Product Catalog Publishing to e Commerce Sites

January 31, 2012 Leave a Comment

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.

Filed under MDM for Products, catalog, ecommerce, etail, ecommerce software, Product Information

Product Information

January 27, 2012 Leave a Comment

Product information resides in many enterprise systems and supplier systems. Product information managers have a big job getting all product information clean and usable. Business applications and graphics programs and marketers, merchandisers, product managers lap tops hold key product information. And with product information changing often managing product data is almost impossible.

Project information management, defined, is a series of processes and technologies, working together, to ensure product information is accurate and most important, usable to all that need it. Creating a central repository for product information is a first step. All product information, or product truth, can be synchronized with systems, business users, and partners. This central repository can cleanse, store and enrich product information. Marketers, merchandisers and product managers are on the same page.

Product information, residing in a central repository, can be leveraged faster for catalog publishing, web content, trading pools, customer support and internal operations.

Filed under MDM for Products, Product Information

Product Information Management & Enterprise Applications

January 27, 2012 Leave a Comment

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:

Filed under ecommerce, MDM, MDM for Products, Product Information

How to Improve E Commerce Site Search

January 26, 2012 Leave a Comment

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:

Filed under ecommerce, ecommerce software, MDM for Products, Product Information

E Commerce & Product Information Management

January 26, 2012 Leave a Comment

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.

Filed under ecommerce, MDM for Products, Product Information Tagged with , ,

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