Whether you’re a retailer with a host of suppliers helping to fill your product catalog, a manufacturer with a throng of retailers ready to sell your products to the masses, or the distribution company in the middle, you likely have a long list of business partners. These partners need the same thing you do to succeed in this omnichannel age — great product experiences built on a foundation of accurate, consistent, and compelling product information and assets.

But without a dedicated space for you to collaborate with external partners like suppliers, retailers, or distributors, and internal teams like sales reps and customer care workers, it’s easy for inaccurate, inconsistent, or outdated product data to reach your customers. Those mistakes can add up quickly, leaving you or your partners with low-quality product data filled with errors and inconsistencies and slow enrichment processes, which lead to bad product experiences, increased costs, and decreased revenue.

What’s needed is a dedicated space for sharing and exchanging product information and assets easily, efficiently, and securely. That’s where two of Akeneo’s products, Shared Catalogs and Supply Data Manager, come in. They’re designed to make it easier than ever to work together with your internal teams and partners and collaborate to create compelling product experiences, slash enrichment costs, and boost revenue.

Let’s take a closer look at how these two new innovations can help your team unlock growth.

Share Data Seamlessly

Managing product data is often a challenge for brands and manufacturers, particularly when it comes to sharing data with retail and distribution partners. Akeneo Shared Catalogs is designed to help your organization conquer those challenges with relative ease.

Shared Catalogs enables your teams to share specific product data and assets with selected partners via a dedicated, secure portal. This offers your retail and distribution partners a quick and easy way to access your product information, including digital assets, directly from you via an easy-to-use, flexible, and browser-based interface. It even comes complete with search capabilities to help them find what they need and export it on demand. Plus, Shared Catalogs gives your team increased control over who can access your product catalog, meaning that your retail and distribution partners can access the information they need — and only the information they need.

The results? Higher productivity and increased collaboration with external partners, on-demand access to your product information to pressure and workload from your teams, and improved product data quality and accuracy on partners’ sales channels. What does that mean? Better product experiences, higher conversion rates, and increased customer loyalty for your organization.

Provide Accurate, Consistent Data to Internal Teams

Shared Catalogs can also help organizations by providing them with a dedicated space to share accurate and up-to-date product catalog information.

With Shared Catalogs, your internal teams such as sales, marketing, and customer service departments can use a flexible and easy-to-use interface complete with search capabilities to ensure they have access to the latest product information. This gives your team a window into your Akeneo PIM instance, allowing employees to access information without forcing them to learn and use a new system on top of the many they already utilize. If they want, your internal teams can even consume it directly in the PIM user interface or share it with prospective customers, making collaboration even easier to manage and offering product managers increased control over access to a shared product catalog.

With Akeneo Shared Catalogs, organizations are able to collaborate with team members more easily and effectively, resulting in accelerated time-to-market, sinking enrichment costs, and improved product data accuracy. That translates to more selling days for your teams, better product experiences for your customers, and increasing revenue for your organization.

 

Onboard Suppliers with Ease 

Brands and retailers, of course, don’t just need to share product data among internal teams. They too need to communicate with external partners, namely the suppliers that help provide the products they sell. Enter Supply Data Manager.

Supply Data Manager is for anyone — retailers, distributors, multichannel brands, discrete manufacturers, and anyone else who is looking to improve workflows with suppliers. It provides a dedicated browser-based interface to help suppliers quickly and easily understand what information their team needs to provide for their sales partner. Sellers can then review and approve this new data. The data is then automatically fed directly into the seller’s Akeneo PIM instance, without forcing them to manually re-import or map attributes for each supplier.

Supply Data Manager also offers simplified supplier information acquisition processes by offering a familiar interface to manage suppliers, review, and accept the new products and information that they have provided.

Akeneo clients using Supply Data Manager have reported several business benefits, including better relationships with suppliers and accelerated time-to-market, improved product data accuracy, and consistency, and increased revenue.

 

Unlock Growth with Shared Catalogs and Supply Data Manager

Whether you’re a retailer, distributor, or manufacturer, you need to be able to send and receive information with your business partners easily and efficiently. That’s why Akeneo created Shared Catalogs and Supplier Data Manager.

Akeneo Product Cloud

Shared Catalogs and Supply Data Manager are just the start of what Akeneo has to offer. Start your journey towards better product experiences today.

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Casey Paxton, Content Marketing Manager

Akeneo

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 

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.