A potential client wants an eCommerce site, your agency wins the pitch, you set the estimated scope and budget for the project and the client agrees. At this point, you discover their product data horror story. Typically digital agencies are not system integration specialists nor have platform-based capabilities to manage complex product data.
Delivering eCommerce projects can be challenging in themselves, combine that with mining fragmented product data, cleansing it, discovering inconsistencies, removing corrupt records and optimizing it to create a successful online sales model – in the absence of a structured framework, smooth operations and cost-efficient delivery these projects can quickly become unprofitable.
Rich product data is a competitive differentiator for retailers today. So it’s obvious that an integral part of delivering a successful eCommerce project involves addressing and solving product data challenges systematically with best-practice solutions. But when agencies are not able to undertake this task efficiently it can put them in a bad light, making them look unprofessional & unreliable. In such instances, it is not uncommon for clients to replace the agency altogether. Often times agencies are in charge of broader high-cost digital projects including eCommerce and omnichannel initiatives and by not solving product data management challenges in the early stages, they risk jeopardizing bigger deals.
On the other hand, when clients are ignorant of the impact bad data can have on sales and the overall profitability of business they look for shortcuts like outsourcing the task of cleaning up their messy data to hasten the eCommerce project. This means data quality issues are resolved by ill-equipped agencies using manual and semi-automated ways – leaving the data at best; invalid and inaccurate. Many times agencies themselves don’t understand the complexity and cost involved in product data management and project low budgets in order to avoid losing the client, ending up hurting their margins. The flipside is that charging the true cost of a PIM project to a client who isn’t convinced about product data management will likely put them off and lead them to contend with bad product data. Even if the agency absorbs the bulk of the cost, the project becomes low margin or unprofitable from their perspective. All these scenarios will lead to unsustainable projects in the long run or even failure to launch.
Think of a PIM solution as the bedrock of an agency-client relationship. We champion the tremendous impact high-quality product data has on productivity, agility, reduced costs, improved efficiency and the ability to compete with early adopters of PIM technology. By creating a combined offering with StrikeTru that includes deep domain and PIM deployment expertise you can deliver exceptional product content and commerce solutions that can transform your client’s product data quickly, help your client grow their business, accelerate sales and give you measurable results.
Read more to find out how we solve product data challenges for digital agencies.
If you’re a digital agency looking to solve your clients’ product data management challenges or complement your e-commerce service offerings, we can help.
Contact us for more information on how we can partner.
