Introducing Supplier Data Manager

For retailers and distributors, one of the most formidable challenges faced is the need to gather vast amounts of data and assets from a number of different suppliers. It’s a complex puzzle of data points, visual media, and spreadsheets, exacerbated by the fact that each supplier has its own unique way of organizing and communicating data.

That’s why we here at Akeneo recently launched Supplier Data Manager: a simple, scalable, and collaborative way to collect product data from all your suppliers. Akeneo’s Supplier Data Manager streamlines the collection, management, and enrichment of supplier-provided information and assets, ensuring efficiency and accuracy in this critical process.

If you want to learn more about the announcement, you can read the formal press release here, or continue on to learn more about why we built Supplier Data Manager, what it does, and how you can learn more.

Supplier Data: The Problem

Retailers and distributors need to collect information and assets on thousands of products from hundreds of suppliers. That’s an operational and logistical challenge because:

1. 1. Those suppliers all organize their data in their own way
   2. Retailers and distributors have varying degrees of influence over their suppliers

The Impact

Without an efficient way to collect supplier-provided product data, companies often experience the following pain points:

Slow time-to-market – New product launches and updates to existing product content are delayed because the process of collecting information and assets is inefficient.  

• What’s the impact? Missed revenue.

Low quality data & lack of governance – Without proper guardrails in place, retailers may be stuck dealing with massive spreadsheets full of low quality, unstructured data.  

• What’s the impact? Manual effort and a poor customer experience with missing or incomplete data.

Inefficient communication – Retailers and suppliers often struggle to communicate effectively to share requirements and/or request additional information. 

• What’s the impact? Poor supplier experience

The Workarounds

Without a solution like Supplier Data Manager, retailers are most likely to rely on inefficient workarounds including:

• Manual effort: Teams of individuals are subjected to the arduous task of manually reviewing and keying in product content from spreadsheets, and spend thousands of hours emailing and calling suppliers to complete missing attributes. This leads to a lack of visibility or traceability on both sides. 
• Home-grown solutions: Some larger organizations attempt to build their own bespoke solutions to collect data from suppliers. Not only is this an expensive and time-consuming investment, but these home-grown solutions often fall short of delivering desired results for both suppliers and retailers.

The Solution: Akeneo Supplier Data Manager

Akeneo Supplier Data Manager provides an easy-to-use portal that enables retailers and distributors to collect, manage, and enrich supplier-provided product information and assets.

Akeneo Supplier Data Manager is available as an add-on module within Akeneo PIM, and helps simplify supplier data onboarding, driving measurable benefits and efficient communication.

Key Capabilities

Supplier Data Manager makes it easy for you to configure your suppliers, have them upload product files or fill out a template, and map the data to Akeneo PIM for easy import.

Manage your suppliers at scale

Easily add suppliers directly within the PIM UI, either manually or via bulk import. Empower designated contributors with secure, dedicated portal access via email invitations.

Collect the latest product data from suppliers

Enable your suppliers to easily upload their most up-to-date product data spreadsheets using a simple drag-and-drop user interface.

Enrich products with assets

Suppliers can share media files to enrich the product information already collected. Retailers can convert media into assets and link them to PIM products with a single click.

Request specific content via templates

Provide suppliers with templates to ensure you receive precisely the data you need. Avoid back and forth with suppliers by leveraging guidelines and mandatory attributes from the start, reducing excess back-and-forth communication.

Comment directly in the portal

Collaborate more efficiently with suppliers directly in the portal by giving them visibility into file history and status updates, and leaving them comments about specific products, attributes, or images. 

Import supplier data into the PIM

After collecting product data and collaborating with suppliers to get what you need, it’s simple to map everything to your PIM data structure, leverage basic rules to clean and normalize the data, and import everything with just the click of a button.

The Benefits

A simple, scalable, and collaborative way to collect product data from all your suppliers drives measurable benefits such as:

• Improved collaboration with suppliers: Retailers can centrally manage all supplier interactions and build stronger relationships with improved visibility and effortless communication directly in the portal
• Accurate and complete product content: Retailers can efficiently collect the most up-to-date content from suppliers and request specific information via templates.
• Faster time-to market: With supplier-provided data readily available in Akeneo PIM, retailers can expedite product launches and updates.

Want to see it in action?

Are you ready to witness Supplier Data Manager in action?  If you’re a current Akeneo customer, Join us live for Supplier Data Manager in Action on November 8 at 11:00 am ET/5:00 pm CET or reach out to your Customer Success Manager to learn more.  If you’re not yet an Akeneo customer, you can request a demo and an Akeneo expert will walk you through the solution.