In this week’s edition of the Ziggy Customer Campfire Series, we’re calling up our friends in Italy to relay the story of smartphone accessories seller SBS Mobile. Smartphone and tablet technology is constantly being updated and improved upon, forcing accessories providers to move quickly and offer an extensive range of products to remain competitive. So, in search of a solution to their increasingly complex product catalog, SBS Mobile decided to implement Akeneo PIM — and was quickly glad they did! SBS Mobile was able to take control of product information by instituting a single source of truth for product data management and enrichment, accelerating time-to-market while increasing product data quality and easing expansion to new territories. Watch the video below and discover how SBS Mobile used Akeneo PIM to conquer product data complexity, unite their IT and Marketing teams, and grow their business. https://youtu.be/fwYJ_Vxmexs

In this week’s edition of the Customer Campfire Series, Ziggy heads to South Africa to hear the tale of omnichannel retailer JD Group, a company with a simple mission statement: Bring quality, durable goods to customers at a fair price. In their pursuit of this goal, the company had built a massive catalog filled with thousands of different furniture, appliances, and consumer electronic products. But this massive product catalog was becoming a challenge for the company to manage. With JD Group’s scattered and siloed product information, the many different sales channels and merchandising teams across the company yearned for a centralized authoritative source of product information. Check out the video below to discover how JD Group took advantage of Akeneo PIM’s out-of-the-box functionality – and its flexibility to support their specific requirements — which enabled them to slash time-to-market from 6 days to 6 hours, boost productivity, and deliver a great product experience! https://youtu.be/ogix9dKrqYU

That includes everyone’s favorite three-headed hydra, Ziggy! She’s gathering the Akeneo PIM community around the campfire to share stories of scary product information problems and heroic PIM solutions, featuring the Akeneo customers that lived to tell the tale, as part of the new Customer Campfire Series! In our first campfire fable, we travel to Omaha, Nebraska, to hear the story of Midland Scientific. The company has staked out a reputation in the scientific community, growing to become a leading distributor and seller of scientific and laboratory equipment. With over 400,000 products for sale, Midland needed a fast and cost-effective way to manage the diverse and complex product information demands of its growing catalog. Watch the video to hear Rodrigo Neves, Technology Officer at Midland Scientific, as he explains how Akeneo PIM helps Midland Scientific manage a diverse and highly technical catalog, increase productivity, and provide a compelling product experience — all while cutting enrichment costs from $5/SKU to $1/SKU. https://youtu.be/biEZ2g7XwIo

But as we’ve learned over the course of the past few weeks, the story behind this refreshing aperitif is a study in delivering a great product experience. Did you miss any episodes of this epic tale? Perhaps a binge-watch is in order? Not to fear! We’ve compiled each of the four episodes of the Ziggy Cocktail Experience, so you can watch it on repeat to your heart’s content. Just click the play button below and you’ll be transported to that lovely tavern where the heroes of our story await. Take that, Netflix.

It’s all come down to this, our final episode in the Cocktail Experience(s) video series! Our heroine has discovered the vodka that’s used to create the wonderful Ziggy Cocktail, and learned about each step that goes into creating this compelling concoction. So what does the final chapter of the Cocktail Experience(s) have in store? Will our heroine Julia successfully acquire the secret recipe? What is the human connection that brings it all together? Or are there more people involved in creating the product experience that she has yet to meet? Can’t stand to wait another minute before finding out the end of the story of the Ziggy Cocktail? You don’t have to! Check out the finale below.

Welcome to episode 2 of our Cocktail Experience(s) video series! Our heroine Julia has had her first sip of that delicious Ziggy Cocktail, and now she’s desperate to find out exactly what the ingredients of this lovely libation are. There’s just one problem — the recipe is a closely guarded secret, protected by the close-knit and diverse family of professionals that produce it. And all of them have their own secret ingredients, processes, and innovations that contribute to the ingredients that make the cocktail a true experience. In episode 1, Julia declared how important it is to know what’s in the products we buy — she’s about to learn how meticulous attention to ingredient sourcing contributes to brand values, where every part of the process is crucial to success. So if you want to learn what ingredients are at the heart of the fabulous Ziggy cocktail, check out Episode 2 of the Ziggy Cocktail Experience below!

This year’s series is about the Ziggy Cocktail — the world’s most delicious drink, aptly named after the Akeneo company mascot! So, what goes into creating this potent potable? Julia, the heroine of our tale, has the same question on her mind — but the answer is harder to find than she might have hoped! While the drink is delicious, its lack of product information leaves her wanting more, and the other patrons at the bar don’t seem to be any better informed than she is… Check out Episode 1 of the Story of the Ziggy Cocktail below!

PIM has proven to be an important piece of technology that should be considered as a way to actually accelerate the pace of getting your eCommerce site up and running. Without it, organizations are left to manually acquire and prepare product information and transform it for use in the new eCommerce site and to external marketplaces. With PIM, however, this process can be made to go much faster and delivers the added benefit of making managing product information as your catalogs adapt and evolve simpler and easier as time goes on. PIM can ultimately help you reduce return rates by up to 40%, reduce product enrichment costs by as much as 5x, and increase conversion rates by 400%. A common concern we hear raised is “Our digital transformation project is moving fast and we’re worried about making the project longer if we include PIM.” So how long does it take to implement and deploy your PIM and start seeing some of these benefits and realizing a return on your investment? No two PIM projects are alike, but by using the right approach, it can lead to go-lives in less time than you think — in fact, you can be up and running in a matter of weeks! The key to getting value rapidly is to take a “minimum viable product” implementation approach. Fortunately, Akeneo PIM supports this approach so you can deliver an initial, working solution rapidly, and still be able to evolve and grow the PIM to a “perfect” state over the longer term.

Integrate with ease

Another common concern we hear is about integrating PIM with your existing stack. How much extra effort is this going to add to my project? Akeneo’s highly connected PIM is ready to fit perfectly into your existing tech arsenal. We offer fully documented APIs, and with our marketplace you can easily integrate Akeneo PIM by working with one of our more than 100 extensions and connectors to leading eCommerce platforms, print solutions, syndication tools, translation services, and more, all designed to simplify and speed integration. This saves you the costs and person-hours that are typically spent enriching product information without PIM and manually feeding complete product data to your sales channels.

Tips for a fast go-live: Think big, start small

Even the longest journeys start with a first step, so think big and start small, then iterate and evolve over time. You can have a vision for what you want the perfect PIM to be able to do, but you don’t need to design and build the ultimate PIM solution before you go-live. Adopt a good/better/best approach to help you design the simplest PIM possible, then add additional functionality as your business grows and your needs evolve. That way, you can get your PIM project started quickly, provide accurate, consistent, and compelling product information and better product experiences for your customers, and scale sustainably with a fast and easy go-live process with minimal investment.

Get flexible

Maybe you think PIM is a nice-to-have tool in your arsenal, but not your must-have or go-to weapon in the omnichannel commerce war? Or perhaps you’re convinced that PIM is too complex to implement and adopt quickly? Instead, you can adopt and implement PIM into your teams’ product information processes easily and efficiently, without wasting valuable energy, money, or time. By leveraging Akeneo PIM’s flexibility, and adaptability, you can allow your solution to grow and evolve alongside your business. The key is to select a solution that doesn’t force you to define the distant future up-front — as well have all seen, things can change rapidly.

Take care of your teams

Now more than ever, it’s important that your product enrichment team be able to efficiently and productively update product information in order to get your products to customers quickly. But if your teams are relying on outdated or poorly suited solutions to manage product information they won’t be able to work efficiently to meet your current needs or change catalogs in the future. This is especially true for smaller, thinly spread, or fully remote teams, who are often also suffering from a lack of resources or support. Fortunately, there is an answer — use PIM to help your team react to changing demarket demands with ease and efficiency. Look at the example of Midland Scientific. The company was able to train college students to successfully use the PIM to enrich products in a matter of weeks, and leverage Akeneo’s easy-to-understand user interface and short learning curve to help its team rapidly adopt the solution. Check out the podcast below to hear a brief conversation about the MVP approach and some tips and advice on how to leverage this agile implementation methodology. Ready to add an MVP to your team? Contact us and we’ll help ensure your PIM project gets off on the right foot!  https://open.spotify.com/episode/4NwV7lA5AK7RlsObwAE46U?si=Vz2FLQ1xRGeaViPFkvexvQ

Even in cases where there is ample supply, delivery times have increased significantly. Shipping times of weeks instead of a few days or overnight are now common. As a result, many sellers are searching for new suppliers, ideally with an eye to finding more local partners, in order to be more responsive should a similar situation arise again. For many retailers and distributors, adding product information from suppliers is a challenging process that typically involves everything from phone calls with your new supplier to emails exchanging information, and even swapping spreadsheets, burning valuable time and resources with each step. Sellers may have this cadence down with existing suppliers, but starting the process from scratch with new suppliers adds additional friction while you are trying to rapidly respond to shifting market demands and disrupted supply chains. What’s needed is a solution to tackle the issue of efficiently onboarding supplier product data. A solution that enables willing suppliers to provide their product information directly to you, the retailer/distributor, in the format you need, without having to go through the painful, time-consuming manual process of editing Excel sheets, copying and pasting data, and manually reviewing and approving their submissions. These manual processes can leave you with errors in product information, a slower time-to-market, and an inability to add new products to your product collection or modify your existing offerings. Akeneo PIM with Akeneo Onboarder can solve these issues. This solution makes it easier to collaborate with suppliers to add new products and improve product data quality, resulting in faster time-to-market.

Handling the long tail of suppliers

In a retailer’s or distributor’s ideal world, all suppliers would graciously offer the authoritative product information the sellers need to create great product experiences. But sometimes, suppliers just won’t play ball. The largest and most important suppliers you work with might often decline to collaborate directly with you — or they simply may be unable to, given their resources or whether they perceive a strategic relationship. A rule of thumb we often hear retailers and distributors quote is “20% of my suppliers are 80% of my business” — so what do you do about the other 80% of suppliers — the so-called “long tail”? The key to getting these suppliers to work with you is to make it as easy as possible for them to provide you with the information you need. So how do you make that happen?

Onboard supplier product data with ease

Akeneo PIM features integrated product data onboarding capabilities for suppliers via the Onboarder. This speeds up the process of collecting data from suppliers and makes it easier for them to provide product data directly to the seller. Myer, a leading Australian department store used Akeneo to devise an easier method for their hundreds of suppliers to upload product information and images. By informing suppliers about Myer’s exact requirements, both Myer and their suppliers were able to enjoy a more streamlined process and get products for sale much faster than before. Myer also gamified the process by giving suppliers a score and therefore an incentive to enhance data quality. You can read the Myer case study and hear more about it in the podcast below.

Accelerate time-to-market

Besides the need to find new suppliers, the current pandemic has also impacted available resources as some companies have been forced to make unplanned, unwanted cuts. If you don’t have enough people or other resources available to dedicate to manually acquire, enrich, and approve product data from suppliers, that’s just another reason to look for an integrated solution to share the work among your team and those of your suppliers. With a solution like Akeneo PIM and the Onboarder you get more done with less. Suppliers have a personalized online environment for creating, uploading, and enriching required product information requested by the retailer/distributor, who then reviews and approves the data. Once approved, the supplier’s product data is ready for further enrichment and then distribution to relevant sales channels. Akeneo customers like Petra have already seen the benefit of using PIM to accelerate time to market. The U.S.-based wholesale distributor of electronics uses Akeneo PIM to help their supplier managers oversee an average of 30 suppliers each, enriching a total of 33,000 products while accelerating time to market and improving product data quality. To hear more about this topic, check out our podcast where we discuss the challenges with today’s supply chain and how a product data onboarding solution can help to overcome them. Ready to say goodbye to supplier struggles and hello to accelerated time-to-market, high-quality product information, and top-notch product experiences? Then say hello to the Akeneo Onboarder! 

“When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.” Benjamin Franklin may not have had modern business in his mind when he first thought up those words, but the sentiment remains true to this day. In modern commerce, constantly emerging new products and shifting customer demand means your product catalog and assortment are never finished. Whether it’s the current pandemic or just a change of seasons, your catalog is always shifting and changing to accommodate new needs and desires from your customers. That means you need to be able to rapidly pivot and update your catalog without allowing errors in product information to reach your customers, or inefficient, unproductive processes to burn time, money and other valuable resources, slowing your time-to-market. That’s where Akeneo PIM comes in. It’s designed to help you adapt and update your product information, making sure you stay on top of quickly changing market trends. With the power of PIM, you can more easily and efficiently get new products to market, update catalog assortments for market or seasonal needs, and even add new categories to help you meet shifting market demands.

Keep your catalog current

What happens when products become obsolete, or demand for different products that didn’t exist one day does the next? You need to be able to easily and efficiently update catalogs with new products and product information. Manually updating catalogs with new product information can be time-consuming and difficult to accomplish quickly, especially if these market changes have left you with a smaller or more distributed team, as many companies are experiencing right now. Akeneo PIM’s flexibility and adaptability help you quickly and easily update product assortments by adding or removing products from your catalog, adding new product attributes, and pushing updates to the relevant sales channels. Turner Price, a foodservice wholesaler, originally looked to Akeneo PIM to ensure that ingredients and allergen information is 100% accurate. Since the advent of COVID-19 and closure of restaurants — their primary customer — Turner Price pivoted their business and in just over a week, modified their product catalog with additional information required to facilitate selling directly to consumers.

Reposition products and communicate your brand values

Another phenomenon we’ve seen during this pandemic is the rise of repositioning products for different uses, or simply offering new products that consumers are currently seeking. Examples we’ve seen include positioning a neck gaiter as a mask, and clothing brands who began making masks out of the material used in their shirts. With this shift comes the urgent need to update product descriptions, technical specs, digital assets, and more pieces of product information in order to adapt the product catalog. Furthermore, with the uncertainty about what’s next, consumers have become more attentive to and focused on what products they purchase. Brand values have emerged as an important buying criterion (read more about how this has risen in importance in our new global B2B survey). Buyers and shoppers want to know where products are made, are they ethically produced or sourced, sustainable, cruelty-free, and so on. This new product attribute and reference information, including images and information about suppliers or materials used, now needs to appear in addition to the “traditional” information in your catalog. Akeneo can help you rise to the occasion and keep customers in the know by easily and efficiently adding new attributes and rewriting descriptions in one central system and rapidly populate them to all sales channels in context. Akeneo customers like Made.com, for instance, have attracted attention and acclaim for using PIM to make information about brand values the centerpiece of their brand strategy.

Prepare for new selling paradigms

Another pandemic-induced phenomenon is the closure of retail outlets and the need to ship all items. If items aren’t available for shipping, some sellers are offering click-and-collect or BOPIS (buy online, pickup in store) with curbside pickup. This also has implications for product information in terms of accuracy and the systems where it needs to be shared. The key is keeping your customers informed and aware of what’s happening with their purchase. That way, their expectations stay realistic, and your relationship with them stays intact. But providing accurate shipping time estimates means being able to easily find and communicate lots of different pieces of product information, including dimensions, weight, and assembly instructions. Without a dedicated solution to handle this information, errors and inconsistencies can abound, further hurting your relationship with customers. Midwest U.S. farm supply store Rural King used Akeneo PIM as part of its buy online pick-up in store offer. By being able to efficiently collect and enrich the right product data to support the program, Rural King’s BOPIS program resulted in an increase in online sales as well as in-store foot traffic. So, while we all hope for the pandemic to subside soon, Ben Franklin was right about change. Being prepared to handle change and rapidly adapt will serve us all well. Want to learn more about how Akeneo PIM can help you adapt your product catalog with ease? Contact us and we’ll put you in touch with one of PIM experts!