PIM technical components are important but so are team roles, training, and adoption! This dual need to focus on both tech and team pushed us to rename our department. Instead of Product Information, we now talk about Product Experience Management (PXM) and our obligatory first step now includes a readiness and governance phase where our client’s PXM program team is created and brought up to speed, collaboratively.

PXM touches more than development; it impacts your product catalog management functions including marketing, merchandisers, legal, and more. Their day-to-day tasks, including how they collaborate to keep data clean, accurate, and complete to send to all their channels, will be impacted. So, it’s better to be prepared with the right people, with the right remit, and a strong team dynamic. 

Based on what we’ve learned at Valtech over the years, we put together a list of the five must-have roles for a successful Product Experience Management (PXM) program team and what to look for when hiring or promoting key players.

1) PXM Champion

The PXM Champion is the program owner who coordinates all teams involved in the PIM integration project. This person provides consistency and communication from the discovery phase to implementation to support and maintenance. During the discovery phase, the PXM Champion helps map an organization’s stakeholders and ensures all impacted business and technical users are involved in relevant communications and workshops.

When hiring or promoting a PXM Champion, look for someone with deep knowledge of the product catalog management organization (the different people who touch the product data before it is sent to different channels). This person should have a business profile with technical understanding, listen to users’ needs, and document processes while unifying the different functions of the organization across the same product data quality goal. The PXM Champion also validates the technology strategy, understands PIM concepts, and is responsible for creating an enrichment strategy, managing roles and users with access to the PIM platform, and training internal users.

The PXM Champion’s primary goals include time and budget savings by bringing the right people into the process at the right time and data ownership to coordinate enhanced product pages across channels.

2) Product Data Specialist

A Product Data Specialist is intimately familiar with a company’s products, attached information, and the needs that drive customers’ product choices. They are responsible for enriching the product, such as SKU, descriptions, specifications, and attributes, and understanding the most valuable product information for seamless end-user navigation and conversion on different channels.

When hiring or promoting a Product Data Specialist, look for someone who already knows the product information, is responsible for data quality, documents the data format, updates data errors, and connects with channel owners and merchandisers to answer their product attribute format requirements. 

3) Systems Architect

A Systems Architect is critical for ensuring seamless data transfers in and out of the PXM platform, acting as a central repository for all attributes and assets. They work with PIM solutions, such as Akeneo, to design solutions that support integration, system stability, scalability, and security.

When hiring or promoting a Systems Architect, look for someone with expertise in data architecture, systems integration, and API development, who can create custom scripts and connectors, identify and address bottlenecks, and configure security and firewall settings.

4) Data Governance Officer

A Data Governance Officer is responsible for managing data quality, security, and privacy policies and ensuring that data is accurate, consistent, and compliant. They are also responsible for defining data standards and processes, managing data security, identifying data quality issues, and recommending solutions.

When hiring or promoting a Data Governance Officer, look for someone with expertise in data governance, data quality, and privacy policies, who can develop and implement data quality metrics, establish data standards and processes, and monitor data quality.

5) The Channel Owner

The Channel Owner plays a crucial role in your PXM program, second only to your PXM program champion. They work with your PIM champion and product data specialist to quickly adjust your product information strategy, driving the output your channels need. They monitor errors when pushing to external channels and track the performance of your product catalog for better customer conversions. 

When hiring or promoting a Channel Owner, look for someone who can screen channels to ensure up-to-date data, take customer feedback, track product updates’ impact on conversion, communicate with the PIM team, and recommend SEO optimizations.

The Channel Owner’s main goals are to increase the level of information on all channels’ product pages and analyze the product page’s performance compared to the completeness of product data.

Remember the Business Users!

The people that will work with your PIM are essential in this process. Make sure the five roles stated above understand the importance of the Business Users, and work to implement an efficient governance structure to ensure their needs are met. Business Users make your project a success, and without them, there is no adoption.

You’ve got your team, now what?

A successful kick-off is crucial, and involving key sponsors from the start will set the tone. In the next article, we will cover the importance of setting clear objectives and accurate KPIs to measure them, connected with your customers’ and channels’ goals.

Get ready to start your discovery and keep your PXM program on time, on budget, and with the proper scope with the Akeneo x Valtech partnership. Or, feel free to check out this previously recorded webinar to discover how to leverage AI technology into your PX Strategy.

Now imagine you click the “Furniture” menu on a site and the options are “Lounge,” “Relax,” and “Recharge.” No longer clear where you’ll find the bed frames, right? 

That’s the power of product taxonomy. The way you organize and display your products directly impacts your brand’s reputation, customer experience, and ultimately, conversion rates. 

At first glance, product taxonomy may seem as simple as putting the right products in the right category, but that can be easier said than done… especially when you’re working with tens of thousands of products. Let’s take a deeper dive into what product taxonomy means, why it matters, and the best practices to follow to see the biggest impact. 

What is Product Taxonomy?

Product taxonomy is a set structure used to organize and categorize a vast amount of product information in a logical, easy-to-understand way. The main goal of any taxonomy system is to present both structured and unstructured product data in a way that is quickly digestible for both internal teams and consumers.

Think of product taxonomy like a tree. You sort products into categories, and then those categories branch out into smaller groups, organized with tags. These metadata tags play a huge part in helping your consumers find your site. Search engines, browsers, and web crawlers use them to understand the structure, content, and context of your web pages, which in turn improves your website’s discoverability and search engine rankings.

Let’s take a quick look at an example. Luxury fashion brand Fendi has their products initially sorted into large buckets in their menu; namely, “Women”, “Men”, and “Kids”. Then, clicking into just one of this categories gives you a range of items to choose from within that category. So, you click under “Women”, and you see all the types products targeted for women that Fendi offers, such as bags, shoes, and accessories. Then, taking it a step further, Fendi allows its shoppers to click into one of these sub-categories and personalize even further; by selecting “Accessories”, you can see a list of the different types of accessories offered such as scarves, socks, sunglasses or belts. How Fendi decides to organize and list their products is their product taxonomy, and has a direct effect on the shopping experience.

What are the Benefits of Taxonomy Management?

When your product taxonomy management game is on point, your business benefits. Here’s how: 

• Skyrocketing search engine rankings: A well-structured product taxonomy that uses relevant keywords and metadata tags helps search engines like Google more accurately index and rank your content. These tags include crucial information such as the title, description, and keywords related to your products.  What that means for you is better visibility in search results, increased organic traffic, and a higher likelihood that potential customers will find your products online.
• Boosted conversion rates: When your product taxonomy is easy to navigate and understand, consumers can quickly find the products they’re looking for, which in turn creates a better shopping experience. Since happy customers are more likely to make a purchase (and return for future purchases), this positive experience often translates into a higher conversion rate.
• Personalized customer experiences: Streamlined taxonomy management helps you create a more tailored shopping experience for each customer. By offering product categories and filters that resonate with your target audience, you can make it easier for them to find products that match their preferences and needs. A personalized experience not only leads to higher customer satisfaction, but also stronger customer loyalty.
• Simplified inventory management: An efficient product taxonomy structure allows for easier inventory tracking and organization. With a well-defined product hierarchy, your internal teams can more efficiently manage stock levels, monitor product performance, and make informed decisions regarding product assortment and merchandising.

How Does a PIM Solution Support Product Taxonomy Management?

Let’s revisit that last bullet point. Product taxonomy can simplify your product management processes… if you’re using the right tools. A product information management (PIM) solution is the secret weapon to take your product taxonomy management to the next level. 

Manually managing taxonomy can be inefficient and error-prone, especially at high inventory levels. With thousands of products, it’s easy to imagine accidentally applying the wrong tag or sorting a product into the wrong category. PIM solutions allow you to automate many of the mundane tasks associated with taxonomy management, such as data entry, updates, and validation. This not only saves time and resources so your team can focus on higher value tasks, but also reduces the risk of inconsistencies and errors in your product data.

PIM systems also help by centralizing all of your product information, including taxonomy structure, in one place. This creates a reliable and consistent record that can be accessed by marketing, sales, IT teams, and other stakeholders. By creating a single source of truth, you can ensure that everyone is working with the most up-to-date and accurate information, essential for maintaining a well-organized product taxonomy.

Whether you’re selling through your own D2C site or partnering with retailers, PIM tools make it easy to syndicate your product content and taxonomy across all your sales channels. This means your customers receive consistent and accurate product information, regardless of where they’re shopping. 

Product Taxonomy Best Practices

Of course, the better you structure your product taxonomy, the more impactful it will be to your bottom line. To optimize your product taxonomy, make sure to follow these best practices: 

Use logical organization and clear naming conventions

Your product taxonomy should be easy for both internal teams and customers to understand. Each category, subcategory, and tag should have clear, descriptive names that accurately represent the products within them. (Remember our bed frame example at the start?) For eCommerce, consider using terminology that aligns with common search terms to support SEO. Pro tip: Create a visual representation of your taxonomy hierarchy to further help users navigate where they want to go.

Prioritize the customer

Nobody wants to navigate through ten different categories and subcategories to find the one product they’re looking for. The golden rule is to enable customers to reach their product in three clicks or fewer by providing intuitive navigation options and filters. Consider what kind of information and product attributes are most valuable to your customers during their decision-making process (ex. are desk buyers more concerned about the color or the size?), and incorporate these details into your taxonomy.

Utilize PIM tools for automation and efficiency

Remember how we said a PIM solution can help? The best taxonomy structures are managed by a PIM tool which can automate and easily maintain your categories and tags. Not only does this cut down on time and errors, it allows you to easily review and update your product taxonomy periodically to make sure it remains both relevant and effective.

Product taxonomy affects search engine rankings, customer experience, conversion rates, and more, making it an absolutely critical aspect of your business’s success. By adhering to best practices and tapping into PIM tools, you can make your taxonomy management more efficient for both your consumers and your internal team. Always a good sign for your bottom line. 

Want to see how Akeneo’s PIM solution can help support your product taxonomy management? Let’s talk. 

Why does it matter? With an effective product management strategy, you’ll be better positioned to attract and retain customers, increase sales, and stay ahead of the competition in the fast-paced world of eCommerce. Plus, by staying on top of emerging product trends and evolving customer needs, you can ensure that your products remain relevant and in-demand. Not to mention, effective product management can help you streamline your operations and improve your time-to-market.

In this article, we’ll explore the ins and outs of eCommerce product management, including what it is, what an eCommerce Product Manager does, and how a Product Information Management (PIM) solution can help streamline your product management process.

What is Product Management in eCommerce?

Product management involves overseeing the product roadmap, or the entire lifecycle of a product from its initial creation to its end, with the goal of creating products that meet customer needs and generate revenue for the business. It involves working cross-functionally with teams such as marketing, design, and engineering to develop, launch, optimize, and promote products. 

While eCommerce product management involves the same basic principles, it specifically optimizes the entire online shopping experience, from product discovery to checkout and post-purchase support. Today’s consumers have high expectations when it comes to the online shopping experience, demanding seamless navigation, personalized product recommendations, and fast customer support. Investing in effective eCommerce product management helps brands meet these expectations, leading to a more loyal customer base. 

Because things are ever-changing in the world of eCommerce, the most effective product management also incorporates monitoring the competitive landscape, following the latest eCommerce trends, and keeping up with consumer demands to stay ahead of the competition.

What Does an eCommerce Product Manager Do?

eCommerce Product Managers act as trusty guides along the product journey, focusing on the online retail environment. An eCommerce product manager sets and oversees the product strategy, creates a product roadmap, defines the features, and works with teams across the organization to position the product for success, creating the best possible online experience for consumers. 

Though the exact responsibilities can differ based on the organization and product need, a breakdown could include: 

• • Market research: Identifying customer needs, market trends, and competitive landscapes.
  • Product roadmap: Creating an outline that maps the strategy vision and direction of the product and tracks progress.
  • Product feature definition: Defining product features and working with cross-functional teams to develop and launch the product.
  • Product launch: Leading the launch of the product and ensuring that it is promoted effectively to the target audience.
  • Product discovery: Enhancing search, navigation, and recommendation features to improve product discovery.
  • Online product experience: Ensuring product information is accurate, up-to-date, and well-organized.
  • Product performance monitoring: Monitoring success and making necessary adjustments to ensure that the product continues to meet customer needs and drives revenue.

Why is eCommerce Product Management Important?

The cost of launching a new product can vary wildly depending on the industry or brand, but most often, it falls within the $20,000 – $500,000 range. That’s a big investment for a company of any size… and one you don’t want to lose with a failed launch. 

That’s where product management comes in handy. Instead of assuming a new product will meet consumer needs or resonate in the market, eCommerce product management develops a strategy to set new products up for online success from square one and reduces the risk of a product flop. This strategy is created through digital market analysis conducted to uncover the unique differentiators and needs of online shoppers.

Plus, as eCommerce competition grows and customer needs evolve, product management can help businesses stand out from the crowd and attract and retain customers.

At its most effective, product management helps businesses streamline their operations by optimizing their product offerings, reducing time-to-market, and improving inventory management.

How can a PIM Solution Help eCommerce Product Management?

Speaking of inventory management, a PIM system should be an eCommerce product manager’s best friend. Product managers are often juggling a lot of information, and spend quite a bit of time chasing down product details and assets from departments across the organization. A PIM system makes it easier to manage eCommerce product information in several ways:

• Effectively store and manage product information that can be syndicated to eCommerce channels: A PIM software centralizes product information, making it easier for product managers to oversee and distribute these details to a wide variety of eCommerce channels. This can save time and reduce errors associated with manual data entry.
• Optimize product information for eCommerce channels: A PIM can help optimize product information for eCommerce channels, such as Amazon or a first-party site, by ensuring that the data is complete, accurate, and formatted correctly. This can improve the customer experience and increase sales – a product manager’s dream. 
• Simplify & improve time-to-market: The longer it takes you to gather, enrich, and verify product data, the longer it takes your product to hit the virtual shelves. A PIM can help streamline product launches by providing a single source of truth for product information, assets, and more. This can reduce the time and resources required to launch new products.

Remember, “composability” should be on your list of PIM feature requirements. A composable PIM will offer more flexibility than a monolithic architecture. This allows you to tailor your PIM solution to your specific needs and integrate with other systems in your tech ecosystem, such as eCommerce platforms, such as BigCommerce or Salesforce CC.

Effective eCommerce product management is a non-negotiable for businesses looking to succeed in the digital economy (which is basically all businesses). A PIM system can help manage eCommerce product information, improve the customer experience, and drive sales. By investing in eCommerce product management and leveraging the power of a PIM system, businesses can stay ahead of the competition and succeed in the rapidly-evolving eCommerce landscape.

Want a better idea of how PIM and eCommerce product management can work together to hit your product goals? Get a firsthand look here. 

Map and import the data you need, in the structure you want

Work smarter and faster by automating the import and export of data

Support better data governance with new options for product identifiers 

Discover all that Akeneo PIM Flexibility V7 has to offer.

What are Product Variants? 

Product Variant Examples 

• Potato chips that come in different flavors, such as salted or BBQ
• Couches available in different fabric materials and/or sizes
• Screwdrivers with long or short handles 
• Shampoo that comes in regular or travel-sized containers

Benefits of Product Variants for eCommerce Sales

• Improved conversion rate: Product variants keep consumers browsing on your eCommerce site longer – and reduce the chances they’ll check out your competitors. The easier it is for them to find the exact size, color, or style they need quickly, the more likely they are to convert.

• Increased sales: Not only do product variants impact conversion rate, they also can affect the total number of sales. Variations can allow you to reach new audiences that may have unique product needs.

• Improved customer experience: Product variants are key to providing a customized and personalized shopping experience, something that over 71% of consumers now expect from retailers. 
• More efficient internal operations: Instead of creating product variants for a t-shirt, some brands create a new product listing for every size and color combination. Not only does this confuse your customers, it definitely does not endear you to the internal team tasked with updating the listings. Product variants = a streamlined process. They allow teams to upload one “master” product and incorporate/adjust variants quickly as they go.

How PIM Can Support Product Variants

Akeneo is the ideal engine to support this omnichannel product experience strategy as it acts as a single source of truth for product information that can be quickly and efficiently contextualized and activated on every sales channel a company sells on. This benefit can be clearly quantified in Forrester’s recent Total Economic Impact (TEI) report on Akeneo, that found the incremental benefit provided by Akeneo’s data quality and management capabilities in new channels was responsible for 4.2% revenue growth over 3 years. 

Are you thinking about incorporating a new sales channel into your Akeneo solution? Let’s explore what a channel is and how you can prepare your Akeneo solution to unlock growth across all customer touchpoints, whether they’re owned by you or not.

What is a Channel in Akeneo?

Channels in Akeneo are used to adapt product information, product assortment, and mandatory fields to meet the requirements of each customer touchpoint within a product catalog. A company with an omnichannel strategy may sell the same product across many, or even dozens, of different customer touchpoints. 

A company selling in a print catalog, in an eCommerce platform, and through a marketplace may have three separate Akeneo Channels to support each version of the catalog. However, it’s important to think of each Akeneo Channel as an adaptation of product information, and not just a new destination of information. 

For example, a customer with four separate eCommerce storefronts with identical product information may need just 1 Akeneo Channel. Likewise, a mobile app and an eCommerce platform could also require just one Akeneo Channel if the product information, assortment, and mandatory fields (completeness) are identical. 

Adapt your Product Catalog

The first step in adding a new channel in Akeneo is to consider how your product content, assortment, and mandatory fields (completeness) will differ across channels. 

Product content

Different customer touchpoints often require different versions of the same product information. When adding a channel, it’s critical to first identify which information needs to be adapted and which information can remain the same across channels. 

Information that will remain the same can be left alone, while information that needs to be adapted to have a different value per channel needs to be configured in Akeneo. In the image below, you can see an example of how a Description attribute that’s been configured to have a different value per channel can support two separate descriptions. 

Note: We want to avoid doing redundant work, so be deliberate in identifying which information should actually change from channel to channel and what information can be shared. Need to modify some of your existing attributes to support separate values per channel? Check out this guide.

Don’t forget about your rich content! It’s often necessary to adapt your media across sales channels too. An eCommerce platform may require multiple high resolution images, while a print catalog may have just a handful of lower resolution or even black and white images. All of these different channel specific requirements can be supported with Akeneo’s Asset Manager. 

Assortment

It’s common for product assortment to change across channels. Category Trees in Akeneo manage product assortment and can be used to organize products within Akeneo. Each Channel in Akeneo can have a unique Category Tree. It’s quite common for products to be organized differently across channels. 

For example, print Category Trees are often much flatter while eCommerce Category Trees have multiple levels. Enriched Categories can also allow you to build channel specific category level content to build even more impactful experiences for customers. 

Completeness

Different channels may require more or less information. For example, a mobile or print channel may just need a few basic fields to meet customer expectations, while an eCommerce platform may need significantly more. Each channel in Akeneo can have different completeness settings to support this. This allows you to meet higher expectations for more detailed channels while launching rapidly on channels that require less information. 

Organize your Teams

Bringing a new channel to Akeneo often means incorporating a new team into your Akeneo environment. It’s important to understand early on who will be enriching products in Akeneo for your new channel and ensuring you have a clear definition of their roles and responsibilities. If an existing team will be enriching the new channel, it’s still important to ensure they are aware of their new responsibilities.

Training 

New teams being brought into Akeneo must be trained to work effectively in the tool. Akeneo offers a number of training options including free online courses and paid private training. It’s also possible to have a more experienced Akeneo user enable new teammates with some hands-on training. 

Permissions 

When adding new teammates to Akeneo, you want to ensure they’re working on the products and product information they’re supposed to with the help of Akeneo permissions. Consider which User groups and User Roles new teammates should have. Utilize Categories to control product access, Attribute Groups to control access to attributes, and Roles to control actions users can take in the PIM.

Process 

Map out the entire end-to-end product enrichment process for the new team. It’s important that every step is considered and that enrichment is done as effectively as possible. Utilize automation using Rules and Product Link Rules, and empower your teams on Teamwork assistant features to support rapid enrichment. It’s also critical to consider tasks or dependencies outside of Akeneo that new team members may need to contend with (like waiting for a photography team to take pictures, or a buyer to input a new product in an ERP system). 

Activate your Products

Now that you’ve adapted your product information for your new channel and enabled your new teammates, it’s time to get Products to your new Channel. In Akeneo, there are three primary ways to do this.

Akeneo Apps 

The Akeneo App Store gives you access to Akeneo Apps that provide a quick, high-quality integration to external systems with no developer intervention necessary. The App Store includes Apps for a number of platforms including Shopify, Adobe Commerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, BigCommerce, Channel Engine, ProductsUp, and more. In many cases, product mapping and scheduled exports can be handled directly in the Akeneo UI. Akeneo also allows you to build your own custom apps to meet your organization’s unique needs. 

Akeneo Activation for Retail 

Akeneo Activation for Retail allows you to send high quality product information and assets from Akeneo PIM to key retailers. By leveraging easy-to-use mapping, error reporting, and support for enhanced content, you can meet the requirements of your retailers at scale and deliver the customer experiences that increase discoverability and drive conversions.

Tailored Exports

Akeneo Tailored Exports allow you to build a custom export profile to map your Akeneo product information to the format of an external destination. Ideal for getting information to business partners, retailers, or internal teams, these exports can be scheduled to deposit a file into an external location (FTP server, AWS S3 etc.) and provide you with Akeneo native integration capabilities.

It’s critical that your organization manages every sales channel with Akeneo. Managing product information outside of Akeneo leaves you susceptible to inconsistent brand messaging, data inconsistencies, siloed workstreams, and excess content enrichment costs. 

Looking for other opportunities to improve your Akeneo solution? Take the Akeneo PX Strategy Assessment now.

1.Akeneo Activation for Retail

Akeneo Activation for Retail is a new solution intended for brands using or interested in using Akeneo PIM to manage their product catalog and activate it across their key retail channels, making it easier than ever before to sell your products on retail channels with the product experience that your customers expect. 

When utilized with Akeneo PIM, the powerful and user-friendly Akeneo Activation for Retail is proven to fuel exceptional product experiences, increase time-to-market, and reduce operational inefficiencies of being a first-party vendor selling to multiple retailers. With error reporting that enables a user to read and diagnose missing product information, Akeneo Activation for retail makes it easy for your team to map PIM source data to any and all retailer requirements.

2. Custom Apps

One size does not fit all when it comes to your Product Experience Management (PXM). Custom Apps provide a flexible solution to easily create an app to address almost any unique customer need, enabling organizations to innovate faster than ever before. A Custom App is an app created from the Akeneo Product Cloud to package in a SaaS-compliant way your specific needs that are not covered by our existing native features or existing Apps available on the Akeneo App Store. These SaaS native apps allow developers and integrators to alleviate the expense and time necessary to build and maintain custom integrations by leveraging tools provided through the Akeneo App Store.

3. Time-to-Market Insights

What’s the best way to beat out your competition? Get on the shelf earlier with a faster time-to-market and increased sales. Just announced as part of our Spring 2023 Release, Time-to-Market Insights brings new operational analytics to the Akeneo Product Cloud that identify opportunities to streamline the product data enrichment process in Akeneo PIM, providing your team with the data and insights you need to innovate and improve.

4. Akeneo for Shopify

Today, eCommerce teams have to pull from multiple scattered data sources to build their product catalog in Shopify.  The Akeneo App for Shopify enables customers to connect Akeneo PIM directly to their Shopify stores through Akeneo technology and Shopify APIs.  Customers can easily publish their optimized product content from Akeneo PIM directly into their Shopify stores, making it easier than ever to map and import Akeneo products into Shopify.

With this newly released app, customers can easily publish their optimized product content from Akeneo PIM directly into their Shopify stores, resulting in a faster time-to-market, more accurate and up-to-date product content, and more impactful product experiences that include images and technical or emotional information to your customers.

5. 10 additional new apps on the Akeneo App Store

That’s right, we released so much stuff that we had to combine a whole other 10 new announcements into one! We launched many more apps other than Shopify, including:

• Digital Asset Management (DAM) apps, such as the new TESSA Akeneo App by EIKONA Media, Filerobot Akeneo App by Scaleflex and Akeneo Image CDN by TwicPics, which will allow Akeneo customers to seamlessly access digital assets within Akeneo PIM and foster cross-platform collaboration between teams working in an external DAM and teams working in Akeneo PIM.
• Translation apps, such as Powerling x Akeneo App, and DeepL App by Induxx that will streamline workflows to make it easier for businesses to deliver localized content. 
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) based apps, such as ChatGPT Bee App by Dataggo and RoughDraftPro AI that leverage ChatGPT to speed content enrichment. Contentwise Catalog Builder App also leverages AI capabilities to generate product attributes and text.
• A new catalog classification app, Calago ETIM App, that creates a catalog structure in Akeneo PIM based on ETIM classifications, the international standard for technical products.

And that’s not even all. You can head to the Akeneo App Store to get a full account of all the new apps released.

6. Identifier Generator

Enable product managers to efficiently prepare products for market with the Identifier Generator, a new way to automate the generation of your identifiers during the creation process of your products. Create product identifiers, a critical piece of product information, directly in Akeneo PIM and ensure that your product identifiers are created and structured to match your specific needs. This new feature allows your organization to create the structure of your identifiers with product attributes, select your targeted products by specific families, and manage custom abbreviations for each property.

7. Enriched Categories

Create a better customer experience, powered by a stronger product experience. With Enriched Categories, your organization will be able to create more impactful experiences for your customers on your D2C site by providing them with access to more information about specific product lines, categories, or sub-categories. Enriched Categories enables your team to leverage e-merchandising information such as images, descriptions, and SEO content, all of which provide better information to your buyers.

8. AI-capabilities now available in Akeneo PIM

Thanks to Spring Release 2023, you can now leverage Artifical Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning directly inside of Akeneo PIM.  Automate the cleansing, deduplication, and categorization of product data as it is imported into Akeneo PIM, and support a faster time-to-market through AI-driven data cleansing.

9. Developer Tools and Sample Apps 

Akeneo’s platform makes it easier than ever before for you to interact with our ecosystem, ensuring that both our customers and integrators have access to everything they need. On the customer side, Business Users can feel confident that the applications that they need are easily accessible in the Akeneo app store off-the-shelf, are easily integratable. And for our integrators, partners and developers can integrate with Akeneo, reducing their Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) with confidence and ease.

10. Akeneo PIM Flexibility v 7.0 

The forever-free, open-source Akeneo PIM Community Edition (CE) now boasts some of the latest and greatest Akeneo features. CE customers and managed services version customers can now more easily export and import product information with the product UUID option, as well as mark the SKU input as optional, and more. See the full list of what’s included in Akeneo PIM Flexibility v7.0 here.

With a decade of dedication to product experiences in  our rearview mirror, we’ve released a ton of really exciting and innovative product updates, but Spring Release 2023 has truly been one to remember. We had a wonderful time celebrating with our PX community of customers, partners, and PX experts at Unlock Paris last week, and we look forward to seeing what we can create and build together in the future.

Expansion Award Winner: DELFINGEN 

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What makes them award winning? 

Acceleration Award Winner: Kolmi-Hopen 

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What makes them award winning? 

Global Award Winner: FENDI 

Who are they? 

What makes them award winning? 

Leadership Award Winner: Arkema

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Experience Award Winner: Smartphonehoesjes.nl

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Ambassador Honor Winner: Bowens

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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.