Product Management Agility

April 19, 2012 Leave a comment

Imagine sorting products into hierarchies. Hierarchies being a set of products to sell to a vertical or specific customer. How do you do this today? Do you have parent child relationships, a family view of product lines, ability to enrich products? Is your hierarchy management system scalable? Say today or next month new products or new suppliers come on board. Are more folks needed to manage the new lines the increase in SKUs?

Sure you do, you and 20 colleagues skip through spreadsheets, copy and pasting fingers to the bone,am I wrong? And then searching for an image or several images pertinent to products and product assortments. And where are the videos, maybe hazmat information, documents, pdfs, delivery restrictions?

Delivery restrictions are interesting. Take a rifle scope seller. Best not deliver that night vision scope to China. Or gun powder to California and on and on. And on to labeling products, packaging to your business requirements and to your regulatory needs.

Filed under product catalog, Product Information, Product Information Management

Product Information and Data Silos across the Enterprise

March 12, 2012 Leave a comment

Product information resides on several systems across most large, complex organization. Over time ownership of product data changes. The product development team often uses tools to which no access is provided to sales, marketing and operations. And when a product is developed and read for sale manual efforts will then build attributes for customer use. Taking a look into the future the product is changed, edited and then discontinued. All efforts eat time and money due to manual efforts.

PIM or product information management, leading edge solutions, get, cleanse, transform and enrich product data fast. The best solutions use powerful workflow engines making product lifecycle management simple. A solid pim solution is a must have for manufacturers, distributors, retail and e-commerce enterprises. Product data, the life blood of any business, is made accurate, up to date and presentable to customers. The manual efforts are converted to governance of key processes. Alerts and notifications keep all owners of data and consumers of data, including ERP, CRM and data warehouses, all on same page.

Filed under e-commerce, manufacturing, MDM, MDM for Products, Product Information, Product Information Management

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

New Product Introductions Real-Time, Really…..

September 21, 2011 Leave a comment

The Yankee Group has published specs on how better product information management benefits a retailer, manufacturer and or e-commerce business.

“Data Entry people, Product Managers, Merchandisers and Marketers can save 5,000 to 10,000 hours on new product work.”

This statement amazes me. Consider salaries/ wages paid to professionals managing product information 40 hours per week, over a year and compute the savings. This is savings just based on wages. New Product introductions speed to real-time. Invoice errors are slashed. Returns are slashed. Promotion errors down too.

I am a MDM for products professional and drink the Kool-Aid of benefits each day. Even with enthusiasm tempered, a PIM solution or product information management software solution is a must have in organizations that make, manage, sell, a high level of products.

Filed under PIM, product catalog, Product Information Management

The Product Data Dilemma

September 21, 2011 Leave a comment

Product data; digital images and related product product content, originates in ERPs, PLMs, graphics programs and similar applications including spreadsheets, and databases. Product data is used by wide range of professionals; product engineers, product managers, graphic designers, marketers, merchandisers, customer support, e-commerce managers, and compliance professionals.

Product data is needed by a range of users inside and outside the enterprise. There is often no central authority to ensure product information completeness, or to ensure product information accuracy. Or no central authority which makes product information available to users, or to distribute or publish to applications where and when it is needed.

The lack of no central product information authority causes pain.

Filed under MDM, Multi Channel Sales, PIM, 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 , ,

Print Publishing for Multichannel Sales Success

September 7, 2011 Leave a comment

Success in Multichannel marketing takes lots of effort. Research, pricing strategies, competitive intelligence, product development, supplier partnerships, and even more behind the scenes work must be done.

Websites, catalogs, datasheets and other marketing materials must always shed the best light on your company. And your product catalog is more than a collection of product photos, descriptions and prices. It is the visible representation of your company.

This booklet offers 6 milestones for guiding your company through familiar minefields inherent to multichannel marketing. Intended for marketing and sales executives, eCommerce managers, catalog designers, IT personnel, and others responsible for building and working on building marketing assets for multichannel sales.

This information can kick start conversations in your company. Can aid you in building a sales pulling, profit generating multichannel sales process.

Please get your FREE booklet right here:

Filed under MDM, Multi Channel Sales, PIM, Product Information Management

Master Data Management for Manufacturers

September 6, 2011 Leave a comment

Accurate, up to date product information for all applications, business processes, and all marketing channels and media.

All manufacturers would like to have that. And most do, yet this accurate product data state is attained with much manual labor and cost. Now, I am making a Master Data Management for Manufacturers Guide available to you for free. This MDM guide is for Manufacturers that seek to optimize product information management and product information management publishing to all marketing channels and media.

Better product information management benefits manufacturers in several ways:

20% increase reported in communications and collaboration in Supplier Relationships.
Products get to market faster.
Invoice disputes drop.
Stock outs drop.
Purchase order errors drop.
Faster new product introductions.
Fewer Returns.

And more… Request your FREE Master Data Management for Manufacturers Guide below:

Filed under MDM, Product Information Management Tagged with

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