Ultimately, the long-term ROI from PIM is everywhere. The reduction in expenses, the increase in product information completion, the conversion driver of a compelling product experience, are among the demonstrable process improvements that exemplify value and return.

While solution software is a valuable commitment and investment, what that looks like can be quite different for varying organizations based on several factors. For more information on which Akeneo option might be right for you, check out A CIO’s Guide to Akeneo and reach out to Sitation for guidance through your leap into PIM solutions.