But how can you evaluate what a PIM can really do for your business? What does a good scenario for adopting a PIM look like? And how do you select the best solution for your needs from all the available tools? Check out this recent webinar from Akeneo’s John Evans and special guest Jordan Jewell, Research Manager, Digital Commerce, at IDC. The pair discuss why high-quality product information is crucial to better results from your commerce initiatives, what PIM can do to help, and tips and best practices for selecting the right technology. Watch now to discover: 

• Key reasons and use cases for adopting a PIM to support your commerce objectives
• Typical business benefits of PIM
• Must-have capabilities of a PIM solution you should consider

DISCOVER THE POTENTIAL OF PIM

These familiar red-and-white buttons were a product of office supply chain Staples’ mid-2000’s advertising campaign, originally debuted as part of the 2005 Super Bowl, and presented an alluring, if simple, premise. Just press your handy-dandy “Easy Button” and poof! Any conceivable problem someone was struggling with, from a bucking bronco that refused to be lassoed, to a new father struggling to keep up with twins, to a business owner or employee searching for an affordable and convenient spot to pick up office supplies, would magically fix itself.

A colleague referenced the campaign last Friday afternoon, and I spent most of the weekend (and if we’re being honest, a good chunk of that workday), fantasizing about just how great it would be to really have an Easy Button. Want to spend some time watching TV instead of checking chores of your weekend’s “to-do” list? Easy Button! Stuck in traffic and running late? Easy Button! Don’t feel like cooking dinner after a hard day writing blogs? Easy Button! (At least there’s GrubHub!) Want to take some tasks off your plate at work? Easy Button! Then it hit me. Akeneo’s PIM (product information management) solution is a lot like an Easy Button for your business — especially when it comes to making eCommerce easy. For example, let’s say you need a top-rated solution to compete in the increasingly fierce and fractured digital market. Winning the battle for customers online all comes down to the experience you offer your customers, which means it’s crucial to arm yourself with the best product information arsenal you can assemble. There’s a big difference between a “good enough experience” and a compelling, dynamic, contextual experience. If you want to succeed in eCommerce, you don’t just want a good solution — you want the best — and Akeneo PIM is a leader in helping B2B brands and B2C companies alike create these compelling experiences. Just ask retailers like American farm equipment and supply store Rural King, who have used Akeneo PIM to reinvent their eCommerce experiences and live up to the high expectations set by their in-store experience. Other retailers, like Europe’s leading retailer of outdoor and camping equipment, Obelink, have used PIM to create dynamic product experiences that help them reach customers far outside the walls of their flagship brick-and-mortar stores. Europe’s largest luxury shoe retailer, Kurt Geiger, meanwhile, used PIM to dramatically improve productivity and efficiency. This allowed the company to more quickly add new products to its catalog or expand to a new channel and also helped them better manage seasonal products and events. PIM can also be an integral part of an eCommerce re-platforming or migration, reducing the time spent migrating product data to the new platform and helping your team more efficiently handle the product information related challenges that come with such a transition. Or, if you’re looking to reach new customers by selling products in new locales, Akeneo can help you localize and optimize your eCommerce experience to fit the needs and norms of your new market while making it easier for your employees to track exactly which pieces of product data need to be translated or updated. Maybe you’re struggling to take your eCommerce endeavor to the next level? Make it easy with Akeneo’s dynamic open-source ecosystem of partners and integrations. Integrate with major eCommerce platforms like Magento, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Shopify, Big Commerce, Oro Commerce, and many more via the dozens of extensions in our marketplace. Or, get help with your most difficult eCommerce challenges from our community — more than 3,000 PIM enthusiasts and evangelists are ready to help you conquer even the biggest obstacles. Or, brush up on your PIM skills and show off your eCommerce expertise by joining the community yourself. No matter what your business needs to make eCommerce product information management easier than ever, Akeneo PIM has it. So get your hands on the Easy Button of product information, Akeneo PIM, today! Ready to make eCommerce easy to the next level with Akeneo PIM?  Discover how companies like Novia and Pierce have used Akeneo to make product information management as simple as pressing the Easy Button. 

Looking for a dose of community while working away from the office and your normal routines? Akeneo’s got you covered! We’d like to cordially invite you to watch the first live edition of the PXM Pioneers’ Pulpit — a new webshow from Akeneo PIM featuring our vibrant PXM community. Join us as we take a deep dive into the world of Product Experience Management and the exciting ecosystem that surrounds it with Akeneo experts and guests from around the community! Watch the debut episode of this new adventure below! Help us grow the community by sharing this episode with a friend, and join us on our next episode where we’ll invite some Pioneers to join us in discussing some of their PXM tips, tricks, and best practices.

Around the world, the COVID-19 pandemic and resultant economic, social, and political turmoil have changed our daily lives. Many European countries such as the UK, Italy, France… have closed all their schools and have asked people to stay home and limit social interactions as much as possible. Working from home whenever possible has now become a civic act that slows the spread of the virus and saves lives, protecting the elderly, the vulnerable, and each one of us. As a global company with offices and employees all over the world, Akeneo is already experienced in managing a virtual workforce and has taken all the necessary decisions to be able to work and serve our community (customers and partners) as usual. As a cloud-based business, we are fortunate to have a suite of tools that keep our business operating smoothly, no matter where our people are. We have also increased the capacity of our infrastructure to ensure the current ramp-up. Therefore, at this time, we do not anticipate any impact on our ability to continue to render services to our customers. Please note that for the safety and health of our teams, business travel at Akeneo is on freeze until further notice, but we all remain operational and ready to run meetings and workshops via video conference. We keep doing everything we can to ensure our products and services will help support your own operations in the best conditions. Our dedicated maintenance and support teams are available for you as usual. You can reach us through our regular communication channels. We wish you, all of your employees, and loved ones to stay healthy and to get through this unusual period as well as possible, together. Fred de Gombert, Akeneo CEO

It’s safe to say that most of us have cabin fever by now. We’ve binge-watched our favorite show on Netflix (or a few shows), listened to some new podcasts, and brushed up on a new book or two. But here at Akeneo, we’ve been yearning for a way to get our creative juices flowing and express our artistic sides, or trying to find a way to simply keep our little hydras away from the screen for a few moments. Fortunately, our pal Ziggy heard our pleas and is here to help. She’s provided us with a brand new Ziggy the Hydra coloring book, filled with 12 pages of adventures to explore and relax with while coloring inside the lines (or outside — we don’t judge!) Keep your kids (or yourself) busy and relax by creating some art with our pal Ziggy! Download the coloring book pages below and share your masterpieces using the hashtag #ZiggyTheHydra!

Download Now

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!