Product Information Malpractice. The single biggest threat to omnichannel commerce

Transcription

1 Product Information Malpractice The single biggest threat to omnichannel commerce

2 You don t need us to tell you this: Selling online has completely changed the dynamics of retail and consumer products.

3 High-cost shelf space has become low-cost warehouse space. Aisles have become endless as assortments widen. Long-tail products deliver the kind of margins we all thought were gone forever.

4 THAT S EXCITING.

5 But there s a ticking time bomb at the heart of every business that sells more than one product

6

7 Here s how it works: Every product comes with a rich set of product information. Specifications Dimensions Sizes and colors Images and videos Ratings and reviews Anywhere from dozens to hundreds of attributes and assets for each and every product.

8 Remember: this isn t back-office data. This is essential information that helps shoppers become buyers. If you don t have it ready for them when they re ready to buy, they ve clicked off to someone who does.

9 Now multiply all that essential product information by millions of products. That s one ugly spreadsheet.

10 Now add new channels. The web. A printed catalog. A mobile store. Social pages. In-store kiosks. Tablet apps. The product information challenge is getting more and more complex.

11 If you re like most retailers, you ve built a product information silo for each channel. You had to. So product updates and changes are painful. And adding new products takes weeks or months (of potential high-margin selling time). And information is often out of date or incomplete.

12 Now add new countries and languages.

13 Now bring on new suppliers and products.

14 That s Product Information Chaos.

15 And, as multichannel commerce matures, this tiny little inconvenience has blossomed into a major business inhibitor.

16 How do most retailers attack the product information management challenge? They don t. (At least not efficiently.)

17 Most retailers struggle on with multiple spreadsheets and manual processes. And pretend it s just the way things are done.

18 Most retailers struggle on with multiple spreadsheets and manual processes. And pretend it s just the way things are done. Others try to use their CMS to hold product information. That doesn t work for even the single web channel.

19 Most retailers struggle on with multiple spreadsheets and manual processes. And pretend it s just the way things are done. Others try to use their CMS to hold product information. That doesn t work for even the single web channel. Others try to make their Digital Asset Management tool do the work. But DAM just holds stuff it doesn t do anything with it.

20 Most retailers struggle on with multiple spreadsheets and manual processes. And pretend it s just the way things are done. Others try to use their CMS to hold product information. That doesn t work for even the single web channel. Others try to make their Digital Asset Management tool do the work. But DAM just holds stuff it doesn t do anything with it. And others think ERP can solve the problem. Which is like using a sledgehammer to perform eye surgery.

21 Worst of all, most retailers let their customer experience suffer. They just present poor, incomplete, inaccurate or out-of-date product information. Or they do an okay job on the web but a lousy job on smartphones (for instance).

22 That s not a small problem IT S A BIG ONE

23 Bad product information at the point of sale means: You lose sales you should have won. You disappoint customers who buy the wrong things. You watch your product returns increase (and margins disappear).

24 In short, most multichannel retailers are guilty of Product Information Malpractice.

25 That would be okay if every multichannel retailer suffered from it. So it wasn t a competitive disadvantage just a price of doing business. But that s not the case.

26 In fact, some of the most successful retailers have already solved the product information management challenge. They ve deployed a centralized Product Information Management system PIM for short that shatters all those silos, bringing all product information together in one place.

27 Here s what a good PIM process looks like: 1 2 It starts with a supplier portal Where all suppliers can contribute all the data, images, and rich media for their own products. Ideally with automatic validation (so, for instance, they can t put 9 under Color: ). That feeds a central database So all product information is in one place not duplicated with every new channel.

28 3 4 With some quality data and business processes on top So your team can see how complete your product data is by item or supplier or category or region and take steps to improve it. And automatic updates to all channels. So you make a change once and it gets populated across the entire estate. That s what good PIM process looks like.

29 By the way. Once all that product information is centralized, normalized, and validated, you can do some amazing new things with it. Like combining it with your customer and supplier data for a complete view of the business. (That s called master data management and it s a very big deal indeed.) But back to the heart of the PIM story

30 Here s what proper PIM lets you do: Increase conversion rates. Because you ve deployed all the right information where the shoppers are. Please more customers. With the information they crave and a much better chance that they choose things they ll love. Drive down product returns. Because shoppers were better informed in the first place. (There s more...)

31 Add new channels easily. Without duplicating your product data (again). Get new products to market faster. Instead of suffering from the Shelf Lag that eats profits. Focus your team on better things. So merchandisers are actually merchandising instead of housekeeping.

32 So let s recap Multi-product, multichannel, multi-language commerce gets ridiculously complex amazingly fast. Without PIM, you re not only slower and less efficient you re delivering a poor customer experience. With PIM, you solve all this for every channel and every product. Once and for all.

33 Here s your choice: Muddle on with manual processes, spreadsheets, and lousy product data. Or attack the chaos. And kill it.

34 Liked this? You ll probably like this, too: The Informed Purchase Journey How product information can dramatically alter the customer s buying experience and power sales in retail Click here to download now.

35 This impassioned plea was brought to you by Informatica. We make the world s most complete PIM solution. And it s part of a Master Data Management portfolio that s changing the world, one company at a time. Some of the world s biggest, most successful and most agile retailers rely on our PIM solution and our experts in PIM deployment. Maybe we should talk.