Akeneo Announces Activation for Retailers Like Amazon in Addition to New AI-powered Capabilities for its Akeneo Product Cloud Solution

Akeneo Activation for Retail
Akeneo is bringing its best-of-breed product experiences to product listing pages on retailers like Amazon, Macy’s, Zappos, Nordstrom’s and more, with the launch of Akeneo Activation for Retail, which connects rich product information from Akeneo PIM to product pages on these retail channels. Brands and manufacturers will now have the ability to deliver consistent product experiences on these channels while easily customizing product information to align with shopper expectations and channel requirements. In uncertain economic times, the ability to optimize all of your routes to market or move quickly into new ones will rapidly become a competitive advantage and Akeneo Activation for Retail is designed to facilitate that optionality.

“At Havaianas, when it comes to retailers like Amazon, we’re laser-focused on conversion. We know that some shoppers may come to Amazon to browse, but we also know that they mainly want to purchase quickly, pay a fair price, and get the product delivered fast,” said Francois Silvain, Digital CTO, Havaianas International. “We need to ensure our products are findable and once found, the listing must be perfect with all the information that a consumer needs in order to convert. We need to have up-to-date, high-quality product information automatically feeding our Amazon listings. Having a product experience strategy that is mapped to this end goal is a fundamental must-have step and we have Akeneo Activation for Retail to power that for Amazon as well as our other key retailers.”

New Time-to-Market Insights
Getting your enriched products listed faster in any destination is a competitive advantage and that is why Akeneo is introducing new operational analytics for Akeneo Product Cloud that identify opportunities to streamline the product data enrichment process in Akeneo PIM and bring products to market faster. This new analytics functionality provides additional actionable insights into the product enrichment process as well as industry benchmarking to pinpoint where and how your business can improve. Faster times to market result in getting on the shelf before the competition and ultimately increased sales.

New AI Capabilities for Akeneo PIM
The cornerstone of Akeneo Product Cloud, Akeneo PIM launched AI-driven data cleansing to support faster time-to-market by leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate the cleansing, deduplication and categorization of product data as it is imported into Akeneo PIM.

Akeneo is pushing the boundaries of a traditional SaaS offering and following the example set by best-in-class SaaS providers like Microsoft and Salesforce by introducing Custom Apps that are designed to meet the specific need of an individual Akeneo customer. These SaaS native apps allow developers and integrators to alleviate the expense and time necessary to build and maintain custom integrations by leveraging tools provided through the Akeneo App Store. Custom Apps provide a flexible solution to easily create an app to address almost any unique customer need. For example, a Custom App could leverage Google Vision AI to detect errors in product information and make suggestions to improve data quality. Custom Apps can also be used to create business process workflows that save hours of manual effort; for example, leveraging an in-store scanner to scan clothing and accessory SKUs to create a “look” while automatically generating associations in Akeneo PIM to bundle these products together. 

“Akeneo is proud to enable DIY innovation for our customers and developer partners with the launch of Custom Apps,” said Nico Dupont, Chief Product Officer and co-founder of Akeneo. “To extend the value of Akeneo’s SaaS platform, Custom Apps provide the flexibility to package and release apps to address any specific customer use case in a secure, scalable, way.”

Akeneo is also announcing the addition of 11 new apps in the Akeneo App Store, including: 

• Akeneo App for Shopify which allows customers to easily connect Akeneo PIM with their Shopify stores.
• Digital Asset Management (DAM) apps such as the new TESSA Akeneo App by EIKONA Media, Filerobot Akeneo App by Scaleflex and Akeneo Image CDN by TwicPics, which will allow Akeneo customers to seamlessly access digital assets within Akeneo PIM and foster cross-platform collaboration between teams working in an external DAM and teams working in Akeneo PIM.
• Translation apps such as Powerling x Akeneo App, and DeepL App by Induxx streamline workflows to make it easier for businesses to deliver localized content. 
• New AI-based apps ChatGPT Bee App by Dataggo and RoughDraftPro AI leverage ChatGPT to speed content enrichment, while Contentwise Catalog Builder App also leverages AI capabilities to generate product attributes and text.
• A new catalog classification app, Calago ETIM App, creates a catalog structure in Akeneo PIM based on ETIM classifications, the international standard for technical products.

In addition to the new innovative apps in the App Store, Akeneo has launched a new self-service application development program that delivers a guided experience, including sample apps with code examples in multiple languages to help Akeneo partners develop new apps easier and faster. In short, the App Store of the Akeneo Product Cloud offering allows customers to innovate with a click of a button, which is essential in future-proofing your business in uncertain times.

“Every new piece of functionality that we design is done so with an eye toward empowering product experience decision-makers and practitioners to showcase their products wherever their customers are in their buying journey,” said Fred de Gombert, CEO and co-founder of Akeneo. “Consumers and business buyers need more and better information about products in order to purchase and to be satisfied with the purchase. Putting a product experience (PX) practice in place, led at the c-suite level, and providing the PX team with a product cloud to execute on that strategy is the only way to truly future-proof your business.”

Akeneo is announcing these updates at Akeneo Unlock 2023, the annual global summit for product experience leaders and practitioners, taking place on March 8-9 in Paris.