Smarter Supplier Collaboration Starts With Akeneo SDM

While a PIM lays the groundwork for managing internal product data, scaling efficiently requires a solution that brings your suppliers into the fold. 

That’s where  Supplier Data Manager (SDM), Akeneo Product Cloud, powered by Akeneo PIM, comes in. Together, they provide a centralized system for supplier collaboration, enriched with automation and AI, that helps you activate products across all your channels faster, more accurately, and with fewer manual touchpoints.

Let’s explore how this combined solution transforms supplier collaboration and why now is the moment to unlock its full potential.

1. Centralize Supplier Collaboration at Scale

Keeping all your product and supplier data in one place fundamentally transforms the way teams collaborate. With SDM, your suppliers no longer rely on messy spreadsheets or slow email exchanges. Instead, they interact with a self-service portal that’s directly connected to your product data ecosystem, with customizable workflows, tiered access, and error detection at every step.

This centralized approach:

• Speeds up onboarding by aligning your teams and suppliers in one workspace.
• Reduces errors with AI-powered mapping, shared templates, and built-in validation rules.
• Empowers suppliers to submit data confidently, with tailored permissions and guided workflows.

The average distributor uses SDM deals with 300 to 500 suppliers. With Akeneo SDM, customers like The Agent have cut onboarding time by more than 50%, while doubling the number of products activated per season. 

See how The Agent scaled faster and smarter with Akeneo SDM. 

2. Reduce Errors, Returns, and Manual Touchpoints

Inconsistent or incomplete supplier data can ripple through your entire product experience, from misclassified products that never appear in search to incorrect attributes that frustrate buyers and increase return rates.

Akeneo PIM + SDM helps eliminate these issues by getting product data right at the source, the moment the supplier submits it.

Together, they help you:

• Detect and resolve issues early using real-time error reports at the point of supplier upload 
• Validate data quality through mandatory fields and rule-based validations 
• Create a feedback loop that visually guides suppliers toward better data every time 

For example, Steelcase uses Akeno PIM + SDM to support the high volume of onboarding of spot buy and custom product categories that previously required heavy manual cleanup. With SDM’s automated validation and enrichment tools, they now catch data issues earlier, reduce internal workload, and get more products into their PIM faster.

Discover how Steelcase achieved a 62% reduction in annual time spent loading supplier data. 

3. Unlock Everyday Efficiency with AI-Powered Enrichment

While SDM without AI can help set up a foundation for distributors trying to industrialize an onboarding process and provide suppliers a guided workflow for catalog sharing, the benefits of AI within SDM automate and optimize every stage of the collaboration process, even during setup.

With built-in automation and intelligent enrichment, teams spend less time fixing data and more time optimizing product experiences.

Here's how AI with Akeneo SDM adds value in real-time:

• Auto-categorization ensures every product is consistently classified across multiple hierarchies, saving teams from repetitive corrections
• Attribute extraction pulls details like color, material, and fit directly from product descriptions, reducing manual input and error risk
• Multilingual normalization handles translations and synonyms effortlessly, keeping global product data consistent and ready for any channel

Find the Right Package for Your Business 

Ready to scale smarter? 

The future of supplier collaboration is centralized, automated, and collaborative. With Akeneo Supplier Data Manager, you gain faster onboarding, better data quality, and more powerful product experiences across every channel.

Now is the time to take advantage of Akeneo PIM + Supplier Data Manager. Suppliers are more tech-savvy. eCommerce demands are higher than ever. And your teams deserve to focus on strategy, not spreadsheets. 

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