Product Catalog Publishing to e Commerce Sites

Back in the day a business put out a “Big Book” product catalog once a year. And some businesses just put out the same catalog year after year, with manual, painful edits made by staff. ( I am working one project now and catalog has not been updated for 6 years.)

And more and more complexity bubbles up each day. Each day because new potential sales platforms pop up. Names like Amazon, Ebay, Google, and many, many more that can sell your products if you can hand them the product data.

And EMEA too. Getting product data in multi languages, with cultural flair, to offshore partners is not a snap, for most marketing folks. Mary Kay comes to mind. Biggest new markets are China, Russia. This I have been told. I wonder how many folks are transforming data to usable Chinese format?

And I ask to think about how fast markets change. How new entrant web sites are up in moments. How old school business fails. Just think about this.

Product Information Management & Enterprise Applications

The enterprise is chock full of product data applications. Product Lifecycle Management, ERP, CRM, are just a few applications holding product data.

Each application has a valuable role in an enterprise product information strategy. This brief overview summarizes what Product Information Management solutions do and explains how PIM fits and strengthens existing business applications.

Please get your copy of Product Information Management & Enterprise Applications right here:

Accelerate your Site Search with Better Product Data

Learn about why your web page visitors may be far less than they should be with this Executive Summary:

This executive overview hands you a framework for re-thinking your site search challenges. It begins with a brief explanation of how product data on the web became un-findable in the first place. It continues with a survey of search techniques and associated issues, followed by an explanation of product information management techniques that help correct limitations. It concludes with initial steps, you can take now, to begin taking advantage of site search technologies.

Please get your Site Search paper right here:

How to Improve E Commerce Site Search

Take a look at your product data. Is your product data classified with customer-friendly categories and taxonomies? If not introduction of parametric search or navigational techniques will fail. First things first; clean data, govern data. Productivity is ratcheted way up by organizing and managing your product data first. Tremendous benefits will be obtained in the longer run.

Please get your Executive summary right here. This Executive Report, “Accelerate your Site Search with Better Product Data,” can be had for Free by just submitting this simple form:

E Commerce & Product Information Management

Product information management solutions are much more than a product data repository or central product data base. Take a look at this vendors offering:

PIM: central repository for product information.
DAM: Digital Asset Management
Syndication: Product information publishing to e commerce, print, ERP, partners like Amazon, Google, Ebay and more.
Workflow: Process flow to alert and notify users when changes are made to product catalog.

The first three are offered by most MDM for Product providers. Vendors like Heiler and Riversand. The workflow engine is not integral to these vendors data model. It is an off the shelf OEM’d product bolt on. And the magic of real time data driven portals?

Most vendors do not provide the magic juice, a portal framework. This framework, a content management infrastructure, creates portal based applications to leverage that leverages product data. Here are just a few usages of a Portal Framework:

Supplier Portals: Supplier self-service for product upload, product updates and edits. Role based access to supplier product data.

E-Commerce Sites: product information is posted from live data sources to web. Absolute real-time accurate product date presentation to customers for purchase.

Print Portals: Distributed sales force and sales channels customize marketing materials with Web to Print.

Dealer Portals Product information is presented to dealers, e tailers and retailers, accurate and real time.

Portal Framework usage can increase the payback of a PIM or product information management solution. Make sure your vendor has this ability.

Fast Growing Ecommerce Biz

Hi, Working a new one here. Professional software salesguy, I am. Terrific 6 year old business. Fast grower, progressive thinker. CEO impressed the heck out of me with vision.

100 million revs and up I work. Admit the smaller more fun. The larger guys get cement shoes, slow to move, afraid to drown. Small, agile, quick to decide, there you go.

Problem is or, even better, the opportunity is, small get big and smart execs feel the IT infrastructure starting to chug like a car with miles hitting a hill. Time to get a new engine.

Back to CEO meeting at the gazelle company. All business software applications homegrown. Exec defines this as differentiated and he is right. Tech team is sharp as tacks and know what the business, marketers, merchandisers, product managers, need.

Right up against a wall now. Supplier counts growing fast and product numbers growing faster. Now is the time to look to packaged and configurable software products sitting in the MDM for PIM space. Master data management for products for Riolinda residents.

First need, to get Product data in one place. Very common pain. Marketers, merchandisers, product managers on point trying to hunt down images, docs, attributes, descriptions, etc. Just getting organized, getting data in one place in a proper taxonomy is a big win.

This is job one. Then job two may be optimizing print catalogs, faster, simpler product information syndication to partners, on demand ecommerce publishing and more…..

Product Information Management Software RFI Template

Get a Free Product Information Management RFI Guide Loaded with Best Practice PIM Functionality.

Enterprises that can quickly transform product data into rich, selling product information have competitive advantage over enterprises fighting product data each day.

Transforming product data to rich, selling product information is key to delighting customers and to keeping sales healthy.  Often, gathering product data from suppliers and internal systems to publish to e commerce sites and to print is a slow, painful process.

Retailers and etailers have many suppliers. And the market may change each day. Product attributes like price, color, size, availability, fit, capability, may change daily. And getting e commerce changes done, can eat time and cost sales.

If an Enterprise sells thousands of products into a fast moving marketing like apparel, electronics, and consumer goods, and if the product management process is slow and painful, a Product Information Management solution will offer high return on investment. 

Product information management smooths business processes like product edits, new product introductions, data governance and data enrichment Best of breed product information management solutions contain workflow engines that power and improve business processes like product lifecycle management.

Integrated workflow pushes work to designated users, using alerts and notifications, to speed business processes, to increase efficiency and to increase sales.

Now you can speed up the vendor selection process. Base lining your product data requirements is done for you.

PIM-Data.com is offering a FREE RFI/RFP guide to all enterprises seeking a product information management solution. This guide is full of rich functionality detail describing best of breed product information features. This guide is built to serve as a starting point. Project teams can use this road map to save time and kick start the PIM selection process.  

Much information is given to you. General Instructions, PIM and Multichannel Publishing overview and all these chapters:

Product Information Management

Search

Digital Asset Management (DAM)

Multichannel Publishing and Syndication

Product data system integration

Web-to-Print Portal

Work flow Management

Web Content Management

E-Commerce

Portal Framework for marketers, sales teams and more…

Support questions, training questions and technology questions are covered with intelligent questions all seeking a PIM solution can use. Important vendor questions are also supplied plus a reference section. All a Project Information team needs is to apply this template to their business. Please get your FREE copy right here:

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