Expansion Award Winner: DELFINGEN 

Who are they? 

What makes them award winning? 

Acceleration Award Winner: Kolmi-Hopen 

Who are they? 

What makes them award winning? 

Global Award Winner: FENDI 

Who are they? 

What makes them award winning? 

Leadership Award Winner: Arkema

Who are they? 

What makes them award winning? 

Experience Award Winner: Smartphonehoesjes.nl

Who are they? 

What makes them award winning? 

Ambassador Honor Winner: Bowens

Who are they? 

What makes them award winning? 

Global Awards

Impact Award Solution Partner 2022 

Impact Award Technology Partner 2022 

Rising Star Award Solution Partner 2022 

Rising Star Award Technology Partner 2022 

Hero Award Solution Partner 2022 

Hero Award Technology Partner 2022 

Global Growth Award 2022 

MACH Partner Award 2022 

Integration Award 2022 

Regional Awards 

Growth Award North America 2022 

Growth Award Central Europe 2022 

Growth Award Western Europe 2022 

Growth Award UK/I 2022 

There’s good reason for this migration — one recent survey found that roughly 54% of consumers are now using direct-to-consumer channels to shop frequently and are likely to retain those habits in the future. As a result, direct-to-consumer sales are projected to reach almost $183 billion in 2023.

But selling directly to consumers (sometimes noted as DTC and D2C) can be a real challenge for even the most successful B2B brands; from issues of control over product experience to the need for speed on direct-to-consumer platforms, even global brands can find it difficult. Discover how a strong product information management (PIM) solution can help you navigate around any roadblocks and become a D2C brand success story.

Get online

The challenge: If you’re a B2B brand without an eCommerce platform, you’re not alone — there are plenty of other manufacturers and distributors who have yet to complete their digital transformation. In order to sell directly to consumers, however, you’ll need to build an eCommerce store where consumers can find information and purchase your products, one that can stand out from the ever-increasing crowd of online retail companies. That means offering accurate and consistent product information, compelling product descriptions, dynamic digital assets, and more.

The solution: A PIM solution is purpose-built to help you complete your digital transformation and begin meeting consumers where they are — namely, online and on other digital shopping channels. With a strong PIM solution, you’ll be able to easily and efficiently collect, standardize, enrich, contextualize, and distribute product information to not only your retail and distribution partners but also to your owned channels — such as your new eCommerce site.

Control your product experience

The challenge: To succeed online, it’s crucial to take control of your product experience and provide your customers with a unified, but not uniform, product experience across a range of different channels. But managing your product and customer experiences in an omnichannel world is a complex and challenging process that includes complying with the requirements of every channel you sell on. This includes customizing product descriptions and digital assets for each channel and providing a product experience tailored to the touchpoint your customers are using, regardless of where they are on their online shopping journey.

The solution: A strong PIM solution will offer tools to help you categorize products, including product variants, and offer tools like automation and a business rules engine to make the product enrichment process more efficient. This will make it easier for your team to present a compelling product experience that remains consistent, compelling, and up-to-date across a wide range of owned and unowned channels, including direct-to-consumer outlets. And, by pairing your PIM with a strong activation solution, you can take your direct-to-consumer experience to the next level to win over even more new customers.

This quantified, research-based index evaluated sixteen technology providers and products on seven key categories: five were related to product experience, including Adaptability, Capability, Manageability, Reliability, and Usability. The final two categories were customer experience related: Validation and TCO/ROI.

Essentially, the PXM Value Index is an assessment of how well a vendor can address a buyer’s PXM requirements through their software offering. Ventana Research factors customer expectations and needs into their analysis, providing a holistic report that enables organizations to achieve the levels of organizational efficiency and effectiveness needed for engaging digital experiences through PXM best practices.

Why is this important? Well, for starters, two-thirds of consumers say they would stop buying from a brand due to a bad product experience, and over half of all consumers say they are willing to pay a higher price for a more informative and compelling product experience. But delivering these sort of compelling and consistent product experiences across a continually expanding array of channels and touchpoints is nearly impossible without first establishing a solid foundation of product information, and that is where the art and science of PXM comes into play.

Our innovative software offering placed the highest in the “Validation” category, which analyzed the vendor’s ability to support a customer through their PXM journey across sales, onboarding, support, services, and partners, and how the vendor utilizes customer interactions and feedback to improve their product. The close-knit PXM community we’ve managed to curate allows us to use customer behavior and needs to inform our roadmap and improve our product offerings.

Akeneo was ranked second place in several categories as well, including the “Usability” category, which analyzed the technological intelligence of the vendor’s software across the user’s experience, including the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). Ventana Research also factored in the usability of the software by employees of varying skill levels and expertise. With the constantly shifting job market and economic conditions, this is a factor that organizations need to heavily consider when evaluating vendors as quick tool adoption can reduce cost and save time.

Often, when an organization looks to improve its customer experience, they take a “customer-first” approach, which is fair; however, focusing on the customer experience before the product experience is like building the house without pouring the foundation first.

The product experience is the key to exceeding customers’ expectations. It’s what unifies an organization’s efforts to scale and grow, and a well-implemented PX strategy brings more value to the business by enabling efficient expansion to new channels and an experience that your buyers can trust. 

You can learn more about the 2023 PXM Value Index here, or check out a summary of Akeneo’s results in the Ventana Market Perspective. If you’re curious as to how far along your organization is to providing world-class product experiences, you can take our self-assessment for an analysis of your current PXM maturity level and personalized tips and tricks for improving your PXM practice.

1. Identify the team

Who uses a PIM?

2. Identify the goals

What are your PIM pain points?

• Scattered, manually managed, redundant product information 

• Siloed teams, technology, and communication

• Slow time-to-market 

• Inability to scale

• Poor product experiences that result in lost sales, unhappy customers, and high return rates

What are your strategic growth goals?

3. Identify the features

What makes a good PIM system?

Other factors to consider:

The Right PIM Vendor for You

Bringing together the right PIM team is the crucial first step for any successful PXM project, because implementing a Product Information Management (PIM) solution is a wide-ranging process that involves a wide swath of your organization. That means it’s critical to identify the key stakeholders and decision-makers in your organization early in the implementation process and help them understand the potential benefits of implementing PIM.

To help you garner support for PXM across your organization and become an evangelist for the power and potential of great product experiences, we’ve collected three tips to help you ensure your organization understands the value it can bring.

1. Emphasize Return on Investment

Improved process efficiency, a more manageable workload, and fewer manual tasks through automation are all good things that are made possible by a robust PIM. Decision-makers and executives, however, are typically more convinced by its impact on the bottom line.

They want to know how much the solution will cost, as well as what benefits the company could see if they do make this strategic investment. Namely, they need to understand the ROI, or return on investment, this solution holds. So, spread the word about the ROI of PIM by tracking key performance indicators, from improved conversion rates, reduced returns, improved time-to-market, lower enrichment costs, and even increases in average order volume.

Point to examples like Midland Scientific, a scientific instruments and lab equipment manufacturer, and an Akeneo customer. They were 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.

2. Reflect on the cost of bad product experiences

How do you define a product?

It’s all about the data!

Test-drive your PIM with print connectivity

• How do my customers access product data?
• How do they consume this data now?
• Is this the way they want to be fed product data or is this just the way we’re feeding them data now? 

5 steps from digital to print to test your PIM

PIM to print solutions: how far can you go?

A few key points to bear in mind

• What data do you need and where is it stored?
• What are your applications?
• Remember to test your PIM – and when it comes to proof-of-concepts, digital publishing is a thorough and effective way of testing
• When it comes to complex print requirements, PIM to print tools are the only effective solution

But there’s another way: open source software.  

Today, open source is everywhere. Some of the most well-loved programs are open source, including the Mozilla Firefox web browser, Linux operating system, VLC Media Player, and, of course, Akeneo. It’s even made its way to some of the most commonly used business solutions: digital asset management software.

What is DAM software?

Digital asset management software helps you organize, track, and share your digital assets across the entire content lifecycle. Digital assets include anything that is needed to identify, market, and sell your products, including written descriptions, photos and images, videos, logos, graphics, and typefaces. DAM can also include sales presentations, RFPs, spreadsheets and other documents, as well as product data like design files and models. 

DAM software provides a single point of access to all of your organization’s digital assets, across departments and around the globe. It often integrates with your product information management (PIM) software, supplying the assets needed to market and sell your products. Integration between PIM and DAM is ideal: it allows organizations to increase efficiency, improve the customer experience, and boost revenue. 

No matter how you choose to use it, DAM is quickly becoming an essential tool for large enterprises with many products and a lot of digital content.

Common features of DAM software

There are many different types of DAM software: open source or proprietary, cloud-based or on-premise, integrated with PIM or stand-alone. However there are several core features that exist in top-of-the-line DAM software tools. 

• Ability to upload, download, and share digital media assets and documents both individually and in groups
• Storage of multiple file types including images (jpg, png, gif); video (mp4, mov, wmv); audio (mp3, wav); designs (psd, ai, indd); and documents (pdf, docx, xlsx pptx, zip)
• Ability to resize assets and save them as new file types
• Customizable metadata including keywords and descriptions
• Ability to search by category, keyword, and more and preview files
• Access and permissions controls
• Version tracking and control
• Collaboration tools

Benefits of DAM software

When your digital asset management software has all of these features, it becomes a true “hub” where your teams—particularly marketing and sales—can find what they need, when they need it. That leads to numerous benefits, such as:

• Better collaboration between teams
• Improved accuracy in product information
• Easier product data syndication via automation
• More consistent brand presentation
• Faster content creation and time to market
• Better ROI on marketing campaigns
• Increased operational efficiency 
• More value for your customers 

What is open source DAM software?

Open source digital asset management software simply means that the source code is publicly available. All users can access and make changes to the source code, like adding or removing certain features or integrating it with their existing ecosystem. 

The opposite of open source software is called proprietary software. Users can’t see or modify the source code in proprietary software, so the only customizations available to them are those set by the vendor. Because SaaS operates in the cloud, it has traditionally been proprietary, and doesn’t provide users with any executable files. Open source SaaS aims to change that by allowing the user to choose between customization or a more traditional model. 

Benefits of an open source DAM solution

The fact that you can see and modify the code of open source digital asset management solutions gives certain businesses many advantages, including greater agility and creativity, which can be especially valuable for larger organizations. While not perfect for every organization, an open source DAM tool can offer certain functionality that a traditional commercial offering often can’t.

Customization

The biggest benefit of open source DAM solutions is their customizability. With access to the source code and files, programmers can build or remove nearly any feature they desire; you can create your own workflows, integrate with your existing technology, exercise more control over how files are stored and shared, and more. It’s the best option for organizations with specific needs.

Scalability

Content is still king: There are more channels, content types, and personalization options than ever before. Many organizations are managing hundreds of millions of digital assets with increasingly large file sizes, making the scalability of open source DAM software a big plus. Because you can create your own workflows and decide how you will store and manage your files, you won’t be boxed in as your organization—and your digital asset library—grows.

Innovation

Open source software attracts a community of like-minded programmers with a common interest: To make the program as useful as possible. Yet this community will also come from a wide variety of backgrounds, industries, and experiences, bringing different perspectives that can help accelerate innovation and create DAM software that is a leader in its space.

Support

The same community that provides constant innovation and new ways of thinking also doubles as a support team. Many open source DAM systems have active, highly collaborative communities that provide guidance and help each user get the most from the software. Thanks to hundreds or thousands of programmers working together, open source software also releases bug fixes faster than proprietary software, which only has a small team of support specialists.

Lower cost

Because SaaS is cloud-based, it’s lower-cost than hosted data centers, which require on-premises hardware and large IT teams. Open source SaaS is even more affordable, as there typically aren’t any licensing fees. While you’ll likely still pay for storage, proprietary software comes with both storage and licensing costs. And because open source DAM solutions are so customizable, you’ll also save resources through efficiency. 

More choices

Most open source DAM software today has an “out-of-the-box” version that can be set up quickly and easily. From there, you can choose to use the default features without making any changes, or you can leverage the open source licensing to customize your solution. That makes it a good choice for both smaller organizations, who may want the ability to customize in the future, as well as larger organizations who need to hit the ground running, but also want the ability to make changes. 

Drawbacks of an open source DAM software

Though helpful for many organizations, open source DAM solutions are not the right for every team. Let’s take a look at a few reasons why a commercial DAM tool may be a bitter fit for your business.

No personalized support

Though open source software often comes with an extensive network of developers to rely on, there is no direct support or service team there to support you if you have questions or concerns. That means no user manuals, no tutorials, no support reps, and that can be quite daunting to a team that may not be the most technically adept.

Usability

Often, commercial DAM tools are easier to use and have better UX design because they will have teams dedicated to this purpose. On the flip side, open source solutions are often built by developers who focus on functionality rather than usability, so even though it may technically be able to resolve the issue you’re looking to fix, it may be overly-complicated or require more time to set up and learn.

Potential security risks

One of the best benefits of open source technology is that it’s collaborative and open in nature; but that’s also one of its biggest potential pitfalls. With literally anyone able to update the code at any time, there’s always the risk that someone comes in with malicious intent. Though it’s rare, it’s something that does happen, and is something you should take into serious consideration when evaluating DAM tools.

So what’s the best digital asset management software: open source or proprietary? While the answer depends on what your organization is looking for; while open source DAM technology may fit your needs best, it’s not for everyone, and you should explore all options before making a decision.

At Akeneo, our PIM software has been a native OpenSaaS cloud application since 2017, deployed on the secure, reliable Google Cloud platform. Our API-first approach means you can easily connect your DAM software to our PIM and integrate other technology, too, for an omnichannel product activation strategy that provides a seamless customer experience from start to finish. If you’re ready to learn more, check out our article on how open source PIM and DAM systems work together and why this integration could be the foundation of your success.

What is price management for retail eCommerce?

• Business revenue and profits
• Competitors’ pricing
• Costs of production
• Market trends and analytics
• Value to the consumer

The main components of a price

• Supply and demand. Material shortages, plant closings, increased competition, demographic shifts, new technologies, and economic fluctuations can all affect your supply and demand. This creates “pricing pressure” that drives prices up or down, and it’s essential to be able to predict and leverage this pressure.
• Marketing and value. Your product’s value goes up and down based on how your customers perceive it, rather than how much it actually costs you to make. If they are willing to pay more, you can charge a higher price than your competition. After all, a Samsonite suitcase and a Louis Vuitton serve the same purpose. 
• End-user transactions. Knowing when to apply discounts, rebates, and other incentives is a transaction-level decision, as supply and demand vary by location. Mismanagement at the transaction level can cost enterprise businesses hundreds of thousands, yet it’s often a neglected part of retail price management.

Retail pricing strategies

• Cost-based pricing. While you’ll still take into account the demand side of the equation, in this model your pricing is determined by adding a profit level to your base cost. This will give you the price floor and price ceiling for your product, or the lowest and highest prices you can charge. Most organizations will then set the optimal price somewhere in between the floor and ceiling. 
• Competition-based pricing. It’s always smart to keep an eye on your competition, but if your product has similar features as others in a highly competitive market, you might choose this price list management strategy. This strategy can work well for newcomers to a market, but businesses will need to closely monitor competitor pricing while ensuring they still make a profit. 
• Value-based pricing. This strategy puts the emphasis on how much customers value your product. It’s a bit more involved, as finding out what your customers are willing to pay takes research, data, and trial-and-error. It also doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll become the next Gucci—simply that you may be able to charge at least a little bit more than your competitors because your customers correlate your brand with an intangible benefit.

What is price management software?

• Give customers the information they want
• Increase efficiency with automation
• Quickly apply updated pricing changes across the board
• Stay agile in uncertain market conditions
• Reduce margin erosion
• Reduce errors and delays that cut into profits
• Scale complex, global pricing strategies

Finding the best price management software

• Integrates with your customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), product information management (PIM), and configure, price, quote (CPQ) solutions, among other technologies
• Has defined workflows and a clear procedure for determining price changes
• Can scrape data for the products, regions, currencies, and languages you need
• Builds logical, flexible strategies based on demand patterns, elasticity, and more
• Includes a self-service option to choose your own variables and create custom pricing
• Alerts you to important price management developments
• Brings everything together in a cohesive, easy-to-use dashboard

Integrating price management and product information software

But search isn’t just about internet-wide search engines like Google. It’s also crucial that B2B business and B2C companies alike offer search tools that can help consumers navigate their own eCommerce or mobile shopping experiences and find the specific products they’re looking for at a moment’s notice.

Building a site search function can be a complex and challenging process, one filled with product data-related pitfalls and site performance issues. That’s why Akeneo teamed up with our partners Algolia and Capgemini to create this exhaustive list of tips, tricks, and best practices to help you master all that site search has to offer. Plus, we’ll dive into exactly how a PIM solution can set you up for success.
 

How site search impacts your customer experience

Search and discovery is at the heart of great customer experiences. Consumers want and expect to be able to search for products easily on any eCommerce site or other shopping platform. Up to 30%of all visitors utilize a search box when offered. Plus, giving this large, ever-growing percentage of consumers a good site search experience can go a long way toward boosting conversion rates: according to the same study, site search is 1.8x more effective at producing conversions.

Site search can also have a big impact on the product experience that you offer to your consumers: two-thirds of shoppers say that they have abandoned their purchase due to a bad product experience, and almost 70% of shoppers say that poor search experience is a poor product experience.

But it’s not just about offering a search tool — the searches you provide have to be accurate and provide a compelling list of products to customers. Solène Le Saout, Manager Partnerships EMEA  at Algolia, noted that bad site search offerings, “threaten growth and disrupt the customer journey,” and researchers have found that a 12% of shoppers will bounce to a competitor’s site after an unsatisfactory search.

Finally, search goes beyond the search bar. A capable search solution will also power your Category pages – or Product Listing Pages – where the key criteria of a great search are also critical for a highly converting shopping experience.
 

What good site search means

Site search is clearly popular with consumers, and a valuable resource for retailers — but most companies are falling short of consumer expectations. The frustration involved in the overall product search experience results in an unacceptable level of churn and burn: to the tune of 68%, according to Forrester.

So, how can you build a satisfying site search tool? According to Akeneo partners Algolia and Capgemini, it’s all about finding a platform that fits your needs — both now and in the future. “Your customers are looking for an intuitive and immersive experience when they access your website,” according to Solène Le Saout. “Your job is to anticipate their needs, help them easily find that product, complete the purchase, and come back.”

Your solution should provide a wide range of features that can help you provide an advanced search experience both now and as your site continues to grow. That includes strong analytics tools to help you understand your customers and refine your sales channels, as well as customization tools to ensure customers see exactly the results they’re looking for. Your site search platform should also perform reliably, quickly, and easily with features like typo tolerance, suggestions, filters, synonyms, and multilingual options.

A good site search solution will also be built on a strong foundation of reliability and security, meaning that it should offer security features like SOC 2 and SOC 3 compliance, API keys, cluster isolation, and multi-tenant architecture. It should also provide a reliable infrastructure that requires very low if not no oversight from your developers, along with a support team dedicated to handling a wide range of site search issues. That way, you can be sure that not only your search tools are never down or offline, but your engineering team spends time on iterating and innovating on your product experience rather than maintaining a complex infrastructure.
 

Why good product data is crucial for site search

Having a good site search platform alone is not enough, of course. Jérémie Devie, Business Analyst at Capgemini notes that, “A foundation of solid product data is needed to answer your customers’ needs and increase conversions.”

This includes having the right attributes to ensure your customers’ searches don’t bring up the wrong product, instituting good data governance policies, and enriching product titles and descriptions with relevant keywords. It also includes ensuring your data is consistent and accurate, as well as correctly categorizing your product information.

In order to do all of these things and provide the best product experience possible, you need a strong solution to help you collect, standardize, enrich, contextualize, and distribute your product data — like Akeneo PIM! Akeneo PIM is designed to help you take control of your product data and provide superior product experiences for your customers through the power of features like site search. Reach out to an Akeneo expert today to see how our PIM technology, together with our extensive network of partners like Algolia and Capgemini, can help you provide exceptional product experiences through site search.