Print Catalogs: Alive and Well if Done Right

April 19, 2012 Leave a comment

Done right means published with the customer in mind. I am a hunter and a big hunting supply company knows this. Catalogs, rich with hunting products, appear in my mailbox each month. And this is OK. However, I am a bow hunter, a traditional bow hunter, and 90 % of the catalogs sent to me, at high cost, just do not pertain to my needs.

Then another hunting, shooting business sends me, once a year, this huge mail box stuffing book. With this big book of products, tons of products, is another smaller catalog. The smaller catalog, just a bit skinnier than the big book, contains new products. Why is this?

Because catalog production is akin to having a baby. Conception, to delivery takes nine months or more and many new products arrive during the catalog creation process. What to do? Add another catalog with new products. Silly at best, time consuming, sales killing painful at worst.

Now with modern technology can segment customers, segment products into hierarchies and deliver hot product data via catalog which will be bought a heck of a lot faster than irrelevant, out of date product information.

Filed under print publishing, product catalog, Product Information

Fast Growing Ecommerce Biz

January 25, 2012 Leave a comment

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…..

Filed under catalog, ecommerce, ecommerce software, Multi Channel Sales, print publishing, product catalog, Product Information Management Tagged with

Print Catalog Publishing for Manufacturers

November 16, 2011 Leave a comment

In my sales travels I come across print publishing pain. Just this week I met a harried marketing manager tasked with getting a new Big Book Catalog out the door. Sounds simple ehh? Yet the last product catalog was published 6 years ago. And product data like images, copy, attributes reside in several different systems and largely in the 6 year old catalog.

To learn how to put your arms around Print Publishing get this Free Guide: “The New Catalog Approach.” Get details on the below and much more….

How to keep catalog content current and error free.
How to synchronize catalog product content to all media.
How to create on-demand catalog content.
How to offer self-service catalog content.
How to customize all catalog content.

Filed under catalog, manufacturing, manufacturing sales, Multi Channel Sales, print publishing, product catalog, Product Information Management

Product Information Management Pain

September 21, 2011 Leave a comment

Often, in my travels, I run into marketing professionals in charge of catalog creation. Professionals, good at their job on the surface, yet mired in manual tasks to get a catalog, datasheet, brochure or whatever into usable condition. I feel for these folks. Days are jammed with time pressure, and reaching to people, to systems, to suppliers for the building blocks of a product catalog.

My step is light around these busy bee marketers. Light because automation or dynamic catalog creation, which a product information management solution may bring, may threaten some marketing professionals. Unease may be caused my automating the very tasks the people do. I try to share that more creative work can be done and better marketing strategies can be created if their valuable time is saved.

My approach is to question the workflow of the catalog creation process.

How do you get your product data?
Where is it stored, how about images, documentation, specs, prices?
How many people work on the catalog?
How long does it take to get to pre-press?
When catalog finally arrives, how much data is obsolete?

The obsolete question on the surface sounds silly but often is not. I recently visited a product information management prospect. This company produced a big book product catalog for customer use, and sent along with the big book, was a smaller catalog with corrections. Yes this is true. My question of what percentage of the “new big book” was obsolete got a 25% response. Obsolete because the catalog process took over 6 months.

More direct I was in my next question, “Why the heck do create your catalog, loaded with errors, like the way you do?

The answer was, “This is how we always do it.” I encourage these folks to pack a gun to the gun fight not a plastic knife. I give them a Paper on Dynamic Catalog Creation. Please get your free copy below:

Filed under catalog, print publishing, product catalog, Product Information Management

Product Information Publishing

September 8, 2011 Leave a comment

The seeds of eCommerce site search problems were sown well before the internet era. Catalog print publishing needs drove how product data was stored and manged. Blocks of data containing artwork for catalogs and circulars, prices, size and weight, color, features, marketing copy were pasted into page layouts as huge strings of data. Minimizing granularity of data was the goal. This simplified the print publishing process.

Now, the web era is here. Recreating print materials for web and eCommerce sites is the task and it is not easy. How to get product information eCommerce ready and friendly from disparate islands of data across the enterprise takes time and costs sales.

I speak to manufacturing and distribution prospects each day about this specific problem. The problem is magnified too. Product information needs to be published to many sites. Sites include specialty sites or micro sites offering a subset of products, or perhaps a single category of products. Partner sites need accurate data too. Take ebay or google or any number of selling partners that rely on accurate, up to date product information.

I tell the story, sometimes, of a large, successful, eCommerce business that was brought to it’s knees upon Michael Jackson’s death. All Michael Jackson offers, music, posters, books, etc, needed to be aggregated, cleansed, enriched and published to the website. This took hours and large staff requirements to do.

PIM solutions or sometimes called MDM for products solve all the above headaches. That is good PIM solutions. A Product information management solution gets, cleanses, stores, enriches and publishes product information to all sources, NOW!. Not in a week, or month or several hours from now, but now.

If your business seeks a solid PIM or Product Information Management solution, please request this eBook Preparing for PIM. This eBook offers solid advice and strategies to fix product data management headaches.

Filed under data quality, manufacturing, MDM, Multi Channel Sales, print publishing, Product Information Management Tagged with , ,

Product Information Management: Preparing for PIM eBook

August 6, 2011 Leave a comment

“When it comes to managing your company’s product information you must possess the qualities of a maverick while maintaining the leadership and courage of a pioneer.”

This is an important eBook that all product information management professionals should have. Marketers and merchandising professionals should also get this Preparing for PIM eBook. It is free and loaded with guidelines to a successful PIM software evaluation, deployment and usage.

Get your Free Preparing for PIM eBook right here:

Filed under manufacturing sales, PIM, print publishing, Product Information Management Tagged with

To Print Catalogs or not to Print Catalogs

June 6, 2011 Leave a comment

A electronics distributor announced no more print catalogs recently. I look at this a wonder if this is because printing the “Big Book” is just too dang expensive to get together. Companies in this same industrial vertical, electronic distribution, are doing just the opposite; creating more catalogs. Go figure.

I like catalogs. And my wife does too. When the latest Cabela’s enters my mail box at the house, it is scanned cover to cover. I look for deals that fit my needs. And in Cabela’s case, buy on line or in the Cabela store north of Fort Worth. And the catalogs I like are precise for Bowhunters, or hunters or the season.

Catalogs are valuable. But just like all marketing efforts, targeted information is better. A catalog highlighting all new LEDs, or all product for specific application is valuable. Focused product information sent to high potential buyers, sells products. Yellow page big books, w/ 2 mill products, expensive door stops. Maybe.

Catalog agility sets retailers apart. How hard is it to segment the product information and publish to print? How costly to set up and get to print? Please find 2 guides which may be helpful for folks interested in optimizing print catalog process.

Filed under print publishing, Product Information Management

Product Information Management Free e-Book

May 20, 2011 Leave a comment

Getting PIM project buy-in is never easy. PIM leaders must possess a maverick attitude. Often, I see men and women running project management, marketing and merchandising departments, winning this battle based on eye opening business cases. PIM ROI is real and I have earnings reports from customers proving this. Now for the mavericks out there thinking about PIM a new ebook has arrived. This ebook called “Preparing for PIM,” was published by a leading MDM for Product Information Solution provider, Enterworks. This guide is for folks that need product information management tools; The business people that gather, manage and publish their company’s product information. This PIM e-book lights the path to MDM for Product success. Get yours here:

Filed under manufacturing, MDM, Multi Channel Sales, PIM, print publishing, Product Information Management Tagged with , , ,

Product Information Management Guide

May 17, 2011 Leave a comment

Product Information Management or PIM solutions have been around for awhile. Yet still many companies spend way too much time and money getting, cleansing, and transforming data into rich product information. With a PIM solution, transforming data into rich information can be quick and easy. PIM speeds up new product introductions and product edits and makes the customer experience better leading to more sales.

If your company takes too long to introduce new products. Or if your company spends hours editing product data or making changes, then the Free PIM Guide is for you. This guide describes how a best practice pim solution can benefit your business by deliver real world functionally details. Here are some highlights:

  • How to get supplier data and transform to rich, selling product information quickly.
  • How to manage all digital assets like images, videos, spec sheets; And associate digital assets to products and product categories.
  • How to integrate a PIM solution to your ERP, your Web site and your creative solutions like Indeca or Quark.
  • Plus, how workflow can keep data clean, simplify new product information management and optimize your business processes.

This PIM guide, put together in a Request for Information format, will help you learn what benefits your company can gain. And can be used to start building business requirements for a PIM solution. The guide will get you on the path to world class product management and higher sales.

Request PIM Guide right here:

Filed under PIM, print publishing, Product Information Management

Swimming in an Ocean of Product Data

May 9, 2011 Leave a comment

When learning about enterprise product information management, I think about fishing. A fisherman goes out, like Spencer Tracy in Old Man and the Sea, the Hemingway book, and searches for his catch. Minutes stretch into hours and hours into a full fishing day. Often, the fisherman is skunked, or comes up empty. And sometimes, a catch is made.

Take digital asset management in the Enterprise. A new product comes in and a product manager or marketer is tasked w/ enriching the product information. First task is to associate an image to the product, and the person tasked w/ this job, just knows there is an image that fits, somewhere.

Is the image hiding in the rocks, or on a colleagues desktop, or swimming in deeper water, in a fragmented enterprise system. Time is spent seeking this image and there is a cost involved. I have read about the ROI for DAM. Surprising numbers do appear to the plus side, when images, and other digital assets are managed in a single repository, or managed from a single repository, even if images do reside in other systems.

I have a ROI document which I will send to you if interested. Just request in the comment box. Best to you, JR

Filed under PIM, print publishing, Product Information Management Tagged with

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