1. The Power of Bundling to Maximize Sales This Holiday Season and Beyond

2. Managing Green with Green: How Sustainability and Profitability Go Hand in Hand

3. Future Retail: Pioneering Phygital Shopping Experience

4. Why Focusing on the Manufacturer-Retailer Relationship is a Winning Strategy

5. Leveraging PIM to Boost Customer Experience

6. Bridging the Gap Between Online Perception and Offline Reality for Retail Success

7. Maximize ERP Software to Elevate Your Sales

8. The Convergence of AI and Composable Architecture in eCommerce

9. Retail Metaverse: Brands’ Key to Success in Digital Shopping

10. The Price Retailers Pay for Flawed Product Information

11. How Amazon sellers can seamlessly diversify their sales channels

12. Navigating the Future: How Composable Architectures Are Powering the Next Generation of Retail

12 Days of PXMas

During our annual PX conference, Unlock, last year, we sat down with eleven of our most valued partners to discuss their takes on all things eCommerce, retail, and more. So, for day eleven, we’ve compiled all eleven interviews into one list, curated just for you!

1. Shopify

Lara Rosquet, Head of New Channel Partnerships EMEA at Shopify, explains how brands can simplify their product information so that they can focus on strategy and growth and not maintaining their tech stack. Plus, she discuss how organizations can activate global commerce channels like social media and D2C sites with the Akeneo x Shopify integration, and how the Akeneo and Shopify partner ecosystem enables local teams across EMEA to provide personalized, optimized customer experiences.

2. Valtech

Raphael Iscar, Director of PXM Product Strategy at Valtech, discusses:

• How Akeneo’s composable framework makes integrating different tech partners easy and scaling feasible
• Centralizing product information into Akeneo PIM to enable global selling and a faster time-to-market, helping one organization launch hundreds of products in just 3 weeks, a process that previously took up to a year
• Enabling truly compelling and consistent omnichannel experiences, with a focus not just on digital but in-person experiences as well

3. Constructor

Eli Finkelshteyn, Founder and CEO of Constructor, discusses:

• aligning customer and retailer expectations to provide exceptional customer experiences
• why best-of-breed, MACH-certified technology enables organizations to streamline internal processes and reach new markets with more agility
• how the newly released Attribute Enrichments works to reduce incorrect and missing product data across all channels and markets

4. Accenture

Helene Lefebvre, Senior Manager at Accenture sat down to speak with us about easing integration processes for both B2B and B2C customers, as well as sharing how to prepare your data and teams for a successful and sustainable PIM implementation.

5. AND Digital

James Sharpe, Chief of Strategic Alliances for AND Digital discusses delivering rich customer, employee, and product experiences, and how one organization reached new marketplaces, expanded globally, and tripled in business size with Akeneo technology. Plus, discover the three key tips to a successful PIM implementation!

6. Adesso

Haitse Wiersma, Principal Software Engineer & Consultant at Adesso, discusses Akeneo’s cloud-based technology, supporting key retail partnerships for enterprise customers, and planning for a successful PIM implementation.

7. Wunderman Thompson

Ilse Goverts-van Kesteren, PIM/PXM Lead Consultant at Wunderman Thompson, discusses how Akeneo is working with Wunderman Thompson to pave a new future for PXM. Plus, she covers the three key drivers for a successful PIM implementation and why listening to customer needs enables the best possible product experience strategy.

8. Sitation

George Dzuricsko, Senior Director of Solution Architecture from Sitation, discusses Akeneo’s composable framework, and how it enables organizations to create the tech stack of their dreams. Plus, he covers how to migrate data from outdated systems into Akeneo PIM to optimize, enrich, and syndicate product information, and how streamlined and efficient internal workflows can improve the implementation process.

9. Translations.com

Joe Swaffield, Partner Manager at Translations.com discusses how we enable global selling and entering new markets faster for our customers with reduced time-to-market and increased agility, and why he’s excited to work with the PXM community to further develop what’s available on the Akeneo App Store.

10. BigCommerce

Iris Schiefer, Large Enterprise AE at BigCommerce, discusses Akeneo’s and BigCommerce’s participation in the MACH Alliance, personalizing your composable tech architecture to fit your needs, and creating consistent and compelling customer experiences across both physical and digital channels.

11. Adobe

Regis Quintin, Head of Adobe Commerce for West Europe, discusses:

• How Akeneo x Adobe Commerce is enabling brands to provide real-time, personalized digital customer experiences
• Why a composable, best-of-breed commerce architecture unlocks scalability and growth
• A real life example of how a brand utilized Adobe Commerce and Akeneo to reduce time-to-market and optimize product content, including 3D and virtual reality assets

12 Days of PXMas

The 11th (and second to last!) day of PXMas has allowed us to shed light on insights provided from our valued partners during the Unlock 2023 conference. From eCommerce platforms to AI to translations, each partner provides a unique perspective on streamlining processes, enhancing customer experiences, and optimizing product content.

We’d like to take a moment and express our gratitude to our partners for their invaluable contributions! 2023 was a great year as the Akeneo partner network expanded and matured, and we can’t wait to see what 2024 has in store for all of us.

If you’d like to learn more about any of the partners featured today, or if you’d like to hear about any of our many lovely partners that weren’t mentioned here, you can explore the Akeneo Partner ecosystem, or simply reach out to a PX expert today.

In the spirit of gratitude and learning, we thought we’d present a compilation of ten customer case studies that highlight different aspects of Akeneo’s technology. These narratives not only showcase the diversity of industries we touch but also exemplify the power of exceptional product experiences (PX) in transforming businesses worldwide.

All of these case studies are available for download if you’d like to dig deeper into the use case – and as always, if you’d like to reach out to a PX expert directly, we’re always here to help!

1. Staples

As a world-renowned brand, Staples is the go-to office retailer for businesses of all sizes, offering products and services designed to support working and learning. From printers to office furniture to technology and more, Staples is a one-stop-shop for corporate headquarters and home offices alike.

But this hasn’t always been the case – with more and more folks working from home, Staples realized that while their B2B offering was still strong, their B2C digital commerce offering needed some support. So they turned to Akeneo to help.

With our modern PIM technology, Staples was able to:

• Manage twice as many products in less time without increasing the size of their team
• Enhance teamwork and collaboration through easily shareable dashboards and quick product data insights
• Improve data quality, consistency, and accuracy while reducing time-to-market

2. ASSA ABLOY

You may not recognize the name, but chances are you’ve interacted with their brand a number of times. ASSA ABLOY is a global leader in innovative access solutions and security technologies, offering a comprehensive range of products and services including door locks, access control systems, entrance automation, secure identity solutions, and mobile access technologies.

ASSA ABLOY utilized Akeneo PIM and Shared Catalogs to:

• Introduce a mobile app that provided customers with a digital place to research, compare, and purchase products, empowering customers to better themselves in their field of expertise
• Reduce employee workload by over 40 hours a week  and decreased incoming support calls by 20%, enabling teammates to focus on high value activities
• Rapidly pivot to meet new market challenges by creating a single source of truth for customers and internal teams alike to access product data, increasing page views by 27% and reducing the number of users leaving the site by 16%.
• Improve upsell and cross-sell opportunities with an improved customer and product data record

3. Leatherman

For 40+ years, Leatherman Tools has been providing multitools for consumers around the world. From everyday essentials to knives, accessories, and apparel, Leatherman is committed to providing consumers with the best multipurpose products to help them solve expected and unexpected problems in everyday life.

At the core of Leatherman’s strategy lies the aspiration to foster closer bonds with consumers and elevate their experiences at every interaction point. Their journey towards direct-to-consumer (D2C) excellence has primarily revolved around their in-house eCommerce platform and Amazon FBA, with ambitious plans to expand their presence in marketplaces and international eCommerce domains.

However, Leatherman found itself shackled by a legacy Product Information Management (PIM) system that had outlived its usefulness. Designed to meet their needs a decade ago, the PIM solution had grown into an impediment as Leatherman’s product portfolio, sales channels, teams, processes, and technology had evolved.

After comparing several PIM solutions against over 100 stringent requirements, only one solution rose to the top: Akeneo PIM.

Leatherman Tools implemented Akeneo technology into their tech stack in just under 5 months, and was immediately able to:

• Save time for team members, enabling them to focus on complex, critical tasks
• Enhance confidence in data integrity
• Increase speed to market
• Empower team members to effectively utilize the tool in just a few months
• Streamline efficiency through features like Product Models, rule creation, and product families

4. INTERSPORT

In 2016, INTERSPORT embarked on a digitalization journey, recognizing the need to adapt to the evolving retail landscape. 

As part of this transformation, they established their own eCommerce platform, envisioning it as a dynamic platform that would effectively showcase their extensive range of in-store offerings. The primary goal was to leverage the digital medium to emphasize the breadth and quality of their product portfolio, however the available product data primarily catered to the in-store experience and was not suited for an effective eCommerce strategy.

While the in-store product information served its purpose within the brick-and-mortar environment, it fell short in meeting the demands and requirements of a thriving online retail presence. Recognizing the importance of a comprehensive and tailored approach to eCommerce, INTERSPORT realized the need for a more robust solution that would bridge the gap between their physical stores and their digital platform. This realization set the stage for the exploration and adoption of a suitable PIM system to enable a successful digital transformation and align their offerings with the evolving expectations of online customers.

With Akeneo and Unifai technology, INTERSPORT was able to achieve:

• 50% Reduction in Classification Time: INTERSPORT cut the time it took to classify new products in half, allowing their teams to focus on more strategic tasks.
• 95% Improved Classification Accuracy: Unifai’s AI technology provided unmatched precision, ensuring that INTERSPORT’s product data was as accurate and up-to-date as ever.
• 18 Hours Saved Per Week: The freed-up time equated to 18 extra hours per week for the data integration team and buyers to dedicate to higher-value activities.
• 30% Efficiency Boost: The product classification process became 30% more efficient, leading to faster decision-making and product placement.
• Data Accuracy for Business Operations: Accurate data is the backbone of any retail operation, particularly for budget tracking and sell-out/stock tracking. The accuracy of Unifai’s AI model ensured Intersport’s business ran smoothly.

5. Smallable

Globally renowned Family Concept Store, Smallable embarked on a remarkable journey to redefine its product management and content enrichment strategies. With an extensive inventory boasting over 1 million products from 1,000 international designer brands, Smallable grappled with the challenge of efficiently overseeing this vast catalog and localizing product content to different markets and geographies.

Smallable surmounted these obstacles and ushered in a new era of operational efficiency, reduced production timelines, and elevated customer experiences with the aid of Akeneo technology.

In particular, Smallable utilized Akeneo’s best-of-breed technology to:

• Streamline product information management across millions of SKUs, expanding their product catalog offering without investing in a larger team
• Automatically create product attributes to enrich the customer experience and reduce return rates
• Improve production times and time-to-market due to improved team communication, publishing anywhere from 50 to 500 products a day.
• Integrate and communicate seamlessly with Smallable’s existing technology stack

6. Rexel

In a market where information is power, Rexel, a leading electrical supplies distributor, was looking for cutting-edge technology that would elevate their customer experience. With a staggering 2.5 million products in their catalog, the challenge was to ensure each item’s data met the highest standards.

Enter the collaboration of Unifai and Akeneo PIM. Leveraging the prowess of Unifai’s AI technology, Rexel embarked on a mission to enrich 800,000 products to the international classification standard for technical standards, ETIM. The result was not just compliance but a mastery of precision.

Unifai’s AI technology not only achieved a remarkable 98% accuracy in suggesting content gaps or missing data, but also defied expectations by benchmarking 12,000 ETIM classifications in just three months.

Rexel’s utilization of our two solutions stands as a testament that shows that when forward-thinking distributors embrace technology, the customer experience reaches new heights. Rexel’s journey with Unifai and Akeneo PIM exemplifies the power of AI in transforming challenges into triumphs and solidifying their position as leaders in the ever-evolving landscape of electrical supplies distribution.

7. Bath Depot

After seeing a 400% increase in online transactions during the pandemic, Canadian retailer of bathroom and kitchen renovation products Bath Depot turned to Akeneo and Valtech to focus on improving their eCommerce offering. 

This investment enabled the company to:

• Provide enhanced digital shopping experiences to its customers, with detailed descriptions, visuals, and specifications to help inform purchasing decisions. 
• Offer exciting hybrid and custom shopping journeys for customers such as in-store demos and stock availability for every product across every channel, as well as a range of shipping options, including ship-to-store, in-store pick-up, and curbside options, which allows customers to choose the option that best suited their needs. 
•  Automatically localize country, language, and pricing information for all of their products
• Enrich and launch more than 500 products online in less than three weeks, easily managing and distributing product information to all their sales channels, including their eCommerce website and physical stores.

8. Verkkokauppa.com

As their name literally translates to “eCommerce”, it’s no surprise that Verkkokauppa.com has been a retail powerhouse in Finland since 1992. With a unique blend of physical stores and a bustling eCommerce shopping experience, Verkkokauppa.com offers a diverse range of products, including computers, home electronics, toys, gaming, and navigation products, and boasts an extensive catalog of over 60,000 products, selling both directly to consumers and to other businesses.

Verkkokauppa.com sought out a PIM solution that would support their vast catalog of products, integrate seamlessly with their existing technology stack, and provide a more compelling experience for their customers.

This eCommerce powerhouse harnessed Akeneo technology to unlock the next level of customer experiences with smarter cross-sell and upsell opportunities, enhanced internal efficiency, and scalable product experience management.

9. Shop Apotheke

Today, Shop Apotheke Europe operates online pharmacies in Germany, Austria, France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. Shop Apotheke Europe delivers a wide range of over 120,000 original products to over 4.5 million active customers quickly and at attractive prices. The company’s goals are to drive growth, optimize processes, streamline the organization, and enable their consumers to receive the same experience online as in the local pharmacy.

However, this only works when customers in the online pharmacy shop find comprehensive product information such as applications, dosage, side effects, interactions, reviews, and more. The interaction between the ERP and Shop Apotheke Europe’s home-grown PIM development soon became unmanageable due to its lack of flexibility, requiring repeated programming efforts for adjustments. Additionally, the system was not stable, and outages became frequent.

Due to the time-consuming data preparation and maintenance, the product lead times were long – too long to respond quickly. Furthermore, product data quality suffered from a lack of transparency, making it difficult to expand the product range. The goal was to replace the home-grown system with a new, stable, and flexible PIM, streamline workflows, simplify data maintenance, and generate transparency so that international expansion could be advanced on solid foundations.

Akeneo’s open-source PIM technology and built-in community of product experience (PX) experts enabled Shop Apotheke Europe to enhance their digital presence across seven countries and manage over 500,000 SKUs with efficiency and speed.

10. Kolmi Hopen

After the COVID-19 Pandemic, leading manufacturer of protective equipment Kolmi Hopen had to meet an unprecedented level of demand at an unprecedented speed. Meeting this demand would require a faster enrichment process and increased productivity, however, the company had historically relied heavily on Excel for data management. Finding product information involved coordinating with different teams and cross-checking data on their ERP system, a process that was time-consuming and labor-intensive.

Internally, employees had to dedicate significant hours and resources to find the necessary product information. The process was also difficult for external stakeholders, with distributors struggling to access updated, centralized information that is translated and localized to their specific regions.

With products that must meet very specific and demanding standards, product information management became a strategic element in Kolmi Hopen’s plan to differentiate itself in the market, as well as to provide added value to its customers. And so they turned to Akeneo.

12 Days of PXMas

As we wrap up and tie a bow around our 10th day of PXMas, one thing becomes abundantly clear: the power of exceptional customer experiences transcends industries and borders. These ten case studies are not just success stories; they are testaments to the transformative impact that a focus on customer and product experience can have.

As we celebrate these milestones, we’re reminded that each brand and retailer has its unique tale of innovation and customer-centricity. From personalized AI-driven recommendations to sustainable practices enhancing brand loyalty, these stories underscore the diverse ways brands can elevate themselves in the eyes of their customers.

We wanted to express our heartfelt gratitude to the customers who entrusted us with their narratives. Their success is our motivation to continue championing excellence in the realm of customer experiences. Here’s to a new year filled with more stories, innovations, and partnerships that redefine the possibilities of retail!

What is headless commerce architecture?

• Create compelling, coherent, and consistent product experiences across every channel
• Accelerate time-to-market
• Expand into more markets and territories with ease
• Scale the tech stack as the organization grows and changes. 

Headless Commerce & PIM

The MACH Alliance

• Microservices-based: Individual pieces of business functionality that are independently developed, deployed, and managed.
• API-first: All functionality of the product is exposed through an API.
• Cloud-native: SaaS that leverages the cloud, beyond storage and hosting, including elastic scaling and automatically updating.
• Headless: Front-end presentation is decoupled from backend logic and channel, programming language, and is framework agnostic.

Akeneo & MACH

Step 1: Categorizing User Needs into 7 Key Groups

• KPIs & Objectives: Create a  list of measurable goals in order to know where you’re starting from. Identify and list major challenges from a business and technical standpoint.
• Product Lifecycle & User Workflow: Design a process map with gaps between current and future needs and a Business Process Management (BPM) Strategy. This allows listing user roles & permissions roles, enrichment, catalog search, and syndication needs.
• Data Model Structure: Develop a strategy that cleanses and enriches data efficiently
• Data Cleansing: Analyze the level of efforts necessary to cleanse your data base from a programmatic standpoint that leverages AI
• Asset Management: Stay at the strategy level to understand if we’re loading these assets from a DAM or an SFTP, and if there’s a need to rename assets.
• Supplier Data Onboarding & Initial Import: Depending on whether you’re a manufacturer or a distributor, this might require some great features and processes to format supplier’s data into your own format.
• Architecture & Connections: Last but not least, connecting your PIM with all your source & destination systems (marketplaces, websites, paper catalogs, POS, etc…).

Step 2: Crafting a Business Case

• Introducing the major challenges
• Current client key user & roles
• A catalog overview
• KPIs & Objectives
• Product Catalog Management Gaps
• Requirements listing for each of the 7 groups above that PIM provider will use to contextualize their demos.

Step 3: PIM Demos with Purpose

Step 4: Contextualized Platform Rating

• Supplier data onboarding
• Manual data import & updates
• Data cleansing
• Data governance
• Data model
• Taxonomy
• Asset management
• Product search
• Enrichment capabilities
• Product lifecycle & workflows
• Analytics
• Translation & Localization management
• Syndication & export
• Paper catalog & advertising solution
• UI & ease of use
• Product catalog performance
• Customization
• System integration
• Implementation costs
• License costs

Step 5: Executive Summary and Decision Time

Benefits Beyond Selection

• Tailored Solutions: Clients choose a platform aligned with their unique needs.
• Efficient Adoption: Accelerated adoption through streamlined workflows.
• Reduced Customization: Minimized reliance on costly customization.
• Optimized Design Costs: A meticulous approach minimizes design costs.

Ready, Set, Implement

Big Data, Big Problems

Filling the Gaps

Enter Attribute Enrichment

• • Increase Revenue per Visitor and Average Order Value: With improved product attributes, your entire product discovery offering, including search, recommendations, and quizzes, becomes more relevant. This translates to higher revenue per visitor (RPV) and increased average order value (AOV).
  • Reduce Returns and Refunds: High data quality leads to improved customer satisfaction, as the right products match customers’ preferences in terms of colors, flavors, sizes, and other attributes. 
  • Enhance Operational Efficiencies: Attribute Enrichment automates the process of enhancing product information, saving eCommerce teams time and money, and reducing human error. This newfound efficiency allows your merchandisers to focus on high-value strategic contributions, ultimately improving overall operations. 

• Maintain Control: Don’t blindly trust the AI. Your team has the final say on what attributes are added to the catalog so they can refine and tweak as needed.

• Stay Current with Market Trends: Attribute Enrichment leverages customer behavioral data to support the latest search trends. By creating trending attributes based on actual customer behavior, you can keep your product catalog up-to-date and competitive.

The Power of Composable eCommerce Solutions

What is Site Search?

• Strong filtering capabilities for different categories or groupings, based on the the behavior of your customers and shoppers
• Intelligent recommendations based on past searches and even general site behavior (I.e., shoppers clicking on a product, and recommending another product that would be related in their search)
• Clear and concise search results with the exact information that the shopper would like to see. Don’t make them click into every single result!
• Incorporate user generated reviews, and allow filtering of products based on reviews
• Autocorrect and error correction
• Never allowing a shopper or user to hit a dead end; even if their exact search doesn’t come back with results, suggest something else that could be related.

AI-Powered Site Search

Cleanse & enrich data

Translate & localize content

Personalize the shopping experience

Unlocking the Power of AI for Site Search Success

Whether it’s new digital marketplaces coming onto the scene, social media apps looking to break into eCommerce, or new technology like AI permeating the retail landscape, there seems to be an almost endless stream of new channels that many, if not all, brands and retailers are struggling to keep up with. Why?

Simply put, their eCommerce presence is precariously built on a traditional, monolithic commerce architecture that offers a single solution, from a single vendor, and a single digital experience.

And while this one-size-fits-all approach worked for many years to support standardized experiences and basic eCommerce offerings, the digital marketplace has expanded at such a rapid pace that we’ve quickly outgrown this legacy architecture. It wasn’t built to accommodate all the facets that are now required to produce high-quality product experiences across so many different channels.

Enter composable commerce; the modular approach to eCommerce that enables true omnichannel product experiences.

What is Composable Commerce?

Composable commerce is a development approach that leverages best-of-breed vendors composed together into a singular, custom-built application. This type of architecture model allows teams to create an ecosystem that is customized to meet their organization’s specific business needs, enabling activation of their entire product record across every channel.

Instead of the traditional, monolithic approach, composable commerce software communicates via API, meaning each individual solution can be updated or replaced at any time without disrupting the rest of the system. This creates a flexible, scalable eCommerce stack that can easily be updated or adapted to meet your needs as your organization grows.

What’s the Difference Between Composable Commerce and Traditional Architecture?

A traditional, monolithic approach offers an all-in-one solution from a single vendor, providing the basic capabilities needed to activate an eCommerce site.

For a while, this met a need in the market; everything was stored in the same place, and organizations had everything they needed to provide a singular, standard experience for all their customers.

However, thanks to the impact of both the pandemic and rapid technological innovation, the needs of modern organizations span much farther than the reach of traditional commerce architecture. There are new digital touchpoints emerging constantly that these legacy platforms simply weren’t built to accommodate, not to mention the ever-growing expectations of customers to have a dynamic, cohesive, and engaging experience with your product no matter where they discover or search for you.

At a more granular, technical level, massive monolithic code bases present steep roadblocks; plug-and-play replacements of outdated technology is impossible, extensive knowledge of the code base is required for developers to do any sort of adjustments, and scalability is severely limited. As a result, development speed and time-to-market is simply too slow to keep up with the speed of today’s economy.

As consumer behaviors continue to rapidly shift and digital touchpoints continue to expand, more and more organizations are beginning to move away from a traditional model and towards a composable commerce model that decouples the frontend user experience from the backend logistics. This offers organizations the flexibility to customize their tech stack to their specific business needs.

With composable commerce, brands are able to:

• Create compelling, coherent, and consistent product experiences across every channel, regardless of their specific personalizations.
• Accelerate time-to–market and expand into new territories, products, and markets more seamlessly than ever before.
• Leverage best-of-breed technology solutions to ensure that you’re utilizing the most up-to-date and efficient processes.
• Scale your tech stack with your company by replacing technologies as you continue to grow and take on new challenges.

Tenets of Composable Commerce

Composable commerce architecture has been growing in popularity as more and more organizations continue to search for a more scalable and flexible model. But what does that actually look like in practice? Let’s take a look at three of the defining features of this modern commerce architecture.

1. Modular

Arguably the most important aspect of composable commerce approach is its modular nature. Every component of your tech stack is replaceable, and therefore scalable. Changing, adding, or removing one aspect of your tech stack will no longer crumble your entire ecosystem like a fragile Jenga tower.

What does this mean? Accelerated time-to-market, increased eCommerce conversions, eliminated redundant technology costs, and stronger omnichannel customer experiences.

2. Open Ecosystem

An open ecosystem essentially means that your organization isn’t tied to one specific vendor; you are free to select the software that best serves each individual business need, ensuring that you’re receiving world-class SaaS products across the board. This is a particularly useful aspect as it allows your team to easily swap out technology if a piece of software isn’t performing the way you intended it to, it’s been changed, or it becomes obsolete due to changed internal processes.

This open ecosystem also encourages simple integrations and deep customization capabilities, allowing your team to essentially build the perfect system for your commerce tech stack.

3. Flexible

The scalability and flexibility of a composable commerce architecture is one of the biggest reasons so many organizations are beginning to transition. Whether it’s adapting to meet the needs of new customer markets, new global locations, new products, or new eCommerce channels, composable commerce offers the flexibility to meet your organization’s needs that a traditional approach can’t compete with.

Benefits of Composable Commerce

So we’ve covered the basics of composable commerce, and how this architecture framework often provides greater agility and control to brands and retailers. But now let’s dive into the specific benefits that an organization can reap from migrating to a composable commerce architecture.

Create truly omnichannel experiences. 

Mobile, print, web, social media, retailer sites, even newer channels like voice search and TikTok. All of these existing touchpoints, and those of tomorrow, are potential places where your customers could discover you, but showing up on these channels requires a strong technological foundation to syndicate product information and listings. Monolithic architectures are often too rigid to adapt quickly to these rapid market changes.

Reduce vendor risk. 

Swap in and out components of your tech stack as needed, allowing your ecosystem to scale to meet your needs. Whether you need to replace an old piece of technology, incorporate a new software tool, or upgrade existing functionality and capacity, you can do so freely with this type of plug-and-play architecture.

Reduce operational costs. 

By increasing internal operational efficiencies and leveraging modern technology stacks, your organization is able to save time and money. Plus, you’re customizing your tech stack to what works best for your team, so you aren’t paying for features or solutions you don’t use.

Remove heavy reliance on IT. 

The user-friendly aspect of composable commerce means that managing and operating within this commerce approach doesn’t require in-depth technical skills from developers. Unlike the traditional model, composable commerce allows non-technical employees to perform necessary tasks.

 Deliver highly differentiated, personalized experiences that win against your competition.

More channels than ever before means more competition than ever before; the product experience that you offer to your customers needs to stack up or you risk losing their loyalty. By utilizing best-of-breed technologies and allowing your organization to scale, you’re able to provide your consumers with the personalized experience they’re looking for.

Future-proof your Business with Composable Commerce

Future-proofing your business means that you need to be able to create compelling and consistent product experiences across all your owned and unowned channels, and that is significantly more simple when you’ve implemented a composable approach that allows you to plug-and-play technologies as you scale.

The inherently modular nature of the architecture, coupled with the flexibility and scalability it offers, means that a composable commerce approach is the one of the most efficient way brands and retailers can activate their product story across each and every channel, regardless of if it’s owned by them or not. By streamlining internal operations and relying on best-of-breed technology, composable commerce enables organizations to deliver unique, personalized product experiences to their consumers at every stage.

Interested in learning more about how to migrate to a composable commerce model? Request a demo of Akeneo today to see how our MACH-certified PIM can help.

Then along came the digital transformation.

First there was dial-up internet and chat rooms. Then came along Amazon, social media, Yelp reviews. Before you knew it, you barely existed if your business didn’t at least have a Google listing.

Each of these new creations became more than a fad. They became channels through which potential buyers learned about your products. But businesses faced the challenge of managing these multiple channels at once, and two dominating strategies emerged: omnichannel eCommerce and multichannel eCommece.

What exactly is difference between omnichannel vs. multichannel, and how can one or the other impact your business? Let’s dive in.

What is multichannel eCommerce?

Multichannel eCommerce is short for “multiple channels.” It simply means that you sell your products on more than one channel. Many retailers have both a physical store and an online presence, selling on social media, eCommerce sites, marketplaces, and other platforms. For manufacturers, multichannel eCommerce has been truly revolutionary, allowing them to sell direct-to-consumer rather than having to rely on third parties and catalogs. 

Businesses following a multichannel approach focus on building out individual channels while ensuring product information is accurate and consistent. They tailor strategies to each channel and track results, but each channel acts as a “solo act” rather than a player in an orchestra.

Benefits of multichannel eCommerce

Because of the digital transformation, even the most old-school retailers and manufacturers typically have a basic website or social media presence by now, making them multichannel by definition.

For some, this simple strategy can bring rewards like:

• Reaching more customers and new audiences
• Reaching shoppers when and where they are most likely to buy
• Increasing incremental sales and total sales volume
• Increasing awareness of your brand
• Driving higher average order value
• Growing your online presence and sales
• Providing a more consistent and rewarding shopping experience

Drawbacks of multichannel eCommerce

So why the debate between multichannel eCommerce vs. omnichannel?

Those who have operated under a multichannel eCommerce framework will know the struggles well, such as:

• Implementing new infrastructure and processes needed for fulfillment, shipping, logistics, etc.
• Increased costs due to new requirements
• Greater demands on the supply chain
• Channels and data becoming siloed
• Inconsistent product information, branding, and customer experiences

New business plans can typically fix the first three issues. However, the last two points are the reason why multichannel vs. omnichannel eCommerce remains a problem, so let’s dive into omnichannel.

What is omnichannel eCommerce?

Omnichannel eCommerce combines all customer channels for brand interaction into one strategy, going beyond multichannel approach. Instead of working separately, all your channels collaborate, communicate, and influence each other. This creates a harmonious “orchestra” that guides your customers throughout their purchasing process.

What’s the difference between omnichannel vs. multichannel?

The biggest difference between omnichannel and multichannel eCommerce is that while omnichannel is people-focused, multichannel is product-focused; while omnichannel is customer-centric, multichannel is channel-centric. Multichannel eCommerce is all about moving inventory as efficiently as possible through various channels. Omnichannel takes a more holistic approach, aiming to provide a seamless experience throughout the entire customer journey. 

Both strategies have data at their core, but even then, there’s a difference: The foundation of multichannel eCommerce is product data. The foundation of omnichannel eCommerce is both product and customer data. 

Multichannel presents your products on various channels and allows your customers to purchase them or otherwise communicate with you. You’ll collect data on what’s selling, when, and how quickly, but not on customer behavior and preferences. And while you’ll be able to see individual channel performance, you won’t be able to see how all the channels work together.

Omnichannel retail is an integrated experience. Data is shared between channels to target and retarget buyers, providing seamless experiences. Buyers can continue where they left off, even if it was on a different channel. Each interaction builds upon the last, fulfilling the customer’s needs as they progress through the buying journey. 

Essentially, omnichannel takes multiple channels and synchronizes them, while multichannel leaves them separated and siloed. Thus, all omnichannel eCommerce is multichannel, but not all multichannel is omnichannel.

So why isn’t everyone doing omnichannel?

When you look at omnichannel vs. multichannel, it seems obvious to say that omnichannel is better. Multichannel is a more siloed approach, and whether you’re in retail, manufacturing, or distribution, the digital transformation has paved the way forward for holistic, omnichannel eCommerce. 

So why aren’t more companies focused on omnichannel?

The truth is that omnichannel strategies typically require a large investment of resources, especially in the beginning. If you operate out of a brick-and-mortar store or warehouse using a catalog or third-party partnership model, creating even a multichannel strategy means you’ll need to build a website, leverage marketplaces, learn about social media, and start advertising.

To reach true omnichannel status, you’ll also need to syndicate your product data, optimize your tech stack, synchronize your customer data, and then use analytics to segment and target and deliver personalized content at every touchpoint.

When business are instead offered a simple, straightforward multichannel strategy that can still increase sales in the short-term, it can be tempting to not make a further investment in omnichannel. But that’s a mistake.

Omnichannel vs. multichannel eCommerce is ultimately about a long-term vs. short-term approach. The fact is that the digital transformation is turning the world toward omnichannel experiences. You can either build an omnichannel commerce strategy now and get ahead of your competition—or you can be left behind. 

Luckily, many of the differences between omnichannel vs. multichannel can be mitigated with the right technology and partners. While a multichannel strategy will use separate and disparate technologies, like eCommerce platforms for selling, customer relationship management (CRM) systems, or customer data platforms (CDPs), composable technology allows you to orchestrate and scale your tech stack as your challenges and goals expand.

Best-of-breed Product information management (PIM) systems are a great place to start implementing an omnichannel strategy. A PIM provides a central database for your product information, allowing you to distribute consistent, accurate data to all of your channels while also conforming to their rules — and a composable PIM means that it connects seamlessly with your existing technology, and plays nicely with new systems introduced down the road.

Ready to learn more about best-of-breed technology can help you implement and support an omnichannel strategy? Book your demo today to see the benefits for yourself.

1. Data-Driven, Hyper-Personalized Shopping Journeys

2. Transparent Supply Chains & Business Practices

3. Incorporation of AI to Enhance Customer & Employee Experience

• Generate & enrich product content: Quickly and easily generate ready-to-edit content, including product descriptions and product page copy that aligns with your business’s tone of voice, product keywords, and character limits.
• Collect & cleanse product data: Leverage AI to accurately clean and enrich any product data including de-duplication, data extraction, and product categorization & classification, at scale and in a centralized way. Relieve your teams from lengthy manual data work by leveraging the power of AI.
• Enhance work automation: Remove lengthy manual tasks and increase operational efficiency, elevating employee job satisfaction and productivity
• Unburden & support customer service: AI can help unburden support teams and make them highly efficient by intelligently routing specific requests or questions to specific people or departments, encouraging higher customer and employee satisfaction
• Personalize content to new markets and geographies: Automatically translate product content to quickly and efficiently deliver product experiences at scale and in any language with AI

4. Seamless Experiences Across Digital, Social, and Physical Channels

5. Growth in Demand for a Circular Economy

• Increase Store Traffic: Customers are increasingly drawn to stores that offer drop-off points for their pre-loved items.
• Reduce Return Rates: By extending the lifespan of products through resale or refurbishment, retailers can significantly reduce the number of returns, cutting down on waste and saving money.
• Communicate a Shared Passion and Commitment: Participating in the circular economy sends a strong message that your brand cares about the environment, which can foster customer loyalty and attract like-minded consumers.
• Improve Upsell and Cross-Sell Opportunities: When customers bring in products for resale or recycling, retailers have an opportunity to upsell new items or cross-sell related products, increasing revenue.

To 2024 and Beyond