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PIM vs ERP integrations in the Product Ecosystem

Posted on by Virginie Blot
Product Experience

PIM vs ERP integrations in the Product Ecosystem

Gain a better understanding of what an ERP is, how it integrates with PIM, and how it fits into the larger product ecosystem to support PXM.

After working with dozens of companies over the last few years to build Akeneo solutions, I’ve spent more time than you can imagine talking about Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. This isn’t surprising because ERP solutions, now reimagined as Digital Operations Platforms (DOPs), are a foundational element within the technology stack of most companies, and represent a large investment in time, money, and tears (we’ve all been there). And when PIM enters the mix, companies naturally want to understand the strengths and limitations of each system and how they should interact with each other. So let’s break down exactly what ERP tools are and get a better understanding of their importance to product inception and basic enrichment, their limitations in supporting customer experiences, and best practices for integrating them with PIM solutions.  

What is ERP?

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is a category of business management software that centralizes, manages, and provides insights into core accounting, manufacturing, supply chain management, sales, marketing, and human resource business processes within an organization. Common characteristics of ERP solutions include a modular design with easy internal integrations, a shared database and data format, a consistent user interface, and the ability to manage real-time transactional data. Like most software solutions today, ERP solutions are moving towards cloud-based deployments and SaaS, but many companies still use legacy on-premise solutions that in some cases can be heavily-customized. The substantial implementation costs of ERP solutions and their criticality to core business processes make ERP solutions a significant investment for most companies.  

ERP Systems and Product Experience Management (PXM)

 ERP solutions play an important role in Product Experience Management(PXM) for many companies because they have traditionally served as a point of origin for products and an initial collection point for basic product information. Distributors, wholesalers, and retailers originate products in their ERP systems as part of the procurement process from suppliers, while manufacturers may utilize a Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) system to develop a product before passing it onto their ERP system. In both scenarios, the ERP system is typically where the Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) is generated to identify and differentiate products across various applications in the ecosystem.  While generating SKUs within the ERP system remains the modus operandi for most companies, a recent shift has seen some businesses in industries like Fast Fashion and Home Furnishing challenge this approach. For these companies, time-to-market and customer and product experiences drive the product creation process; brand managers and marketers originate products within their Product Information Management (PIM) system before passing it onto their back-office systems (ERP). To support this shift, many PIM vendors include capabilities for customers to generate incremental SKUs based on their unique naming conventions (Department IDs, Product Category, Supplier, etc.). It’s important to note here that regardless of where the product information originates, ERPs are still a necessary part of the ecosystem because PIM systems cannot be used to manage the rest of the vital back-office operations ERP systems perform.  ERP systems can play an important role in the creation of products in a company’s ecosystem, but they are not designed to create, manage, or distribute compelling product experiences for customers. ERP systems have rigid data models that inhibit product marketers from creating rich differentiated experiences with high levels of data governance, lack support for contextualization of product data (By Region, Language, and Sales Channel), and don’t have the ability to manage Media and Asset content. ERP systems also lack dedicated features to support product enrichment, which relies heavily on collaboration, automation, translation, and a user-interface built for marketers. Finally, getting data out of ERP systems can be a challenge; they don’t have syndication capabilities and store sensitive financial and customer information that brings additional security concerns that can complicate integrations with external systems. 

ERP systems are important, but theyre rigid back-office systems. They arent flexible enough to meet the needs of business users managing high-quality product catalogs.’

George Dzurickso Senior Director of Solution Architecture

Sitation
It’s critical to identify what data is actually relevant to crafting the customer experience when considering how your ERP system will support PXM. ERP systems manage a lot of information around procurement, fulfillment, internal reporting, and bill of materials that is important to the business, but irrelevant to customers. Leave this data in the back-office where it belongs! ERP systems do house useful product data though, because they are where procurement and product development teams populate basic product details like Name, Price, Basic Color, Short Description, and Dimensions when onboarding new products. This data may be a useful reference point or even a source of truth for brand managers and marketers building compelling customer-facing information in downstream systems (like PIM). Failing to delineate this useful customer-facing information from operational “back-office” data means more work for business-users in downstream systems, more complex integrations, and in extreme situations, it could mean a digital commerce experience that’s handcuffed to the catalog structure of a 15 year-old ERP system! 
ERP & PIM
 

ERP and PIM Integration Best Practices

When integrating an ERP system to a PIM system, establish a single source of truth for each data field and determine who can access and manipulate what within each system. Bring only relevant customer facing information from the ERP into the PIM and determine how frequently the data needs to be updated. Most ERP to PIM integrations communicate one-way (from ERP to PIM), but bi-directional integrations are sometimes necessary (though these are often more time-consuming and expensive). API-based integrations are preferred and will often require middleware software to support. Flat-file exports are also a viable solution when outdated ERP systems or security concerns preclude the use of APIs. Flat-file exports from an ERP to a PIM can also be more economical and are perfectly sufficient for smaller product catalogs that are updated less frequently.  Note: Many ERP systems do not support Model Variant relationships between products (e.g. T-shirts in multiple sizes and colors, TVs by screen size etc.). This relationship is expected by customers and should be built out to support digital commerce, either in a middleware layer or a PIM system.    ERP Systems are an important part of a company’s back-office ecosystem, but they should not be used to build, manage, and distribute customer-facing product experiences. PIM systems provide unique capabilities to manage product catalogs that cannot be replicated in an ERP. When approaching a digital transformation with PIM and ERP, build a composable solution that utilizes the capabilities and intended design of each system to maximize their value.   Still unsure of where to start? Feel free to reach out to us, and an Akeneo Expert will gladly walk you through first steps.

Adam Beatty, Community Evangelist

Akeneo

What is a Digital Product Catalog for eCommerce?

Posted on by Virginie Blot
Product Experience

What is a Digital Product Catalog for eCommerce?

A digital product catalog is an interactive listing of all of your products that’s hosted on a website, like a digital brochure, and allows your organization to create a truly omnichannel experience.

There’s nothing quite like cracking open a fresh, print catalog.  The colorful images. The leisurely flipping of pages. That new-catalog smell. It’s enough to inspire even the toughest customer to consider a purchase.  Yet the digital transformation is here, and eCommerce sales are on the rise, even for industries that traditionally operated with print catalogs only. The Granite Group, a wholesale distributor and Akeneo customer, says its eCommerce share of sales was about 20% in 2021—well above industry standards. What’s a traditional, print-catalog business to do?  The good news is that print catalogs aren’t going anywhere. They’ll remain integral to many sales processes, but they’ll need to be supplemented with digital product catalogs. The even better news is that you can use digital catalog software for both print and eCommerce, creating an omnichannel strategy that keeps up with the times.   

What is a Digital Product Catalog?

A digital product catalog is an interactive listing of all of your products that’s hosted on a website, like a digital brochure. The most basic type will allow customers to browse and see product information. More advanced digital catalogs also allow customers or sales reps to:
  • Make purchases directly through the website
  • Search for what they want
  • Compare items based on features and price point
  • Filter items by desired attributes
  • Watch videos or see 3D models
On the business side, there are lots of potential features that make it easy to create a digital catalog and see its benefits:
  • Easily create custom and shared catalogs 
  • Update product information
  • Track and manage your sales
  • Optimize for mobile and other new channels
Digital product catalogs weren’t always so packed with functionality. Back when the internet was just getting started, digital catalog creation might have involved simply uploading scanned PDFs of your print catalog. We’ve come a long way.   

How a Digital Product Catalog Can Benefit Your Business

No matter your industry or vertical, business success starts with customer experience. Your customers may be sales reps or distributors, but the story remains the same: Providing a seamless, immersive buying experience via a digital catalog helps move your customers more quickly from discovery to purchase.  What if you don’t have a digital product catalog? Or, what if your catalog is very basic, like that early-2000s scanned PDF version? The truth is that you could fall behind the competition.   We’ve all heard the story about how the human attention span is only 8 seconds, which is shorter than a goldfish’s. It isn’t exactly accurate, but studies have shown that our attention spans are indeed getting shorter.  There’s no telling your customers’ exact attention spans, but chances are if they head to your website and can’t find exactly what they’re looking for, they’ll bounce—and they’ll do so quickly. But give customers the product information they want, when they want it, where they want it with an easy-to-use digital catalog, and you’ll create loyalty for a lifetime.  Digital catalogs aren’t just for customers and sales reps. They also allow manufacturers, retailers, and their internal teams to have a single source of truth when it comes to product information. With digital catalog software, your catalog can automatically update product information so that everyone is on the same page. And that has big benefits for your business, including: 
  • Increasing agility. Print catalogs can take six months to a year to update. That dramatically affects your product release schedule and your time-to-market. If you operate in print or even in a basic digital catalog, you may wait to release new products. When you create a modern digital catalog, you can release your products whenever they’re ready—helping you stay agile and keep up with the competition. 
  • Streamlining operations. Digital catalog software ensures your engineering, product, sales, and marketing teams are all working with the same information, and the benefits are immeasurable. You’ll make fewer mistakes. You’ll communicate better. And you’ll always know the status of your products. 
  • Offloading inventory. Because print catalogs are time-consuming, many businesses only create one or two versions. With digital product catalog software, you can easily create as many versions or layouts as you want. The best idea? Create a catalog for old and surplus inventory you want to offload. Customers get a deal, and you get to focus on the future. 
The bottom line: Digital catalogs aren’t just good for business—they’re the future of business. Are you ready to get on board?  

Digital Catalog Creation: The Basics

Learning how to create a digital catalog can seem overwhelming. You have thousands of SKUs. Incredibly detailed product specifications. A global network of manufacturers and sales people. But that’s exactly what digital catalog software is for. Choose your software The first step is always to choose your digital catalog software. This is your central system for inputting data, organizing product information, and creating your catalog.  There are various tools and price points available, but the more features you have, the better. Videos and 3D models are becoming must-haves, and you’ll definitely want to provide the ability to search, filter, and compare.  Input your data The biggest barrier to digital catalog creation is often the sheer amount of data. This is another area where catalog design software comes to the rescue. Digital catalog creators like Akeneo Product Cloud allow you to easily input raw data from many different sources, including spreadsheets and product data management software. You can combine, enhance, and refine data until you have a complete and accurate description for every product.  Create a tagging system Even the most basic digital catalogs today allow customers to sort, filter, and search products. Product tagging is the foundation of these features. First you’ll need to categorize your products by function, size, type, and so on. Then you’ll tag each product so they can be found based on these attributes. Again, digital catalog software can help you automate this process. Sync your channels Using the same SKU, model number, and name for each product, across all of your channels, is essential to avoid confusion among both customers and your employees. From in-store to your website to your print catalog, consistent information makes it easier to find what you’re looking for. Your software should do this automatically.  If you don’t have a digital catalog, it’s time to bring your business into the future. And if you do have one, you might want to take another look and consider if it’s providing all the features you need. Because your digital product catalog shouldn’t just list your products—it should provide an immersive, seamless customer experience that encourages conversion.  At Akeneo, we’re experts at digital catalog creation, product information management (PIM), and customer experience, and we have industry-leading software that allows you to take advantage of that expertise. Start your free trial and let’s see how we can help. 

Casey Paxton, Content Marketing Manager

Akeneo

Supporting Commerce Trends with the Product Ecosystem

Posted on by Virginie Blot
Product Experience

Supporting Commerce Trends with the Product Ecosystem

Commerce trends and channels are constantly emerging and evolving. The best way to stay afloat and rise above the competition is through your product ecosystem; by starting at the foundation of your technology, you set yourself up for success.

In today’s fast-paced, dynamic, and exceedingly competitive commerce world, retailers and distributors need a healthy commerce ecosystem to succeed. Why? There have never been as many opportunities in the commerce industry, nor has there been as much competition.

From online retailers like Amazon and Etsy lowering the barrier to entry for entrepreneurs to sell products, to social media platforms like Instagram and Tik Tok entering the retail space, the eCommerce landscape has just exploded over the past few years and advancements in technology, increased competition, and the growth of available channels have made it easier than ever to buy and sell online.

 

eCommerce: Steadily growing, and showing no signs of stopping

As businesses came online during the COVID-19 pandemic, the global trend toward digitization surged ahead. Even with the recent rise in inflation, as regions began to reopen and consumers could shop in-person, eCommerce growth continues to climb. Merchants continue to follow consumer demand online, and this growth means more brands competing for customers.

Due to this increase in competition, the digital advertising dollar is not going as far as it used to. A recent study by Adobe saw that the rising cost of digital advertising was moving five times faster than inflation in the United States.

As the barrier to entry thins and the digital space becomes more crowded, brand identity and brand awareness will only become more crucial to draw more organic acquisition and retain more customers.

Not only are new competitors emerging, but new channel opportunities are as well. Brands and retailers need to be where their consumers are online to be top of mind, make an impact, and capture the sale. The typical social media user now spends about 15% of their waking life using social platforms; people around the globe are spending even more time scrolling through social feeds which leads to spending their money online.

Implementing an omnichannel product activation strategy is essential, and successful brands are the ones that are meeting customers where they already spend their time. The omnichannel opportunity is all about giving consumers choice and options around where, what, and how they engage with retailers and their products to make a purchase.

 

Utilizing the Product Ecosystem to Support Commerce Trends

Staying on top of commerce trends is not an option — it’s a necessity. For commerce business owners, keeping up-to-date on industry trends is particularly important to stay competitive and identify new opportunities. Partnering insight into commerce trends with a comprehensive, scalable, and well-functioning commerce ecosystem is the key to staying competitive and supporting your commerce business.

You’ve heard all of the ecosystem acronyms – ERP, PIM, MDM, and PLM, just to name a few, but why are they important? Whether you are B2C, B2B, a distributor or retailer, the end goal is the same – get your products to your consumers.

Most commerce brands have similar ecosystem components. However, the type, number, and scale of the tools or software they use for their online businesses will differ.

Identifying your desired business outcomes, key processes you want to improve, and what metrics you’ll use to measure impact will help guide your decisions on what systems within your commerce ecosystem will be most beneficial to your business.

Your commerce ecosystem can help you with marketing, sales, customer relations, inventory management, and product data and enrichment. Strong product data and the right commerce ecosystem can massively improve the customer experience, improve your time-to-market, and increase sales conversion.

That’s why the team here at Akeneo will spend the next few weeks diving into all the different areas of the product ecosystem, detailing what they are, how they interact with each other, and how to best utilize each piece of technology to create the most compelling omnichannel experiences. From the basics to the best practices, we’ll be providing you with everything you need to better understand the product ecosystem and how to build a scalable technology stack that supports the future of eCommerce.

Kendra McCarthy, Director of Enablement, Business Operations

Akeneo

PXM is the Key to Delivering Best-In-Class Customer Experience

Posted on by Virginie Blot
Product Experience

PXM is the Key to Delivering Best-In-Class Customer Experience

In an Akeneo-commissioned Forrester study, it was found that PXM and product experience (PX) are the foundation for customer experience (CX), but require the right technology, processes, and strategies in place for organizations to truly optimize their operations.

A customer’s experience with your product is no longer just a single interaction; they may discover you on Instagram, search for you on Google, and compare your product to others by looking at user reviews, all to purchase your product on Amazon. Every single one of those touchpoints, and more, contribute directly to your customer experience (CX). What does that mean? Product experience (PX) is foundational to customer experience.

This has been the mindset at Akeneo for some time, and in April 2022, we commissioned Forrester Consulting to explore this idea further. The research team at Forrester conduct an online survey with 452 global product strategy decision-makers with the intention to discover how product data and product content tools and processes impact engaging and contextualized customer experiences. 

What we found was fascinating – though the right tools, people, and strategies may be in place, organizations have yet to tap into the right functionality and combination of resources to optimize their product experience strategy. Organizations are struggling to create and harness quality product data that they can use to inform customer experience development and achieve business goals.

In particular, we discovered that:

Product experience is critical to customer experience and business success. 

Customer experience continues to dominate the path to growth for many organizations, but CX is impossible without quality product experiences and product data. Decision-makers recognize that top gains can be realized when their organization’s product activation strategy directly aligns with top-level business priorities.

78% of decision-makers report that product data is as critical as customer data to achieving customer experience (CX) goals.

PXM Is The Key To Delivering Best-In-Class CX Forrester Report

Product experience requires the right technology but won’t be achieved without the processes and strategies to align tech to outcomes. 

Respondents to the Forrester survey revealed that their organizations are not struggling with a lack of tooling, but rather that they have trouble tapping into key functionalities required to develop a robust product experience. You may have all the product information technology you need, but you don’t have a focused strategy on how these platforms should communicate and work together, causing communication silos and a subpar customer experience.

88% of respondents said that accurate, complete, and relevant product data is very important to create the best product experience.

PXM Is The Key To Delivering Best-In-Class CX Forrester Report

PXM champions have invested in their PXM capabilities and are reaping the rewards.

When organizations invest in tech, people, processes, and quality product data, they are able to turn actionable insights into decisions that improve the product experience. PXM maturity cannot be reached with poor product data; by prioritizing how they activate their product data, teams experience the full benefits of having actionable access to their PXM data, such as the ability to activate and localize across all channels. This, in turn, provides pathways to better data-driven decision-making, increased agility, and ultimately, better CX.

Omnichannel customer experiences are here to stay, and brands and retailers are going to have to activate their entire product record across every channel, whether it’s owned by them or not. But this requires a dedicated PXM strategy with investments in the right people, processes, and technologies because the customer experience starts with the product experience.

For more insights into how PXM is the foundation for a strong customer experience, you can download the full Forrester study here, or check out our on-demand webinar, featuring an industry analyst from Forrester breaking down the findings in detail.

Want to see the full results?

Casey Paxton, Content Marketing Manager

Akeneo

Highlights from Unlock Boston 2022

Posted on by Virginie Blot
Akeneo News

Highlights from Unlock Boston 2022

One of the biggest PIM/PXM events of the year came to the US in October – Akeneo’s Unlock conference! Experts and leaders from all across the PIM space came together to discuss the future of eCommerce.

For just about ten years now, Akeneo has hosted a yearly conference known as Unlock (or Akeneo Partner Summit, if you’ve been around from the start). It’s held every year in Paris and is one of the most highly anticipated PXM events of the year, featuring engaged audiences with expressed interests in collaborating toward the future of omnichannel commerce. And just about a month ago, in early October, Unlock expanded to the States. That’s right, Akeneo hosted its first-ever Unlock Boston event, and let’s just say it was a big hit; from keynote presentations to technical workshops to networking opportunities and even karaoke, our inaugural Unlock Boston conference brought together leaders and experts from every part of the PIM community to share challenges, lessons, achievements, and breakthroughs. Though there were many notable moments during the full day of activities and sessions, here are four of our favorite parts of Unlock Boston 2022.  

1. The customer and expert peer panels

Throughout the day, the Akeneo team hosted a number of different panels featuring guest speakers from massive global companies, including Chico’s, Sleep Number, and Thrasio. Covering a range of topics from the future of eCommerce to utilizing product information as the foundation for your growth strategy to creating the right mix of people, processes, and technology to create a PXM revolution, our engaging peer panels shed insights on some of the most important topics in the industry today. Forrester VP and Principal Analyst, Brendan Witcher made an appearance as well, giving an electric presentation on combining the right people and products to create success for your business. He dug into the real reason why consumers choose the brands they do, and how organizations can collect and organize the right information to better understand their consumers.
Akeneo customer panel
Our favorite part? Seeing Francois Silvain, digital CTO at Havianas International, rock a pair of Haviana’s sandals on stage while providing thoughtful answers on the importance of omnichannel product activation.  

2. Akeneo Product Cloud & Product Updates

We may be a bit biased here, but unveiling our newest product release and vision for the future was one of the most exciting bits of Unlock Boston 2022. First and foremost, we announced Akeneo Product Cloud live on stage, the solution for product activation across any and all channels that accelerates commerce growth for businesses. Akeneo Product Cloud drives exceptional product experiences across owned and unowned channels that exceed the expectations of customers while eliminating chaos and delays from siloed operations. This type of composable SaaS solution enables teams to increase revenue, optimize internal operations, and reduce returns, creating lifelong customer loyalty. You can check out our article on the topic for a deeper dive into Akeneo Product Cloud and product activation. Unlock attendees were also treated to a sneak peek into new releases in the Akeneo product as well, including a walkthrough of Tailored Imports and Shared Catalogs.  

3. Meet & network with people

Akeneo partner marketplace
PIM, PXM, DAM, OMS – all the acronyms can make everything feel so robotic. What’s more, remote and hybrid working models mean that most of us have limited face-to-face, or even camera-to-camera, interactions with others in the industry. Unlock Boston offered up the perfect excuse to get to meet others in person, and gain quality time learning and speaking with each other. Whether it was roaming the partner marketplace, stopping by the Akeneo Genius Bar, or booking a one-on-one meeting with someone from the Akeneo team, there were plenty of opportunities to connect with one another and exchange ideas on the future of omnichannel eCommerce and how to get started with PIM. The day before Unlock, we even hosted our very first Customer Advisory Board (CAB) and an in-person Akeneo 101 training, hosted by our internal educational team.  

4. Fun!

Here at Akeneo, we consider ourselves to be people first and employees second. Sure, we’ve all gathered to exchange ideas and discuss important topics, but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy ourselves! With plenty of food and drinks for all, retro arcade games scattered throughout, a killer DJ playing 80’s hits all night, and a karaoke machine that barely saw a break, we had an absolute blast partying with all of our customers and partners.
collage from unlock
We could go on and on about all the great things that happened at Unlock Boston this year, but we’ll cap ourselves at our top four here. At the end of the day, Unlock is an opportunity for leaders and experts in the world of commerce to come together and honor the art and science of creating omnichannel product experiences, forging alliances and meaningful connections along the way. We’d love to take a moment to say a big thank you to the wonderful Akeneo employees, partners, and customers who made this event possible. We couldn’t have done it without you, and we’ll see you back in Boston next year! If you don’t want to wait a whole year for the next Unlock event, Unlock Paris will be taking place March 8-9, 2023. It’s our ten-year anniversary of the event, you won’t want to miss it! Stay tuned for more details to come on how to register.

Casey Paxton, Content Marketing Manager

Akeneo

How to Make Collaboration Flow in Akeneo PIM

Posted on by Virginie Blot
Product Experience

How to Make Collaboration Flow in Akeneo PIM

Akeneo PIM has workflow capabilities for product information that enable you and your team to collaborate on work with the usability Akeneo is renowned for, with none of the inflexible rigidity other solutions may present.

We are often asked if Akeneo PIM has workflow capabilities for product information. The answer is a resounding “Yes!” and it enables you and your team to collaborate on work with the usability Akeneo is renowned for, with none of the inflexible rigidity other solutions may present. Here’s how. Early in my career in tech (we’re talking 2000s here), I was often in front of customers demonstrating tools for business process management and enterprise document workflows. Things that looked cool, like drag-and-drop workflow designers and approval logic builders. They demoed really well. Thing is, hardly anyone really used them. Why is that? They were just too rigid and inflexible for the realities of the fast-paced and ever-changing digital workplace. Predefined workflows couldn’t take into account every scenario that would throw up a roadblock (like someone on the team suddenly being hospitalized) without the workflow either becoming overly complex or just too simplified to bother. The exception would be highly-regulated industries like government, finance, and pharmaceutical, where strict accountability is required. Workflow capabilities are absolutely available in Akeneo PIM Enterprise Edition, and they are all about giving you and your team the flexibility to make the work of collecting, enriching, and activating your product record flow. It’s all about gaining visibility into the collaboration that needs to be focused on work that ensures your product story gets to market without delay, and is of the highest quality that your customers expect. Tricked-out workflow design tools that most teams won’t use aren’t required here! Let’s take a look at the neat ways you can have a truly collaborative workflow with Akeneo PIM Enterprise Edition.  

Teamwork Assistant

One reason you might need a “workflow” is to ensure that your team stays on schedule and required work doesn’t get left behind. For example, you have a major launch of a new line of products coming up, and everything must be ready in time for your different channel and marketing teams to promote and sell them on the same day. That means everyone collaborating on those products needs to track progress on enrichment tasks that have been assigned to them, and be notified when there are new tasks for them to take care of. That’s where Teamwork Assistant comes in. Each set of products that needs to be worked on is grouped into a Project, based on their category, channel, and locale. For that Project, a due date is set, and those who have edit permissions for the products selected in the Project will be notified when required attributes need to be completed, based on the attribute groups they have edit permissions on. For example, Mary on the marketing team is responsible for ensuring product descriptions are complete, well-written, and aligned to the brand voice. So she has edit permissions on the Marketing attribute group. If a required Description field for a set of products in the Project isn’t completed, she will be notified repeatedly before the Project’s due date to do so. If everything is good to go with the required attributes that she has edit permissions for, then she won’t be bothered, and will only be notified when everything in the Project is complete. As you would expect, everyone involved can see the overall progress of the Project. And to help everyone be productive and focused, they can even see just the products in the Project they need to work on the Product Grid, just like a View.  
screenshot of Akeneo Workflow
  How is this a different approach than rigid workflow process management? The assignment of the work is made to anyone on the team who has edit permissions for the selected products. So it doesn’t matter if Mary or her teammate Joseph completes the work, as long as it gets done. If Mary were to decide she wanted to escape to a remote island for a few weeks, the work doesn’t stop. Joseph can see what the progress of enrichment is, and pick things up without breaking the flow and without missing the critical deadline that was set.  

Proposals and Approvals

We often see bad product experiences everywhere. “Product description to come when Peter gets back to me with the details” is not something anyone wants to see when researching a product. This is another reason you might need a “workflow”: when collaborating as a team on the product record, you must ensure information doesn’t get out into the wild that hasn’t been checked and approved by a manager first. Akeneo PIM to the rescue here! Akeneo PIM Enterprise Edition provides granular and flexible permissions settings according to your business needs. I won’t go into detail on all of them here, but some that matter for proposal submissions and approving them are the permissions that can be set for a category in your product catalog. These permit user groups to either own products within the category, edit them, view them, or have no permissions at all.  Someone who can edit a product in a category, but does not own the category it’s in, will be able to edit a draft of the product information and then “Send for Approval” – individually, sequentially, or as part of a Bulk Action. The product(s) status will change accordingly, and the users that are part of the group that owns the category will be notified that they have proposals sent for their approval. They can view those in a single place from the Proposals menu under Activities, for a specific product in the Product Edit Form, or by creating a custom View that includes the Draft Status filter. Whatever suits your style of working the best! Whether the manager approves or rejects the proposal(s), the product(s) status will change accordingly: “Working Copy” ready to be published, “Waiting for Approval” or if the proposal doesn’t pass muster, back to “In Progress” it goes.  
Proposal approved workflow screenshot
  Notice some of that Akeneo usability and flexibility in the way Approvals work; the permissions are assigned to a group of users, so anyone within them can work as required to get the job done. Mistakes are minimized if not eliminated, and the workflow doesn’t stop because someone forgot to approve things. There’s more details to Proposals and Approvals, so check out the Akeneo Help Center to find out more.  

Making Work Flow

Why am I writing about all this for product information management for commerce businesses like yours? We are asked if Akeneo PIM Enterprise Edition has workflow capabilities. As you can now see, the answer is “Yes, we do! And you’re going to love how it works, and how it lets you get work done!” Ready to experience some of that workflow flexibility for yourself? Get in touch with us, and we would be happy to discuss how you can collaborate more effectively, without the rigidity.

Ali Hanyaloglu, Sr. Director, Product Marketing

Akeneo

Product Cloud, Product Activation, Product Experience; Oh My!

Posted on by Virginie Blot
Product Experience

Product Cloud, Product Activation, Product Experience; Oh My!

Providing top customer experiences requires a Product Activation strategy that enables omnichannel product experiences and supports composable technology.

At Unlock Boston 2022, we proudly introduced to the world Akeneo Product Cloud, our solution for how omnichannel businesses can activate their entire product story across any and all channels that their customers are on, whether owned or unowned, known or yet to be discovered. It’s an exciting vision that will bring Product Experience (or PX) to the same level of importance and business impact as Customer Experience (CX) has been for the last several years. During our introduction of Akeneo Product Cloud we also introduced the concept of Product Activation. In short, Product Activation is a strategy that removes the silos of people, technology, and data that exist within omnichannel businesses and that lead to poor product experiences across any one or more channels. By removing those silos, all the teams who manage each of the different channels where the product record is activated – D2C owned sites, marketplaces, retail network, marketing channels and beyond – are enabled to tell a consistent, complete, and compelling story whether they own the channel experience or not. A successful Product Activation strategy is made up of four essential parts:
  1. The first step is managing all the information about a product. Not just the title, description, size, color, and so on, but also all the dynamic data that buyers are looking for, such as reviews, sourcing, pricing, availability, and so on.
  2. You then need to connect all the data that is managed with different tools by different people, so that a single product record can be orchestrated as necessary.
  3. The next step is activating that product record into all your different channels you need to be on, adhering to the personalized requirements of each channel, whether it’s owned by you or not.
  4. Lastly, you need to know how that product record is performing across all your channels, with insights that guide you to the best ways to optimize that product record to help you achieve your growth goals or eliminate poor product experiences that increase returns and negative reviews.
So, the question then becomes, how does Akeneo Product Cloud support such a strategy for delivering those world-class product experiences? Let’s explore.  

Product Data Studios

The first part of a Product Activation strategy is to have the data and assets for the product record created, managed, and enriched. It all needs to be accurate and current as it’s important to you and to your customers. Product Data Studios are made up of specialized tools that manage each aspect of that product record. Today, you are familiar with marketing data and assets managed in a modern PIM like Akeneo PIM. There are also dedicated tools for user-generated content, pricing, availability, and technical product lifecycle information.  Some of these solutions you may already have today and are happy with. That’s great! Akeneo Product Cloud is built on a composable architecture, so you will be able to plug-and-play with the solutions you have in place already.  But what if you need new functionality, or have a gap today? We will be developing our own Product Data Studios to meet the needs of our customer’s Product Activation strategy while delivering that consistent and usable experience that you enjoy today with Akeneo PIM.  

Product Data Platform

So all that cold and hot data is being managed in Product Data Studios, but how does it all come together in a single product record? This is where orchestration in the Product Data Platform comes in. It will dynamically create a real-time golden record of your product story that can be activated across all the channels you need to display that product record.  This is also where developers can access that real-time centralized record to leverage it with other business applications and augment it if needed. For example, for use with commerce search and discovery solutions, or augmenting the customer record in a Customer Data Platform with product information. This is the heart of Akeneo Product Cloud.  

App Store

How do you go about activating that product record across all the channels you need to be on – from your D2C site to Amazon to your retailer to your ad networks? Apps is how this magic happens, connecting to the channels you need to be on directly, or through another solution such as an eCommerce platform or syndication tool.  And where do you find and enable those Apps? Why, an enterprise-grade, SaaS-based App Store of course, with functionality for users and tools for IT and developers to build, deploy, and manage those Apps.  

Performance Analytics and Insights

So your product record is activated across all the channels you need to be on. Congratulations! But the strategy doesn’t end there. How do you know you’re delivering the product experiences your customers expect? How do you know where your teams should focus their efforts on optimizing that product record?  This is where Performance Analytics and Insights come in, as part of the Product Data Platform. We know you already get lots of performance analytics on how your products are selling, how pages are converting. All great stuff. But do you know how elements of the product record are impacting business performance? Do you know which elements your team should spend their time on right now that will ensure great customer reviews? That’s where meaningful insights come in.  These insights will guide you and your team to take immediate action on the parts of the product record that will make a difference in business performance and the experience your customers have. For example, why might a product have high returns, and what can you do about the product experience to turn that around? The product itself may be great, but the product experience may not be. You can control that (much more effectively than trying to control the customer themselves!) and therefore understand how exactly your investment in Akeneo Product Cloud is driving your business growth.  

And what about PXM?

PXM, or Product Experience Management, is still vitally important when it comes to a Product Activation strategy. Success with Akeneo Product Cloud won’t happen overnight. It is a journey in the maturity of delivering world-class product experiences across all your channels. PXM is the set of best practices that guide you on the right journey to take, so that your internal and external team members are effective and productive, and giving you the peace of mind that you are making the most out of your investment in Akeneo Product Cloud.  Still a bit confused on how these all fit together? Check out the illustration below for a simplified view, and download Akeneo Product Cloud 101 for more information.  
Product Experience, Product Activation, Product Cloud graphic
   Providing an exceptional customer experience is impossible without providing an exceptional product experience, and that means a consistent and coherent product story across all channels, owned and unowned. Doing so is tricky, and requires a Product Activation strategy that enables truly omnichannel product experiences and supports a composable Product Cloud, like the Akeneo Product Cloud. Ready to see how omnichannel product experiences can unlock growth for your organization? Request a demo of Akeneo today.

Casey Paxton, Content Marketing Manager

Akeneo

Who’s Hungry for a Good Product Experience?

Posted on by Convertiv Boston
Product Experience

Who’s Hungry for a Good Product Experience?

As the holiday season approaches, we mark the occasion with gatherings and feasts among family and friends. That means more shopping in stores, on our favorite eCommerce sites, and on marketplaces. How can you set yourself up for success this upcoming holiday season?

It’s the fall season, and everyone in the Northern Hemisphere are preparing for the winter. Animals are gathering food and storing it for later use, and people are essentially doing the same thing — as the holiday season approaches, we mark the occasion with gatherings and feasts among family and friends (this happens in the Southern Hemisphere too!). Certainly, after the past few years, we all hunger for the ability to gather together and celebrate the season.

Fall also heralds the start of holiday gift-giving. And that means shopping in stores, on our favorite eCommerce sites, and on marketplaces. Perhaps we even get gift inspirations from imagery and posts we see on social media.

Research we’ve conducted shows that the kind of product experience you deliver heavily impacts the customer journey and whether shoppers buy your product. And by product experience, we mean how shoppers and buyers interact with and understand the information you provide about your products in your sales channels. Is it accurate? Is it complete? Do the images match the description? Does the description match the product? Essentially everything about your product that’s available for a shopper to see defines their product experience.

The product experience also can directly affect your bottom line – if the product experience you offer isn’t compelling, shoppers will go elsewhere, and they might not come back. Our 2022 B2C Global Survey found that 2 out of 3 shoppers will abandon a purchase due to a bad product experience. These days, customers are inundated with choices and options from thousands of brands, so give them any excuse to go looking for someone else’s product and they’ll take it. The good news is that not all hope is lost – your team just needs the right tools and systems in place to support a cohesive omnichannel strategy. For example, Akeneo customer City Furniture found that by adopting product experience management, they were not only more productive in creating a good product experience, they also managed to increase revenue.

Your customers truly are hungry for a good customer experience, and that starts with the product experience. And in a literal sense, no industry gets this more than the food industry. Technical data about food products is possibly the most important information that food manufacturers and sellers provide – because errors and omissions can literally affect consumers’ health, safety, and well-being. Disclosures about ingredients and allergens are mandated by law in most, if not all, countries. And in some countries like the UK, they have extended these legal requirements to include pre-packed food prepared and sold on premises which went into effect in late 2021.

Making it easier to manage data about allergens was one of the reasons that Turner Price initially adopted Akeneo PIM. As the pandemic dramatically affected their wholesale distribution business to restaurants and caterers, they shifted to a B2C model and checked to ensure their product experience for consumers made the grade, and so they would be in a better position to comply with the new UK regulations. We cover more about the requirements for accurate food product information in our food services whitepaper.

How do I check my product experience?

It’s time to get ready for those holiday customers who are hungry for good product experiences. It’s prime shopping season for food, gifts, and really all types of products. You’ll want to put forward the best possible customer experience you can, and that starts with your product information. Nailing the perfect recipe of the right people involved, the right processes in place, and the right dedicated tools can be tricky, however a user-friendly PIM tool, like Akeneo PIM, empowers your entire organization to activate your product story across every owned and unowned channel, setting your team up for success this upcoming holiday season. Ready to revolutionize your product experience? Get started by requesting a demo of Akeneo today, and let us show you how to create truly omnichannel customer experiences.

Casey Paxton, Content Marketing Manager

Akeneo

Announcing Akeneo Product Cloud

Posted on by Virginie Blot
Akeneo News

Announcing Akeneo Product Cloud

Akeneo announces category-changing offering, Akeneo Product Cloud, a composable solution that will enable commerce businesses to deliver omnichannel product experiences.

Akeneo is excited to announce our category-changing offering, Akeneo Product Cloud, a ground-breaking, composable solution that will enable commerce businesses to deliver a seamless, consistent product experience across every owned and unowned channel that shows your customers the information they need in the place they want it. Built with composable technologies that not only co-exist but communicate effectively with each other, Akeneo Product Cloud creates a harmonious flow of product information between teams, suppliers, and distributors, translating to higher conversions, reduced returns, and increased customer loyalty.
Through phases of development, Akeneo Product Cloud will include:

– Product Data Studios, that serve each of the core product record components starting with a modern PIM that natively provides product asset management and syndication capabilities, as the keystone to managing and optimizing the entire product record. Additional Studios will provide support for more dynamic product information elements such as product availability management, pricing optimization, user generated content, and product lifecycle management;

– A scalable Product Data Platform (PDP), to centralize and orchestrate the entire product record consumed from each of the Product Data Studios, with performance analytics to inform business strategies;

– And a native App Store, that makes it easy to activate product data across any commerce channel or business application, in addition to providing solutions for seamlessly augmenting the core product information created in the Product Data Studios and orchestrated in the PDP.

Read the full press release here, and you can learn more about Akeneo Product Cloud here.

Announcing Akeneo Product Cloud

PIM is the Keystone for Digital Commerce

Posted on by Virginie Blot
Product Experience

PIM is the Keystone for Digital Commerce

A modern digital commerce environment requires a new generation of resilient technology that operates natively in the cloud and that is extensible to support optimized and personalized commerce experiences.

The modern digital commerce platform is a key component of a successful eCommerce strategy. Today’s consumers expect a truly omnichannel experience, and the right commerce platform can help retailers deliver that.  But to be successful in today’s competitive eCommerce environment, it’s important to adopt the right modern digital commerce platform that supports the enterprise’s business goals and provides customers with a seamless experience across all channels.  

Challenges in Digital Commerce

Organizations face more new challenges to digital commerce efforts today than ever before as customers have elevated expectations about their shopping experience regarding how and where they browse to purchase products.  With thousands of touchpoints, from new eCommerce sites to social media apps introducing shopping and discovery capabilities, organizations face an almost unlimited number of challenges when it comes to syndicating and optimizing product information across digital channels, including: 1. Dealing with monolithic and legacy technology Legacy monolithic eCommerce systems aren’t designed to provide simpler and more personalized digital experiences. They offer limited support for configurable product information sourced from the organization’s PIM software and are lagging in the sophistication of their mobile-first customer experience. Static and brittle eCommerce platforms can’t adapt to industry and digital merchandising requirements and aren’t well connected across the variety of marketing channels where buyer engagement occurs.  2. Settling for impersonal commerce experiences These outdated technology systems and processes mean that scalability and growth becomes increasingly difficult for organizations as new channels emerge almost every day. Optimizing your product information for each channel is the ideal way to provide the best customer experience, regardless of where your customers find you, but that is merely a pipedream when your team is dealing with legacy technology, redundant processes, and inefficient communication. 3. Working with minimal PIM integration Traditional PIM technologies can often struggle with integrating and communicating with other platforms that are needed. Through 2024, one-half of organizations will conclude the lack of a modern dedicated PIM environment to optimize product experiences across marketing and sales channels hampers their operational effectiveness.   

PIM Requirements for Success

A modern platform for PIM supports centralized product information and unified storage with efficient collaboration and teamwork across the organization. Having a best-of-breed PIM platform and a network within which information is collected, assessed, and enriched can save time and resources while also contributing to the best possible product experience for customers. In order to take full advantage of all that a PIM can offer, your PIM solution should: 1. Integrate seamlessly into digital commerce through headless and API methods that ensure a modern architectural approach. Blending the best possible experiences across digital commerce requires the ability to bring a range of technologies that are not necessarily from the same vendor but that nonetheless integrate effectively. The innovation of headless digital architectures separates the front-end application from the back-end technology platform using microservices and API-based methods. This decoupling of technologies enables the opportunity to integrate and unify technologies like PIM, but they must be resilient in design. Market research finds that the majority (95%) of organizations deem it very important or important to integrate PIM and digital commerce, and through headless digital commerce architectures, the use of a PIM platform can be more tightly integrated and enable the information network to syndicate the products.  PIM is the keystone for an organization’s digital strategy, but it must be more than just a product catalog. Planning the technical aspects of headless platform integration with PIM is key. More important is guaranteeing a consistent and contextualized product experience with a fully enabled catalog. When PIM is trusted and integrated with the digital commerce platform, it can enable personalized interactions in both B2C and B2B use cases. 2. Support multi-channel marketplaces through product syndication and information network-based methods. Achieving the business and technology benefits of an investment into digital commerce and PIM together should be based on achieving desired outcomes today and in the future. Unlocking these benefits is possible by investing into technology featuring an architecture and platform that is composable and that can adapt and operate across digital channels in a resilient manner. Success with PIM starts with exploiting its full potential, from the platform to the product information network it must support. PIM is the keystone for an organization’s digital strategy, but it must be more than just a product catalog. When it is trusted and integrated with the digital commerce platform, it can enable personalized interactions in both B2C and B2B use cases.  3. Provide modern, highly-personalized digital product experiences, regardless of the channel. Organizations must provide the information a buyer needs, and this requires product information that is consistent, comprehensive, personalized, and accessible natively in the cloud. PIM enables a faster time-to-value from products through a higher velocity of products sold and through effective experiences for the customer. A modern digital platform for commerce and PIM enables faster time-to-value for products, personalized digital experiences, the automation of manual product processes, accurate product information for customers, and selling into new channels and marketplaces. Interested in learning more about how the right PIM solution can accelerate you towards a stronger digital commerce strategy? Reach out to an Akeneo expert today to get started on a path to better product experiences.

Akeneo Product Cloud

Discover how Akeneo’s best-of-breed PIM technology can support your digital commerce strategy by speaking with an Akeneo export today.

Casey Paxton, Content Marketing Manager

Akeneo