According to Rian Johnson, director of the Academy Award-nominated movie Knives Out, he was not allowed to use Apple products in the movie unless they were used by “good guy” characters and not any “bad guy” characters. I listened in rapt attention — easy enough to do as a hands-free activity, especially considering I was not really moving in traffic anyway. This instance of product and brand control has two implications. One is that, like any good brand, Apple wants its products displayed in the best possible light. That’s by design — not coincidence. It means that any phones or computers used in the movie or television show could be iPhones or Macs only when in the hands of the good guys, the winning side, the innocent. Therefore the bad guys, the losing side, and guilty parties have to use something else — such as Android phones or PCs. Brilliant marketing. How convenient for Apple that its competitors are associated with negative aspects and characters! The second implication is, now that you know the secret, it is a lot easier to identify the possible culprit in the next suspenseful movie or program you are watching by simply looking to see who is using an Apple device. Sorry if this is a spoiler — but maybe you can make some money off your friends by betting on the outcome! This got me thinking about how product information relates to, and supports, your brand strategy and brand values. We don’t all have the brand power of Apple — but there are things we can do to support what we believe is important. We talk a lot on this blog about how high-quality information is important for establishing your credibility with customers, enhancing confidence, and encouraging better conversion rates and reduced returns. There is more and more evidence of these benefits and I think the question of whether consistent, high-quality product information is important is no longer in dispute. What can we learn from the concept of associating your brand with only positive characters? Perhaps the old adage of “any publicity is good publicity” no longer applies. We’ve seen how brands want to have more control over the experience they deliver – specifically, the recent announcement from Nike, who decided to stop selling on Amazon, is one result of trying to control the experience for customers. In an unreleased survey we recently co-sponsored with Accenture, we found that consumers, especially digital natives, see brand values and the product experience as a key factor in a purchasing decision — 32% said they would be willing to pay more for an outstanding experience, and 38% said they would be willing to pay more for a brand that conveys the values they believe in. (Watch our blog for more information from this survey soon). Our survey supports the trend of brands increasingly looking to promote their brand values through product information. Brands and sellers are using sustainable and eco-friendly aspects of their products as a way to differentiate their offering and appeal to customers who actively seek out products with these attributes. We touched on the concept in a January 29, 2020 webcast with Joe Pine, author of The Experience Economy (look for it in our events archive on this page). Sellers are even including the ability to filter products on their eCommerce sites based on which ones are sustainably sourced, include or exclude certain ingredients, and so forth. So, while you may not have the brand power or legal resources to demand and actively monitor how your products are depicted by Hollywood, there are steps you can take to better control your brand strategy and values on the platforms you can control. By managing and presenting relevant product information, telling your brand story, and delivering a compelling product experience, you can speak directly to your customers, appeal to your shared values – and maybe even generate more revenue. Interested in what product experience management is all about? Download our free eBook PXM for Dummies to learn more.

Your “employee experience” encapsulates all of the ways your employees interact with their workload — including whether they have the right tools for the job.

Your team can’t provide a top-notch experience if they’re suffering from a sub-par experience themselves. You hired your team to create these compelling customer experiences to wow your customers and help boost conversion rates. But without the right tools, they’re going to be stuck dealing with product information silos, poor processes, and wasting time on manual, repetitive, low-value tasks. That’s where Product Experience Management comes in. Not only does PXM enable you to better serve customers and see increased conversions and revenue for your business, but also arms your team with a solution designed to make it easier to manage product information, so you can give your employees a better experience, too. How does Akeneo help create a better employee experience, you ask? It’s all about increased efficiency, greater productivity, and enhanced collaboration that enables your teams to get their product information management tasks done without the drama associated with manual, Excel-based methods. Allow us to explain.

Make your employees more efficient

Asking your employees to manage product information and create compelling experiences without a purpose-built solution, and instead forcing them to rely on outdated or poorly suited solutions like spreadsheets or ERPs, is like asking a lumberjack to chop down a tree with a spoon. It’s just not going to work. Instead, give your team of product experience practitioners a razor-sharp tool that can help them clear the forest of product enrichment in no time. Akeneo PIM is a purpose-built solution that can help your team manage even the largest and most complicated product catalogs easily and efficiently. It helps you optimize the process of collecting, enriching, and getting new products to market using one centralized, trusted source for product information. It does so by providing a system of record for product information and digital assets, improving the accessibility of product data and liberating it from disconnected silos. Akeneo can also help your team eliminate the hours of time spent on repetitive, low-value tasks with intelligent automation. It takes these menial and tedious tasks off your team’s to-do list using a business rules engine, which automatically populates attribute values across a wide range of products and product models and helps you manage your product data in bulk. That way, you can speed up your enrichment process, slashing time-to-market along the way, while minimizing errors and inconsistencies in product information.

Help your employees collaborate

When it comes to creating compelling and enticing compelling experiences, teamwork makes the dream work. Your teams need to be able to work together seamlessly — but that’s often easier said than done when you’re dealing with internal teams, remote teams, field and regional teams, and even external teams like translators. If you want to keep up with the increasingly fast pace of omnichannel commerce, every member of your team needs to know exactly what they’re responsible for — and what they shouldn’t touch. That’s why Akeneo PIM comes packed with features like Advanced Rights Management to help you govern product enrichment processes by ensuring contributors only access the products and field values they need. It also offers validation workflow controls designed to help your team ensure that only the highest-quality, validated, and approved information makes it to your touchpoints. What’s more, with Akeneo’s Teamwork Assistant, Akeneo PIM help fosters collaboration across your teams by tracking product data completeness to ensure no incomplete products make it to your sales channel. It also helps you pick up the pace by helping you audit your enrichment processes and notifying your marketing team when a product is missing attributes, needs translation, and is ready to be exported to your sales channels.

Give your employees a 360° view

The last weapon your team needs to triumph in the battle over bad product information and product experiences is a complete view over every part of your omnichannel offering. That means providing your employees with a 360° view of all of your products, product descriptions, digital assets, and any other elements that comprise your omnichannel experience. It also means helping them understand not only what products are available and what products need to be enriched, but also helping them understand how well products have been enriched, by assessing the quality and completeness of the product data and assets you’re presenting to your customers. Akeneo PIM, fortunately, offers all of the tools your team needs to understand the quality of your product data. This includes tools like the catalog completeness feature, which tracks product data by sales channels and locales, ensuring no product data is published before it’s complete. Data Quality Insights helps your team quickly measure product data quality and consistency while making suggestions for how to improve data quality.

Give your employees a great experience

Give your employees the tools and resources they need to be happy and successful at managing product information. People are your most valuable resource, so it’s crucial to give them a high-quality employee experience, so they can create the compelling customer experiences your business thrives on. Give them the tools they need to get the job done right with Akeneo PIM! Want to see how other companies have become more productive and delivered a better experience for their teams? Discover how companies like Kurt Geiger have used Akeneo to boost productivity, slash time-to-market, and ease expansion to new channels. 

That’s why making a decision surrounding a business solution can be so difficult. It often isn’t enough that these purchases provide only a new way to solve an old challenge or a new perspective to view the same challenges you face every day. Your solution needs to provide tangible benefits if it’s going to be seen as a good investment. This is certainly true when you’re considering a Product Information Management (PIM) system. A good PIM isn’t just a container for product information, nor does it simply provide a new place for you to perform old processes. Instead, your PIM should add value to your organization by transforming product enrichment and management process, and, ultimately, help you raise your revenue to new heights. Akeneo PIM is built to do just that by providing B2B and B2C businesses alike with value-added tools and features designed to take their product information to the next level. So, if you’re having a little trouble understanding or articulating the benefits Akeneo PIM could provide for your business, don’t fret — just read on to see what Akeneo PIM can do for you.

1.  Reduced Returns

The value of your PIM starts with making things right. With Akeneo PIM, you can make sure that every piece of product information that reaches your customers is correct, consistent, and complete thanks to features like automated enrichment rules, product completeness tracking, and data validation. And that’s important because if B2B buyers and consumers don’t feel like they can trust the information you’re providing them with is accurate and paints a full picture, they’ll quickly abandon the purchase in favor of a merchant that helps them better understand what they’re buying. Even if you do somehow convince a customer to make a purchase despite incorrect, inconsistent, or incomplete product information, the victory will likely only be temporary. Because when your customer eventually receives their purchase, only to find the product isn’t what they pictured or won’t fit their needs, they’ll likely return it, costing you that hard-won sale in the process. What’s worse, that return is probably the end of the relationship between you and this customer — after all, most consumers do not make repeat purchases from companies that they don’t feel they can trust. With Akeneo PIM, customers have seen reductions in product returns of up to 40 percent, which leads to higher revenue, increased customer loyalty, and increased value over the lifetime of your relationship with that customer.

2. Excellent Experiences 

Accurate product information is just the beginning, however. In the omnichannel age, consumers must be able to see your product in action or get an inside look at how your product functions via digital assets like photos or videos. This is especially true as competition becomes all the more fierce on digital channels. The advent and mass popularity of marketplaces in both B2B and B2C industries has made digital assets even more crucial. Akeneo PIM includes Asset Management capabilities that are designed to help your team more efficiently and effectively manage your digital assets right alongside product information. Its asset management capabilities for both B2B and B2C businesses are designed to offer flexibility, better asset organization, enable asset transformation and linking capabilities to support different needs in different channels, and a dedicated asset library to help you easily visualize all your digital assets. So what do you get when you combine the correct, complete, and consistent product information you get from Akeneo PIM with its Asset Manager capabilities? You get the high-quality experiences that turn shoppers into buyers and transform first-time customers into lifelong fans. Research indicates that providing your customers, whether they’re consumers looking for a new outfit or a Fortune 500 company looking for a new tech solution, with excellent experiences is the biggest thing you can do to guarantee success in the omnichannel age. In fact, according to one study, 66 percent of buyers care more about experience than they do about price when it comes to making purchase decisions, while another report found that 86 percent of buyers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience.

3. Tight Time-To-Market

Success in an omnichannel world requires speed. If you want to be able to keep pace with modern customers, your time-to-market needs to be as speedy as possible. Speeding up time-to-market without letting your product information quality suffer, however, is often easier said than done. Pushing your team to move more quickly can lead to errors and inconsistencies in product information, which kill your product experience. But with Akeneo PIM, you can accelerate your time-to-market, all while eliminating errors and inconsistencies. Thanks to better governance over processes and a more streamlined flow, Akeneo customers report significantly faster time-to-market — like the case of Australian retail giant Myer, which saw time-to-market accelerate by 400% after adopting Akeneo PIM. What’s more, with Akeneo’s Teamwork Assistant, Akeneo PIM help fosters collaboration across your teams by tracking product data completeness to ensure no incomplete makes it to your sales channel. It also helps you pick up the pace by helping you audit your enrichment processes and notifying your marketing team when a product is missing attributes, needs translation, is ready to be exported in your eCommerce or is added to the PIM.

4. Climbing Conversion Rates

With your PIM implemented, your team moving more quickly, your product information enriched consistently and correctly, your digital assets driving interest in your products, and your compelling customer experiences delighting and exciting buyers, you should begin to realize the final benefit of Akeneo PIM: increased revenue! As we’ve addressed above, today’s consumers and B2B buyers have high standards when it comes to making purchasing decisions. Fortunately, Akeneo PIM is built to meet, and exceed, those expectations by enabling you to provide dynamic, compelling customer experiences on every channel, offer localized and geographically-appropriate information, and turn shoppers into customers. Akeneo customers have reported increases in conversion rates of up to 400% — and when paired with reduced returns mentioned above, this can have a real impact on your bottom line. So if you’re ready for a PIM solution that provides you with real results, look to Akeneo PIM.

If you weren’t on hand at historic brewery and distiller Espace Clacquesin in Paris, site of #APS2020, today’s your lucky day. Here’s your chance to look back at highlights from the week that was — and if you were lucky enough to find yourself in the crowd on February 5 and 6, now’s your chance to relive some of your favorite moments.

1. Brewing the Perfect Product Experience

#APS2020 opened in style as Akeneo CEO Fred de Gombert and APS MC Francois Chaix showed off their setting-appropriate, Peaky Blinders-inspired attire, and welcomed guests to Espace Clacquesin, a historic brewery and distillery just outside of Paris. Fred took the time to explain why this year’s event took place at such a venue. It isn’t just because Akeneo PIM has had plenty to celebrate over a pint in the past year, including the 7th anniversary of Akeneo’s founding, a new round of fundraising from Summit Partners, and much more! It’s also because the craft beer industry in the United States provides a good showcase for the current state of product experience. Craft beer has become enormously popular in the United States, with small breweries opening up in cities and towns across the country, eager to get a share of the success of this newly popular space. However, beer consumption as a whole held steady to historic levels — which meant that these new companies were competing for the same small group of customers. A similar phenomenon has taken place in a range of industries as eCommerce and omnichannel sellers flood markets with options, giving consumers more choice than ever before. That’s where product information and product experience come in. Because consumers have more choice than ever before, how you sell your products is incredibly important, Fred explained — meaning those who aren’t reaching customers on the right channels and communicating the right information will fall behind those that provide dynamic and compelling experiences to customers across every one of their touchpoints.

2. The Age of Amazon 

While the recent rise of craft beer may have helped demonstrate its importance, product information is nothing new. Since the dawn of trade and retail, people buying products have craved information and expertise about the objects of their desire. But as Neil Roseman, formerly of Amazon and now technologist-in-residence at Summit Partners, explained on the opening morning of #APS2020, the internet has presented unique opportunities, and posed new challenges when it comes to  product information and its uses. This is especially true following the advent and popularization of massive marketplaces like Amazon, which put increased importance on product information. It’s been a bumpy ride for many companies working to take control of product information and put it to good use in the omnichannel age, as they work to deal with new general and industry-specific channels and marketplaces. There is some good news, however. As Roseman told the assembled masses of PIM devotees at Espace Clacquesin, there are three lessons that modern sellers can take from the early days of eCommerce and omnichannel commerce. The first is to start with the information the customer wants to know, and work backwards from that point, ensuring that you don’t leave shoppers searching for answers to their biggest questions. Next, while it may be a cliche, it’s still essential to remember that necessity is the mother of invention — so don’t be afraid to try out a new approach or solution when confronted with a new problem. Finally, Roseman reminded those in attendance that, while some would have you believe otherwise, failure is always an option. So, while it’s crucial to move quickly in this digital world, it’s also important to take the time to continue to work on a project until it’s completed and ready for the big time.

3.  Technodom, Staples Canada, and Groupe Atlantic take home the top prize 

After APS attendees had their fill of PIM and PXM expertise for one day and the moon had risen, some Akeneo customers and partners got their moment in the sun as the winners of APS’ three awards were announced. Akeneo customer Technodom, along with their partner Scandiweb, showed that you don’t need experience to flex some PIM expertise. The pair took home the Rising Star Award for the work in turning Kazakhstan-based seller Technodom into an efficient eCommerce machine by optimizing their website and product data to accelerate time-to-market and improve conversion rates. The B2C Award, meanwhile, went to Staples Canada and their partner Bounteous. The pair had worked on a full digital transformation since 2018, beginning with the replatforming of their B2C eCommerce site and the adoption of Akeneo PIM. By the time the project was complete, Staples had integrated its previously existing product information into Akeneo PIM, connected their new PIM with their new eCommerce platform and other solutions, and improved its product information quality. Finally, Groupe Atlantic and their partner Smile took home the B2B award. The two French companies had worked to make Akeneo PIM a single source of product information truth for HVAC sellers Groupe Atlantic, which previously had information trapped in various departments and silos. Atlantic now has more than 100 families, 2,000 attributes and 6,000 categories in their PIM and is scaling the solution to cover even more of their products.

4. Akeneo PIM 4.0 Takes Centerstage

After attendees had dined to their hearts’ (or stomach’s) content and the awards had been awarded, it was time for Day 2 of #APS2020 — and what a day it was! The day started off on a high note as a team of Akeneo experience experts, including Emilie Gieler, John Evans, Camille Fant, and Benjamin Gouraud, took to the stage to unveil Akeneo PIM 4.0, the newest version of Akeneo PIM! So what new features, upgrades, and improvements does this new and improved version of Akeneo PIM offer? Let’s start with the new Asset Manager capabilities offered by Akeneo PIM Enterprise Edition. As more and more consumers migrate to digital channels, assets like photos, videos, and documents have become crucial to brands and retailers alike, as they help tell customers a story, increasing trust and emotional impact. To help your team take control of digital assets and enhance your product experience, Akeneo PIM 4.0 offers enhanced asset management capabilities for both B2B and B2C businesses by offering greater flexibility, better asset organization, improved asset transformation and linking capabilities, and a dedicated asset library to help you visualize all your digital assets. But the Asset Manager isn’t the only new feature coming to Akeneo PIM 4.0. It also offers a new capability known as Data Quality Insights, designed to help improve your product experience by raising product data quality. To do so, this feature searches for and identifies misspellings,  inconsistencies, formatting issues, and other product quality challenges, and helps you quickly and efficiently correct these mistakes and inconsistencies. Another Akeneo PIM 4.0new feature is designed to take Akeneo’s open source foundation to the next level. With the new Connections feature, users can now more easily connect and configure extensions from within the PIM, allowing them to easily add add Source Connections (inbound feeds) from systems such as your ERP, MDM, DAM, or others, or Destination Connections (outbound feeds) meant to distribute product information. But that’s not all. Akeneo PIM 4.0 also offers enhancements to several existing features, including continuous delivery of updates and patches, and additional incremental performance improvements. Want to learn more about Akeneo PIM 4.0? Check out the Akeneo PIM 4.0 product page or press release.

5. Out of the Black, into the Green

The new features of Akeneo PIM 4.0 aren’t only designed to help give omnichannel customers great experiences, Virginie Blot, Akeneo’s PIM evangelist, noted from the Espace Clacquesin Stage on the morning of Day 2. As she and Philipp Engelmann, head of product management at MyTheresa.com, explained, they’re also designed to help brands and retailers put their values on full display. The pair noted that as buyers have become more concerned with customer experiences, they’re also paying increased attention to socially responsible aspects of the companies they do business with. While this creates product information challenges for companies who now need to show customers that they’re creating a great product, but doing it in an environmentally-friendly and ethically-responsible way, it also creates opportunities. Organizations can now promote their company values and highlight product experiences that appeal to these buyer preferences — that is, if their product information is up to the task. MyTheresa and Akeneo, the pair explained, have looked to take advantage of these opportunities by taking an active stance, and using Akeneo PIM’s product experience capabilities to feature the company’s efforts surrounding sustainability.

6. A first-hand look at the power of PIM

After hearing about all that Akeneo PIM 4.0 has to offer, it was time for the attendees of #APS2020 to get a first-hand look at the practical power of PIM from some of Akeneo’s most successful customers, including Midland Scientific and Which?, among others. Rodrigo Neves, technology officer at Midland Scientific, took to the stage to explain just how Akeneo PIM had helped the scientific instrument maker and seller move into the digital age. He noted that the company had tapped Akeneo to replace legacy product information management processes and systems after struggling to manage information for a large and diverse product catalog while providing highly technical, specific, precise, and accurate information to customers. The result was a decrease in inaccurate or inconsistent product information, which helped the company improve its relationship with buyers and boost its customer experience. Akeneo PIM also helped Midland Scientific accelerate time-to-market, Neves said, as the company could now enrich its print catalog, a process that previously took an entire calendar year, in six months, and enrich 10x as many eCommerce products per week as it did before implementing PIM. Lewis Skinner, digital product manager, and Leon Harvey, senior delivery manager, also took to the Espace Clacquesin stage to explain the impact PIM had on online seller Which?. The pair explained that, while the company may be known for helping customers find the best options for everything from home goods to technology, it’s real business is product information. However, much of Which?’s data was trapped in high risk, high maintenance legacy systems, which threatened time-to-market and product data quality. So, Skinner and Harvey said, the company looked to Akeneo PIM to serve as an all-in-one solution. The PIM-powered digital transformation was a success, as the company was able to cut enrichment time in half while improving their content creation and curation processes, improving their businesses experience and customer experience in the process. Thanks to all our customers, partners, and sponsors for making the 2020 Akeneo PIM Summit such a special event. We can’t wait to see you again next year! Want to relive more memorable moments from the event? Search for #APS2020 on Twitter!

eCommerce has continued its meteoric rise into a serious engine of business. According to the U.S. Commerce Department, eCommerce sales rose once again last year, this time by 15 percent, and now account for more than 14.3 percent of all retail sales in the U.S. Now, as a result, retailers around the U.S. and around the world are experimenting with and embracing new strategies for getting customers in the door and spending money. Some are working to bring new and innovative tech like augmented reality and cashier-less payment technology to their stores. Others are embracing omnichannel initiatives and looking to introduce new technology to emerging digital channels, including new features like visual search. But increasingly, many retailers are turning their attention back toward a retail strategy that seemed to fall out of favor more than a decade ago — showrooming. Showrooming, or the practice of consumers examining merchandise in a traditional brick-and-mortar retail store, then buying it online, often at a lower price, was considered something to avoid at all costs. The fear was it would become something that could threaten brick-and-mortar retail’s very existence. But now, a growing group of merchants is looking to use the practice to their advantage — and with good reason. More than 50 percent of consumers in both the U.S. and U.K. showroom shop, won over by the convenience and low prices. So how can you use this growing trend to your advantage? The answer lies in your product information.

Using product information to create a showrooming success

Succeeding with showrooming requires that you have your product information up to par — there’s just no two ways about it. When consumers showroom shop, they’re often going to get a firsthand look at a product that they might not feel comfortable buying online without seeing in person. This is especially common with products like electronics, clothing, and household items. This way, they’re able to get face-time with the product, then find it online for a price that suits them later on. Companies can appeal to showroom shoppers and make this a viable revenue stream — if they have the right ingredients in place. However, this requires high-quality product information coupled with equally high-quality digital assets — images, videos, and other forms of media that harken back to the in-store experience and serve as a reminder for customers looking up your products online. Without this high-quality information, consumers who return home to search using specific terms they remember from their trip to a brick-and-home won’t be able to find your products. If you want to succeed with showrooming efforts, search engines need to be able to find your products with ease. After all, if customers can’t find your products, it won’t matter your they are the best ones out there, at the best possible price. Of course, simply being able to find your products isn’t enough. Your product information also needs to be accurate, consistent, complete and compelling. If showroom shoppers don’t trust your product information or don’t like the experience you provide, you’ll quickly be finding your customers will make their purchases elsewhere.

PIM handles webrooming too

Showrooming isn’t the only trend retailers need to worry about. Its cousin, webrooming, is also a growing phenomenon among modern shoppers — and perhaps even more popular than showrooming itself. According to Chain Store Age, nearly three-quarters enjoy webrooming when shopping, often for many of the same products they showroom shop for. So what is webrooming, you ask? It’s the name given to the practice of online browsing and buying in-store. Fortunately, product information can also help here. Even B2B businesses are embracing webrooming. Home furnishings manufacturer Tarkett, for example, offers a webrooming capability via its website. While customers cannot order directly via the webrooming app, the app does send users to a distributor’s website, where they can make a purchase. Whether you’re a B2B or B2C seller, the same things that win over showroom shopping customers — accurate, correct, consistent, and easy-to-find product information and a top-notch customer experience, coupled with high-quality digital assets that not only show the product but also put it in context in a room and help you create a look. When it comes to webrooming, customer experience and consistency are more important than ever before. Companies investing in these experiences will need to provide a customer journey that walks your customers right from their online searches to the register with their product in hand.

Turn your showroom efforts into a success with PIM

Make your showrooming efforts shine with PIM! Learn how Akeneo can help give your team the product information and workflow tools to make any showroom a success. Learn how PIM and PXM can help you make sure all your new sales efforts reach their full potential by reading our blog on Turning A New Commerce Channel Into A Success or get in touch today!

Let’s say you need help getting Akeneo PIM installed, implemented and up and running, or adding integrations and extensions to your Akeneo PIM instance — where do you turn? Or perhaps you could use a little assistance from a crack team of Akeneo experts to, explain new features and functionalities like a pro, or develop your business — what’s the solution? For many Akeneo PIM users, the answers to these questions, and to many other Akeneo PIM installation and integration challenges is Trilix GmbH. The German software development company offers expert insights in a host of Akeneo PIM areas, including installation, implementation, and integrations, especially those between Akeneo PIM and Magento 2. Implementation experts Here at Akeneo, we know that implementing a PIM solution is an exciting time in a company — but it can also be a stressful and busy one. Software integrations of any kind bring along a host of challenges, from time management to employee training to technical issues, and everything in between. That’s why we’ve worked to build a community chock full of partners that are ready to help you get Akeneo PIM up-and-running at your organization with the snap of a finger, and that includes Trilix. The experts at Trilix are ready to help you with the full implementation process, including bundle development, solution architecture, back-end, and front-end development, code assurance, and more. Trillix offers complete integration support and is prepared to help you with every stage of your installation and implementation process, including preparation, discovery, planning, design, launch, and support. What’s more, the company’s strong history of market understanding, high-performance eCommerce stores, and experience with Akeneo mean you can rest assured that your implementation process will go off without a hitch. Magento marvels While Trilix can easily and efficiently get your PIM system up and running, it also believes that sometimes, simply installing and implementing a PIM solution alone isn’t enough. To truly experience the full potential of Akeneo, you’ll likely need to extend your PIM’s capabilities by connecting with your eCommerce platform — and Trilix can help with that too. The company has built itself on a foundation of integrating solutions, with a specific focus on innovation and quality that has helped them develop impactful and inspired integrations for a range of solutions — including Akeneo PIM and eCommerce platform giant Magento. With Trilix’s PIM2Magento REST API Integration, your team can make sharing information a cinch. The extension works to push data from Akeneo PIM to Magento, minimizing dependencies between the two applications, offers a simplified workflow for importing product information into Magento 2, provides synchronization between product data in Akeneo and Magento, and helps improve the accuracy and consistency of product information. That way, you can easily import high-quality, accurate, consistent, and compelling product information to your Magento website and other channels, ensuring your customers are presented with an exciting and captivating experience across every touchpoint. Inspired integrations Trilix’s integration intelligence doesn’t stop with PIM2Magento, however. The company also provides the popular Events API Bundle, designed to offer a smooth and simple way to create integrations that respond to activities in Akeneo PIM. With the Events API, creating, deleting, or updating a category, attribute, family, product, or product model triggers a mechanism that automatically sends those events to various Request URLs as HTTP posts, making it easier to build and develop integrations that respond to specific activities. What’s more, by pairing the Events API Bundle with the web-based service IFTTT (If This Then That), your team can receive email notifications for all Akeneo events or integrate Akeneo event notifications into other applications such as Trello, helping your team work more quickly and efficiently. Trilix also has more integrations on the way. Coming soon to the Akeneo Marketplace is an extension designed to help companies better import product information that’s trapped in a spreadsheet — the Google Sheets Integration. By helping your team automatically pull data from Akeneo in real-time via the REST API, eliminating the need to export data from Akeneo manually, and ease reporting, monitoring and analysis processes in Google sheets, this extension offers powerful real-time collaboration tools that help your team more easily and efficiently visualize, process, and communicate data. With Trilix, your team can be sure that all parts of your PIM journey, from implementation to integration and everything in between, can be done easily and efficiently. Want to discover the potential and capabilities of Akeneo’s open source PIM community? Check out the Akeneo Marketplace for more information on these and other extensions! Have questions about implementations, integrations, or anything else? Check out Trilix’s website for more information on their offerings, or contact Akeneo. 

That’s right, it’s not only aspiring fashionistas, budding bodybuilders, and other consumers who try to find the perfect image to reel in the “likes” and launch them to fame and fortune on Instagram. Increasingly, B2B and B2C sellers are going social and taking to platforms like Instagram. That’s because nearly 3.5 billion people around the world (or 45% of the population), count themselves as active social media users, and Instagram is increasingly the platform of choice. Already, the platform boasts more than 1 billion users and counting, meaning that there’s no shortage of potential customers to reach with the perfect photo. What’s more, these social media scrollers are typically open to being influenced by something they see on the app. According to one survey, 72% of Instagram users report making purchase decisions based on something that they saw while browsing the app, making this platform a place for more than just pretty advertising. Finding success on Instagram, however, isn’t as simple as snapping a selfie and watching the sales roll in. Selling via any social channel, particularly Instagram, poses additional challenges for companies, from added channel complexity to specific channel requirements, and much more. So how do you make sure this information is up to par and ready to turn scrollers into buyers?

Don’t waste a second

Time is of the essence on Instagram and other social media sites. New posts are added every second, and consumer tastes change nearly as quickly, meaning your team needs to be able to move quickly and capitalize on emerging trends or opportunities to have success on Instagram. What’s more, when Instagram users click on a branded post, they’re taken to a product description page where they will see information like product images, descriptions, and prices, along with a link to your website. Customers expect to find the answers to their questions within moments — but if your team is wasting time with time-consuming and tedious processes, you won’t be able to provide the kind of information your customers expect and demand. Tackle these tedious tasks with Akeneo’s PXM solution. Akeneo offers features designed to help you add accurate measurements, compelling product descriptions, emotionally resonant images, and other assets to your product information quickly and easily, making sure that you make the most of every second.

Get it right the first time 

Just as quickly changing timelines and trends necessitate speed, they also require accuracy. Consumers, particularly social shoppers, won’t spend time searching for information or data about your product. If they can’t find the info they want quickly, they’ll abandon the purchase or patronize another merchant who tells them what they want to know. The same can be said if they don’t trust the information or if the information is wrong — and even customers who are convinced to make a purchase will return the product and likely won’t shop with you again afterward. This means that product information must be airtight — accurate, consistent, and easy to find. Use PIM features like automation, catalog completeness, and more to ensure that no incorrect or inconsistent product information gets anywhere near your customers.

Put it all into perspective

Even if your information is accurate and easy to find, it won’t much matter if you aren’t speaking directly to Instagram users when selling on the platform. Context is king when it comes to social selling. Just because something works on your eCommerce store doesn’t mean it will work on other digital platforms, including Instagram. That’s also true of other social media platforms. It’s all about high-quality images and long captions on Instagram, not so on other platforms. As a result, it’s crucial to tailor content to fit the guidelines and unique elements for each social media network, otherwise, you won’t properly connect with your customers. With Akeneo features like export profiles, which ensure marketers export only the data they need, and route it to the desired channel and locale, along with Akeneo’s diverse and dynamic ecosystem of partners and connectors make it easy to send product information in context to all of your sales channels.

Get emotional

Instagram is such a powerful engine for sales in large part because of the emotion it can generate among customers. When shoppers see an item on Instagram that catches their eye, they’re often acting on an emotional impulse. But those powerful emotional impulses don’t appear out of thin air — you need to cultivate an emotional response from social media shoppers by providing them with the compelling and emotionally resonant customer experiences that will convert them from followers to customers. Offering that customer experience starts and ends by providing product experiences built on a foundation of high-quality, compelling product descriptions, dynamic digital product assets like photos and videos, and more. By utilizing robust PXM solutions to tackle tedious, time-consuming work, your marketing team will have more time to create these assets and foster emotional customers between you and your customers on Instagram.

Make your brand instafamous with PIM

Instagram holds no shortage of opportunities for brands of every shape and size — especially fashion, tech, and sportswear brands, which already experience plenty of popularity on the site. But no matter what kind of business you run, interacting with customers via social media platforms like Instagram can allow you to expose yourself to new customers and market your products without spending a dime, and help you open a whole new sales channel. But in order to take advantage of these opportunities, your product information needs to be up to par. Use PIM features and tools like automated business rules engines, validation workflows, export profiles, and more to more efficiently and successfully sell your products via social media networks like Instagram. Get instafamous by boosting the quality of your product experience!!  Learn how PIM and PXM can help your company turn social media into a serious driver of sales and revenue by reading our blog on Turning A New Commerce Channel Into A Success or get in touch today!

Now, that same disruption is coming to B2B businesses. B2B sellers have embraced marketplaces in recent years, and are projected to spend a whopping total of more than $6 billion via these digital platforms in 2019 alone, and most estimates expect this figure to rise in the coming years. But while these platforms are already well understood by consumers and early-adopting businesses, many B2B sellers remain in the dark when it comes to marketplace commerce. And it’s crucial that those who aren’t already selling on marketplace platforms do so soon, because as more millennials and other digital natives enter the workforce and rise to positions of B2B buying responsibility, they increasingly want and expect this process to be as simple, convenient, and enjoyable as the B2C buying process. So how do you start selling on B2B marketplaces, and how do you find success? Read on to find out.

Why are B2B businesses flocking to marketplaces? 

The biggest reason for the increase in B2B sales via marketplaces is also the simplest — companies are going to marketplaces because that’s where their customers are.  As we mentioned earlier, B2B buyers, especially younger workers or digital natives, increasingly want a buying experience that is similar to the B2C customer experience. That means they value convenience, speed, and an enjoyable experience over other factors that were in the past more important, such as price. Marketplaces give B2B buyers all of this, offering a wide selection of manufacturers, products, and prices along with an easy-to-use and consistent buying experience. Any seller, whether offering products to consumers or other businesses, wants to be where their buyers are, which makes the influx of B2B sellers to marketplace platforms quite understandable. But that’s not the only reason that B2B manufacturers and distributors are embracing marketplace commerce. Selling on marketplaces is also often much cheaper and faster than creating and developing a stand-alone eCommerce store. B2B sellers who are looking to embrace omnichannel commerce but don’t want to invest time, money, and other resources in building their own offering only to see it struggle to catch on see marketplaces as an attractive alternative.

What marketplace should my B2B business sell on?

When B2B businesses make the decision to start selling via these marketplace platforms, they have another decision to make: Which platform, exactly, should they sell on? Unfortunately, as is the case with so many other questions, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer. As of 2019, the biggest platforms in the space include some well-known names from the consumer marketplace industry, including Asian giants Alibaba, and the B2B division of American titan Amazon, known simply as Amazon business. Other, B2B-specific platforms have also flourished in recent years, including eWorldTrade, Wholesale Central, and Joor. It’s crucial to consider more than just the size and customer base of each specific marketplace, of course. Make sure you take into account the niche the platform serves, the geographic markets it will deliver to, and the marketplace platforms most often used by other companies in the industry. That last factor can be particularly important as, increasingly, industry-specific marketplaces have found success as more B2B buyers have embraced omnichannel commerce. GoDirectTrade, for example, has become a go-to shop for aviation parts, while the Hanes Closeout Marketplace, offered by the well-known consumer brand of the same name, has found success by operating as a liquidation marketplace for other clothing brands, such as Champion, Bali, and Maidenform.

How do I turn a new marketplace channel into a success?

When it comes to online marketplaces, one of the most important things you can do to find success is to make sure your product information is perfect. As we mentioned above, B2B buyers may want a convenient and enjoyable experience, but they also expect accuracy and consistency when it comes to product data. If they can’t find the data they need, or if they don’t trust it’s accurate, they won’t buy from your company, and will likely patronize a competitor. Accurate product data isn’t enough, however, because, with dozens, if not hundreds of similar or identical items each being listed on the same marketplace, yours needs to stand out. You can achieve this by forging an emotional connection with your buyer via compelling product information. It’s also important to put all this information into context, as each platform has its own rules/regulations— and if you don’t comply, you could be shut out. So, use PIM to take control of product information and turn your marketplace endeavor into a success. Take Control Of Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Holiday Shopping With PIM! Learn how PIM can help your team conquer expansions with relative ease by reading our blogs on Turning A New Commerce Channel Into A Success and Expanding To New Locales today!

This year, however, there’s also a new carol you may hear, particularly if you encounter carolers with a passion for omnichannel commerce and digital transformation. Or should we call it a new version of an old classic? No matter what you call it, the season’s latest and greatest holiday song making its way around the offices of Akeneo and its partners and customers around the world is all about one thing: Product Information Management (PIM). Now, we’re happy to share these 12 Days of PIM-Mas with product information enthusiasts around the world. Just like in the classic Christmas Carol, there’s a gift ready to go for each of the 12 days. But, rather than poultry in fruit trees and golden rings, we’ve got some gifts that should help get you in the holiday spirit by solving your biggest product information problems and challenges. So, what gifts has our product information “Ziggy Claus” brought for all the good boys and girls around the PIM world? Let’s find out…

1. A single source of truth for product information

First and foremost in Ziggy Claus’ bags of gifts this year is a truly valuable gift for brands and merchants the world over: product information accuracy.  A robust PIM system gives you a single source of truth for product information. This single source of truth can then be used to enrich all of your product catalogs on all channels for each locale with the accurate, compelling product information that forms the building blocks for a captivating product experience. With this product experience acting as your foundation, you can create enticing and exciting omnichannel experiences not just around the holiday season, but 365 days of the year.

2. Easier cross-border expansion

Once you’ve crossed a single source of truth for product information off your wishlist, you’ll unlock a host of new potential and possibilities. That includes easier and more efficient cross border expansion! Cross-border commerce requires that you speak your new customers’ language. This goes beyond simple translation and also includes making other changes to product catalogs. That means adapting your product assortment, digital assets, product descriptions, units of measurement, and even packaging to meet the norms and regulatory requirements of your new market. It may sound like a daunting process, but a gift of PIM from Ziggy Claus can help you deal with all of the changes needed to succeed internationally. Akeneo PIM’s localization features, along with its well-stocked marketplace of connectors and integrations, can help you handle cross-border commerce easily and efficiently.

3. Optimized omnichannel commerce

Selling in new markets isn’t the only expansion that Ziggy Claus and his PIM presents are here to help with, however. Opening up new sales channels is also made far easier with Akeneo PIM. Each channel has its own unique properties, rules, and best practices, and your product information needs to be put in context for the specificities of your new channel. When selling on social media networks like Pinterest and Instagram, for example, you’ll need to adapt all of the elements of your product information, including digital assets and product descriptions differently than when selling via desktop eCommerce sites or mobile apps. Even individual social media networks or marketplace platforms can have their own unique requirements, making it even more important that you adapt product information when selling on multiple channels. No matter whether you’re selling to consumers or other businesses, you can’t have a good customer experience without a good product experience. Take control of your omnichannel product experience with Ziggy Claus’ gift of omnichannel optimization.

4.  Dynamic digital experiences

Successfully expanding to emerging digital channels requires compelling and dynamic digital experiences. Offering these in an omnichannel world requires forging an emotional connection with your customers across all channels and touchpoints. This is especially important around the holiday season. Emotion can weigh even heavier on customers’ buying decisions during this festive time, so it’s crucial that your team puts your assets in the proper context to create relevant and timely experiences for customers. However, it’s also important to adapt your digital assets all year round — after all, no one wants to watch a video of a snowy mountainside in the middle of the summer. This all likely sounds like a daunting process, but Ziggy Claus may not be able to help with. But that’s where you’re wrong! With a timely gift of Akeneo PIM from Ziggy Claus, our digital asset management capabilities can help you manage all of your digital assets. Take control of your digital product experience by managing assets independently from products, allowing you to automate actions to edit them, saving precious time and resources when enriching products.

5. Team Efficiency

Now that your product information is correct, consistent, complete, and ready for expansion to new markets and emerging channels, it’s time to pick up the pace. That means accelerating time-to-market by freeing up your marketing team from menial, tedious tasks, and gives them more time to focus on creating the optimized omnichannel experiences we discussed earlier. Fortunately, Ziggy Claus’ PIM present has just the thing — automation and a Business Rules Engine. Akeneo PIM’s business rules engine allows users to create smart product attributes that will be automatically completed according to a rule. It can also help you create content for attributes, and automatically classify products. That way, you can move faster and ensure the quality and accuracy of your product information.

6. Work smarter

Now that your team is more efficient through automation, what else can they do to work smarter? Fortunately, Ziggy Claus and his magical PIM have that one taken care of. With Akeneo, your PIM is now more than a container, it can also deliver product data. Akeneo’s Product Data Intelligence solution, Franklin Insights, is designed to automatically match input product attributes with your catalog product attributes, suggest new data you can include, and validate existing attribute values you have. Once you’ve subscribed to a product identifier, your product data will be continuously updated to ensure the highest data quality. This way, you can make sure you have the most up-to-date, accurate, and compelling product information possible

7. Enhance your product experience

Managing product information is, of course, an essential ingredient for omnichannel and international success — but companies with the most compelling omnichannel experiences go even further. When it comes to fashion and apparel, home furnishings, and other high-level products, for example, form often matters as much as function. Customers in these and other industries expect and demand to be able to easily find and research products from unique brands, designers, collections, colors, and more, using features like shop the look. B2B brands, meanwhile, also need to manage information about suppliers and brands that can support your existing product information, and can also seek to offer product configurators and other tools to help buyers envision how a product will look once installed. Ziggy Claus has just the solution. Akeneo’s Reference Entities feature can help you organize your product catalog around pieces of common information shared among products, including everything brands and designers to materials, colors and more. Your team can use these reference entities to easily and efficiently link information to relevant products in your PIM system to create content-rich product pages. You can also link enriched information to your product, including colors, ingredients, materials, and care instructions for a faster, easier enrichment process.

8. Access to Ziggy Claus’ workshop

Need a little help making sure your omnichannel platforms sing like Christmas carolers? No problem, Ziggy Claus has just the thing. Akeneo’s open-source product information management solution allows you to connect your PIM instance to fit your every need. Akeneo’s inspired integrations and dynamic and exciting ecosystem, meanwhile helps you connect top the top eCommerce platforms and extensions to make sure all your sales channels are holiday season ready.  Plus, you can get access to Akeneo’s diverse and active community of PIM enthusiasts and evangelists. Get help with product information management challenges from more than 3,000 active members and keep your project moving, or pitch-in with advice or insight to other community partners. Because what would the holiday season be if you didn’t share it with others?

9. Reduced returns (accurate product information)

No one wants to wake up on Christmas morning to find the wrong present sitting under the tree — and thanks to Ziggy Claus, they won’t have to. When your product information is unclear or inaccurate, customers don’t get what they feel they paid for, and will rush to return products. While some returns can be chalked up to buyer behavior, according to many analysts, the vast majority of returns — nearly two-thirds, in fact — are the result of bad and inaccurate product descriptions or assets, which leave shoppers with the wrong impression or idea of what they purchased. The answer to reducing returns lies in Akeneo PIM’s ability to ensure only high-quality data is available and reduce returns by up to 40 percent!

10. Accelerated time-to-market

Speaking of spending the holiday season with those close to you, we all know that “teamwork makes the dream work” when it comes to holiday shopping success. Ziggy Claus has the trick to make your dreams soar to new heights this year! Make sure your workflow is as smooth as silk this holiday season while accelerating time-to-market, and eliminating errors and inconsistencies with PIM. With better governance over processes and a more streamlined flow, organizations using a PIM report significantly faster time-to-market — like the case of Australian retail giant Myer, which saw time-to-market accelerate by 400% after adopting Akeneo PIM. What’s more, with Akeneo’s Teamwork Assistant, Ziggy Claus help fosters collaboration across your teams of elves by tracking product data completeness to ensure no incomplete makes it to your sales channel. But that’s not all — by helping you audit your enrichment processes and notifying your marketing team when a product is missing attributes, needs translation, is ready to be exported in your eCommerce or is added to the PIM.

11. Increased conversions

By combining his offerings of better cross-border and omnichannel operations, reduced returns, accelerated, workflows, and more, Ziggy Claus can offer the give your company the greatest gift of all: increased sales and conversions. By providing higher-quality and more comprehensive product experiences that include impactful emotional information, you’ll convert customers at a higher rate. What’s more, when this data is put into context for the channel — by adapting and adjusting digital assets media and product descriptions to meet the specific needs of each channel — it can boost your conversion rates even further. And, thanks to those reduced returns, your revenues can grow as high as Ziggy Claus’ reindeer fly! Add it all up, and a dedicated PIM solution can help your team increase conversions by as much as 40 percent!

12. Sleep easy

Thanks to Ziggy Claus, you can settle in for your long winter’s nap confident in the knowledge that you have the answer to an issue with any of your PIM presents: Akeneo’s dedicated and dashing user support team! Each Akeneo Enterprise Edition license comes with an SLA-backed support agreement, a dedicated Customer Success Manager, and Project Success Assistance. No matter what issue you have, how it happens, or when it happens, Akeneo will be there to help with everything from implementation to workflow to export. With Ziggy Claus and his happy helpers at Akeneo at your side, you can make sure you don’t get left out in the cold this holiday season! Perfect your product information and build dynamic product experiences this holiday season all year long with Ziggy Claus’ greatest gift to B2B and B2C merchants and manufacturers big and small: Akeneo PIM! Get in touch today to get started on your PIM project!