Digital assets are everywhere on websites; these could range from images, to videos and PDF documents. Nowadays, being able to manage them correctly is critical in an eCommerce world. A perfect way to have control over such important information is through the use of a DAM or Digital Asset Management system. Now you may be asking yourself, what is Digital Asset Management?

What is Digital Asset Management (DAM)?

DAM is a system that allows your business to organize, enrich and distribute digital assets from a centralized location by applying metadata. Digital Asset Management solutions come with features such as powerful imports and exports, as well as powerful searches.

Why DAM?

When considering a Digital Asset Management system you should consider these questions: Do you typically have images stored on desktop files and struggle to find them? Is it a challenge for you to include them on the website? Is it causing you product launch or sales delays? As a company, you definitely do not want to sell a product online without a picture or video or spec sheet and you want to be able to find digital assets quickly so you can use or reuse them. Within a DAM, you are able to set up folders, filters and permissions that allow different groups in your company to collaborate more efficiently in managing and distributing digital assets. When enriching data, you can decide on different digital asset characteristics that makes them be easily searchable. All in all, a DAM helps make your products more attractive to the customer and provides them the best shopping experience out there.   

Benefits of a DAM

A Digital Asset Management system allows you to:

1. 1. Centralize your assets for easy access

1. 1. Reduce asset search time

1. Increase efficiency and team collaboration

Source: GlobalSpec.com

Product Information Management and Digital Asset Management

What is a PIM?

A PIM helps a company manage all of its product information and allows them to decide how to present products to the public. PIM can feed hiqh-quality product content to store, eCommerce, mobile, print, and social media channels. PIM systems are an excellent fit for retailers,  manufacturers, and distributors that find it hard to extract and combine the right information to present products easier. Lastly, PIM minimizes inaccuracies and gives your customers an easy and trusted purchase experience.

What is a DAM?

A DAM focuses on digital assets and associated data, and not on product data as in the case of PIM. With a well established DAM system, images and operations are easier to manage and control. DAM systems are critical for companies with a lot of digital assets that need to be accessed by multiple groups within the company and also shared with customers and trading partners. It may be typical for your Marketing or eCommerce manager to spend hours looking for the right digital asset; which can cause process delays. With a DAM, you can cut down this time spent searching for assets (or re-creating them) and use it for better purposes.

PIM and DAM Integration

Why should I use both PIM and DAM?

While a PIM and a DAM share some similarities, they differ greatly and are a smart investment for companies that want to improve their business performance. PIM is designed to manage and centralize all product information; DAM manages and centralizes images, logos and videos, PDFs etc. It is important to note that such images, logos and videos are also part of the product information that is useful to customers to help them search, evaluate, and purchase products. The combination of both will dramatically decrease the time it takes to prepare product data for selling across channels. A decrease in such time spent will decrease the time to market your products and increase your marketing ROI.

Source: FinancesOnline.com

For best practices and assistance with how best to integrate PIM and DAM systems, feel free to reach out to us. We are here to help! StrikeTru has a history of positive outcomes and customer satisfaction. We look forward to assisting you and helping you take your business to the next level.   

PTS is one of the largest suppliers of decorated tableware in the world. PTS America is the brain behind the marketing, design and distribution of its products to large-scale retailers in North America, Canada, and parts of South America. With its highly specialized team of designers, PTS America designs high quality and unique contemporary and classic tableware for its customers. Not only that, it creates and markets its products under its own brands like 222 Fifth, Coventry, and other private labels of a variety of renowned retailers.

The Context

Being in the business of decorated tableware, PTS America has amassed a huge collection tens of thousands of designs and graphic files. The PTS America team managed all of their designs in their own workstations and there was little organization as to where all the designs were kept. There was an enormous archive of design work that couldn’t be searched – no one knew where to find a design, who created it, or how to find it again. Literally millions of dollars in assets they were unable to tap into.

PTS America also was in need of a library for basic design tools and building blocks. For example, a dinner plate can have a variety of basic shapes and may come in 5 or 6 different forms from the factory. To decorate it, a graphic on a decal is printed and the decal film is put on the plate which is gloss fired at high temperature (900 – 950 C) causing the pigments printed on the film to be fused with the surface. The company often purchases graph cards from artists who creates textile or wallpaper designs (called purchased art). The purchased art is scanned and digitized so it can be customized to any shape or design that fits the tableware.

“We needed a library of factory shapes, decal templates, purchased art, fonts, logos, schematic drawings, etc. which was easily searchable. We wanted to store the designs in an organized manner so that any designer who wanted to work on them can find their way around the resources easily.” – says Charles Gallagher, Executive Vice President of PTS America.

Another major issue PTS America faced was its reliance upon email and spreadsheets to manage work and exchange large files between its designers, clients, and the factory. The company needed to automate the collaboration and tracking processes between its different departments and global locations. Manually managing this was time consuming, chaotic and left a lot of room for mistakes. This caused PTS America to run the risk of missing product delivery deadlines and inevitably lowering its customer satisfaction metrics.

So, to find a content management system that will handle all these issues, PTS America reached out to its consulting partner, StrikeTru. After a rigorous evaluation of available content management systems, StrikeTru selected Nuxeo and helped PTS America implement a Digital Asset Management Solution with workflow automation using the Nuxeo Platform.

The Solution

A Digital Asset Management solution was created by setting up a unified repository for easy storage, organization and accessibility of the graphic files. Each file had relevant metadata values added to it enabling users to easily select the search criteria they need. With the Nuxeo Platform search experience powered by Elasticsearch, the time to find and access a design was significantly brought down from a few hours, to just a few seconds. PTS America could now find designs it sometimes couldn’t in the past, and save a lot of time otherwise spent re-creating these designs.

To support working with the factory, workflows were built and PTS America has been able to get away from manually tracking the processes with spreadsheets and emails. One such workflow was built to transfer artwork to PTS’s Indonesian factory. Instead of using FTP to transfer large and bulky files, the artwork is now seamlessly loaded into Nuxeo and both teams have the same version of the files in real time. Workflows have also been designed to track the entire process from loading the artwork into the Nuxeo Platform until the factory receives it. The workflow sends notifications including when the transfer is complete and the factory acknowledges receipt of the artwork. This meant fewer emails and fewer mistakes in communicating between departments, which brought order to where there was once chaos. There are no longer issues that typically arise by two groups being out of sync with regard to file versions.

Results: Tremendous Return on Assets

Apart from saving a huge amount of time searching for designs, the Nuxeo Digital Asset Management solution helped PTS America get more value out of its assets. Designs don’t expire – they just need to wait to be trendy again. Being able to find and refer to the designs already contained in the repository and to modify them slightly to meet new requirements as opposed to having to start the design process all over again a huge time and cost saver. The ability to “not have to start all over again” is terrific.

All of this has made possible a significant cost savings and an increase in productivity. PTS America achieved at least a 20% FTE cost saving by switching to Nuxeo. Designers save around 2 hours per day that was typically spent looking for designs and managing email and spreadsheets, i.e. 10 hours per week per designer allowing PTS America designers to claim back 25% of their productivity.

Nuxeo also serves as a sales tool when it comes to presenting the designs and products to the customers. More than 10000 designs are loaded in Nuxeo so far. PTS sales teams across the organization (Europe, Asia, Americas, etc.) can now easily and quickly access designs that may interest their customers.

What’s Next

PTS America will continue to add assets in the Nuxeo repository and define more workflows. It wants to streamline the designer/buyer interaction by rolling out workflows to collaborate on design and artwork creation. The company has many other product lines, such as home furnishings, furniture, etc. which it plans to manage in Nuxeo as well.

Apart from the design process, PTS plans to roll out workflows for communicating production orders to factories, which are currently tracked using hundreds of spreadsheets. This will help smooth out the collaboration between the sales reps, the buyers, and the PTS team during the ordering process. PTS is also working on automatically feeding product data from the Nuxeo Platform into its ERP system to eliminate re-entering data and save time.

Some quotes from Charles Gallagher, Executive Vice President of PTS America:

“We haven’t found anything we couldn’t do with Nuxeo. There is work for us to do in Nuxeo for at least the next 5 years”

“Designs don’t die. It is terrific to be able to quickly pull up old designs and tweak them slightly to meet new customer requirements, and not have to start all over again”

“Once you realize the advantage of getting rid of the old practices and find this central place for collaboration, it’s irresistible”

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A leading American manufacturer of outdoor and athletic footwear, Five Ten implemented PIM to better support its global digital commerce and marketing channels.

Challenge

In late 2015, Five Ten realized that their product data team was spending an excessive amount of time gathering product content from multiple systems and spreadsheets in order to update content on its e-commerce websites and digital marketing platforms. Centralizing product content in a PIM and integrating PIM with ERP, e-commerce, and digital marketing platforms would deliver multiple benefits for Five Ten. It would save time, help maximize data quality across sales channels, countries and languages, reduce time to launch products to market, and leverage product content across additional sales channels and marketing automation platforms.

Product content resided in multiple databases (including two ERP instances and a local Access database) and spreadsheets that had to be kept in sync continuously. Each time a product feed was needed for the e-commerce website, Google, or another sales or marketing platform, content had to be consolidated and cleaned manually.

Multiple seasonal catalogs and a large number of new product introductions each year meant the product content operations team was constantly spending long hours, including on weekends, preparing, repairing, and distributing content across multiple channels. Acquiring and updating product images and other assets across its multiple channels was also very manual and time-consuming. The lack of a PIM tool prevented the content team from easily listing products on additional sales channels and marketing platforms (including Google search engine and marketing campaign management tools).

Solution

In 2016, Five Ten decided to implement a PIM system to resolve its product content management challenges. Several 3rd party solutions were considered and evaluated. Five Ten had various requirements including:

• an intuitive user interface
• flexible data modeling that facilitated seasonal data management and data inheritance
• product relationship and image management
• multi-language features
• multi-channel features
• multi-currency features
• ability to integrate content easily with other systems.

StrikeTru, Akeneo’s leading solution partner in the US, worked closely with the Five Ten evaluation team to demo the Akeneo PIM solution and provide a clear vision of how the fully implemented solution would meet Five Ten’s requirements. Ultimately, the Enterprise Edition of Akeneo PIM was selected as it met all requirements, offered the best price/value tradeoff, and was most closely aligned with the Magento e-commerce platform in terms of technology stack. The availability of a connector (PimGento) that automates product content sync from Akeneo to Magento was also an important factor.

Result

Various Akeneo product features were used to help users easily setup and manage products for a multi-channel, multi-language, and multi-currency market environment. These features included 4-level entities (style/color/season/size in this case), language- and channel-specific attributes, digital asset and price attribute types, and product completeness.

For shoes, which made up the bulk of the SKUs, only 1 product record needed to be setup in PIM for every 20 SKUs in the ERP. Approximately 300 product attributes (master data, costing, pricing, logistics, marketing, media, copy, publishing, SEO, and technical specifications) were managed in the PIM. About half of them were defined and maintained at the style level, a quarter each at the season and color levels, and just a handful at the size level. This eliminated re-keying and data duplication, and greatly reduced time spent on data management and cleanup tasks.

Prior to deploying PIM, product launches for each season required the Five Ten eCommerce team to aggregate data and images from multiple sources manually, and hand them off to an external agency to update the Magento website. With Akeneo deployed, the eCommerce team could easily review, fix, and approve all content in the PIM itself. Updating content on Magento was seamless and automated, eliminating the need to involve the external agency. What once took 3 to 4 weeks took just a few days with PIM. It also provided the eCommerce team better control over content quality, and much easier reporting on product data. PIM also simplified the process of ensuring images were associated with the right products during the product setup process, which was a disconnected process previously. Controlling product channel availability and managing multi-site pricing was also simplified by using PIM.

Once product data was centralized, Five Ten used PIM to synchronize content feeds to multiple regional Magento stores, multiple ERP instances, retail and mobile POS systems, multiple B2B and B2C websites, BI system, marketplaces, and channel partners including wholesalers, distributors, and retailers.

“We saved a lot of time typically spent on gathering product data and updating our eCommerce sites.” — Chris Moylan, Five Ten

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StrikeTru implemented Akeneo PIM for a nationally recognized distributor of industrial and other products as part of a digital transformation program. This distributor deployed PIM to streamline product introduction and rich content updates on its eCommerce website, and to have visibility and control over product content management processes. This company also wanted the capability to easily onboard high-volume and richly attributed SKU data from Affiliated Distributors to support sales across eCommerce, Punch Out, and Print channels.

Challenge

In response to industry trends, this distributor was digitizing its business to create a strong online presence. The digital transformation program had the following key goals:

• offer and sell a greater number of products in the market by increasing SKUs counts
• improve customer experience by making it easy to search, select, and buy products online
• prepare for growth by setting up a scalable product data management infrastructure

This distributor realized a few key challenges were hampering its transformation efforts. The lack of a centralized product data repository that was integrated with the ERP and eCommerce systems meant data quality and trust issues. A largely manual and disconnected process to introduce products to the web was slow and error-prone. It also did not provide users the visibility and control they needed over what product data goes onto the web.

AD is the largest contractor and industrial products wholesale buying group in North America.  It provides independent distributors support and resources to accelerate growth. One such resource is the AD eContent Service program that enables its members to compete better in the world of eCommerce. As a member of Affiliated Distributors (AD), the distributor had access to over 1 million SKUs with rich product data, images, and other digital assets. The distributor wanted to enrich existing ERP SKUs with AD eContent and also onboard a significant number of new SKUs to grow its product assortment. It was simply not practical to manage all this content for the web in Excel spreadsheets and file folders, and the eCommerce website launch was getting delayed as a result. This distributor needed a modern PIM tool to manage large volumes of SKU data, and scalable data services to match and merge ERP SKUs with those from AD and other 3^rd party sources.

An increasing number of the company’s customers were demanding Punch Out integrations. The lack of trusted product data also meant delays in onboarding Punch Out customers, and hence lost sales.

Solution

StrikeTru, the leading Akeneo experts in the US, worked closely with this distributor to discuss a potential PIM solution and associated data services to support the company’s eCommerce efforts. StrikeTru articulated how PIM helps address the various product content challenges the company faced, and how the ultimate solution would satisfy the company’s current and future requirements.

StrikeTru implemented an Akeneo Enterprise PIM solution to help manage product content. As a first step, SKUs from AD eContent Catalog were downloaded and matched with those in the company’s ERP system. Matched SKUs were enriched with rich data, images, and SDS data sheets provided by AD and all this content was stored in the PIM. Product data was further enriched via custom content rules that produced better titles and descriptions to facilitate online searches. The integration of product content from Akeneo PIM to the Magento website was automated and it was setup so that products and their variations were created automatically in Magento based on product grouping data provided by AD. This also provided the distributor an easy way to manage data and meta-data changes in PIM and sync those to the Magento website. Rich and granular product data from AD was used to drive the website navigation and exploration features (i.e. selection menus, facets, and rich product detail pages) to help optimize SEO rankings and online conversion rates. Additional critical data (weights, UOM) was sourced from other feeds (ORS Nasco) to fill in data gaps found in AD eContent. StrikeTru also helped cleanse data (e.g. remove special characters) and prioritize SKUs for enrichment by providing various analytical reports (e.g. top SKUs and customers by sales, SKU distribution across top customers, etc.).

Result

With the PIM solution in place and content flow automated between PIM and Magento website, this distributor is able to execute an effective eCommerce strategy. Products can be setup and released to web faster than before. StrikeTru’s data services helped enrich products with data from AD eContent program and ORS Nasco. Richly attributed SKU data from AD including images and product sheets were deployed to help provide compelling product detail pages online. Rich and granular content will help improve search engine visibility and drive more traffic to the site. The website also delivers an improved customer experience in terms of improved site navigation, product search, selection, and ordering capabilities.

PIM also enabled the on-boarding of several thousand SKUs from a new supplier onto the web relatively faster than before and set the stage for rolling out Punch Out catalogs. In short, the distributor now has a long-term solution to handle bigger product assortments and grow its online leads and sales.

“PIM enables us to place products on our website without the error prone manual processes we have been relying on. It gives us more visibility and control into the product data that goes onto the web.” — eCommerce Team Member

Helpful Links

• AD eContent Data Connector
• StrikeTru PIM For Distributors

A short introduction to the world of PIM

Product Information Management (PIM) refers to collecting and polishing product content and distribution of that content. PIM can be considered a strategy or a solution to several companies. The basic concept of PIM is to store data regardless of where it comes from (Excel spreadsheets, internal systems like ERP and PLM, external systems like 3rd party data pools, digital asset drives, etc.) so that it can be centralized and maintained to provide a better buying experience to the customer.

Why PIM?

If you want to sell a product you need to present it well and consistently. Poor quality, missing details and unanswered questions will direct your customer to the competition. Nowadays, with technology all around us, individuals tend to do some prior research of a potential product on their own. In fact, a research made by CEB Marketing demonstrated that an average customer completes at least ½ of purchase decisions before engaging with a sales representative. Due to this, PIM helps you gain competitive advantage with an effective eCommerce platform that your customers will enjoy visiting again.

Benefits

Expand your product offerings:

It is said that in the business world Excel is extremely critical and helpful when managing data, but how many of you have felt frustrated and overwhelmed with so many spreadsheets to use or manage? Preparing products can become a nightmare when there is too many information to take into account. Thankfully, with Product Information Management (PIM), we are capable of centralizing every aspect and detail of a specific product by importing data from different platforms like Excel or an ERP. Centralized information with PIM allows one to perform actions like bulk edits and data validations that result in a better and richer product presentation to the customer.      

Decrease time-to-market:

Decrease time to market refers to the time it takes for a particular product to be recorded in your company’s ERP and sales and marketing systems so that it is then ready to be marketed and sold. Unfortunately, it can take up to weeks with legacy systems causing you to delay sales. In addition, within an ERP or an Excel spreadsheet it can sometimes be difficult to locate and include every detail in order to have a high quality product. In the business world, it is sometimes said that time is currency; thankfully, PIM speeds the process up.  

Build a uniform & high quality product experience across channels:

When dealing with a plethora of products and product characteristics, it is common for businesses to have channel specific teams. For instance, there could be a team that focuses on the website, another team on Amazon and finally another one on Ebay. Such teams are managing the same data but no one really knows which one is right or which one is more important than the other. This can translate into inconsistencies like images and descriptions that can potentially confuse the customer and have him/her walk to the competition. With a Product Information Management (PIM), everyone gets their hands on the same data allowing consistency to take place. Once you establish consistency, then you are capable of enriching that data and turning your customer’s experience into a high quality product experience across channels.   

Go global:

Have you ever thought about expanding globally? Sharing your great business with individuals from other countries? Operating a website or an Amazon store in Germany, Canada or any other country is made easy with PIM. If selling in Europe, you want the right localized information (language, currencies, units of measure, etc) for your target audience; which ties back to building trusted, high quality product data for use across channels and geographies. PIM helps you create, manage, and port localized product content with ease.

Increase your sales:

When tying everything that was previously discussed together you will definitely notice an increase in your sales. Best practices like consistent titles, description and pictures make a big difference. If your customer’s search process is easy and consistent, you will accelerate their path to a sale. In addition to rich data, PIM helps provide relevant recommendations (upsells, cross-sells, etc.) to the customer which increases product attachment rates and average order value. Lastly, a Product Information Management (PIM) will help you to rank well and have good visibility on search engines. As we all know, more visibility equals more traffic, which equals more sales.     

To learn more  about PIM and how StrikeTru can help you visit us here!

Source: https://pim-auswahl.de/en/

We’re proud to announce the availability of “StrikeTru Furniture PIM”, an industry specific product information management solution for furniture companies.

PIM for Furniture

“With StrikeTru Furniture PIM, we provide a great solution for managing digital product content and deploying it across all sales and marketing channels”, said Harry Singh, Partner of StrikeTru. “We built this solution based on inputs from our furniture clients and our experience in the industry. We developed several features designed to help furniture retailers create, manage, and disseminate high quality and consistent product information across all their digital channels”.

Our solution is comprehensive and tackles a range of business requirements including vendor data onboarding, product content aggregation from multiple data sources, flexible product data modeling and data management (variations, packages/bundles, merchandising options like up-sell, cross-sell, etc.), digital asset management, and automatic updates of eCommerce and other sales and marketing applications.

Powered by Akeneo, built-in connectors to commerce and cloud platforms

StrikeTru Furniture PIM is powered by Akeneo PIM. Akeneo is the leading open source PIM product in the market, with over 150 enterprise edition deployments and thousands of community downloads globally. It is a very user friendly and feature-rich PIM software that is a “must-have” tool for modern IT organizations seeking to navigate today’s digital commerce trends in the furniture industry.

Furniture is one of the fastest-growing segments of U.S. online retail. Internet, big-box, and traditional furniture retailers are stepping up online sales. Whether you are a national, regional, local, or online furniture store, or whether you are niche, or high-end luxury, or discount furniture retailer, the StrikeTru PIM solution helps you establish a strong digital presence and align your online and store experiences to drive growth. Key benefits include:

• Launch products faster via integrated product content management.
• Deliver cross-channel consistency – selection, content, pricing, etc.
• Improve site search & selection with high quality, granular content curated in PIM.
• Increase efficiency by providing real-time, enterprise-wide visibility into product data flows.
• Lower content operations cost and complexity by modernizing IT.

Partners & Prospects Are Excited

“Our partners and prospects are excited about the StrikeTru PIM solution for the furniture industry and what it can do for them. We showed some of the features to a few partners and prospects, and their feedback has been great”, says Harry Singh. “We are excited about StrikeTru Furniture PIM solution and think it’s the most versatile PIM solution to address the product content related pain points of the furniture industry.

For more information, click here or contact [email protected].

As StrikeTru celebrates five years in business, we take this opportunity to thank all those who contributed to our success and prosperity. Over the years, we have implemented Product Information Management, Digital Asset Management, Web Content Management, eCommerce, and Identity Data Management solutions and services. We had an opportunity to work with some loyal and supportive clients across retail, manufacturing, and distribution sectors and with some wonderful partners including software companies, cloud-computing providers, eCommerce agencies, and IT consulting firms. We also want to thank our present and former employees, investors, friends, and families. We could not have come this far without their hard work and support.

As we take the time to celebrate our accomplishment, we also look forward to new opportunities and to continue serving our valued customers.

At the 11th MDM & Data Governance Summit held Nov 8-10 in NYC, StrikeTru co-presented a case study on how the Akeneo enterprise-grade open source PIM helped overcome product data management challenges faced by SHOP.com, a global internet retailer. The MDM & Data Governance Summit, organized by SourceMedia (publishers of Information Management), is a leading IT industry event that provides MDM related insights and best practices as well as quality networking opportunities for data management professionals of all levels, software vendors, and consultants. The topic of StrikeTru’s session was “CASE STUDY: Enterprise-Grade Open Source PIM – An Important Option for Modern IT”.

The Open Source PIM Option

The session was opened by Vik Gundoju (a Partner at StrikeTru) who discussed the key business reasons why enterprises must move from complex and costly legacy system driven product information management operations to simple, PIM-driven operations. Vik pointed out the underlying product data management challenges that a modern enterprise PIM solution addresses, and the significant benefits that are available to companies that choose to adopt enterprise-grade open source software solutions like Akeneo PIM. He reviewed why enterprise-grade open source distributions provide modern IT organizations the best chance of helping reduce costs, operate more efficiently, and gain quick access to innovations.

Akeneo PIM Case Study

Kyle Christiansen (an Enterprise Applications Architect at Market America / SHOP.com, a leading global Internet Retailer) presented next on why SHOP.com chose to implement a modern PIM solution and reasons why they chose Akeneo PIM. He reviewed in detail the various use cases implemented by PIM which served to highlight Akeneo’s capabilities including: master, reference and metadata management; digital asset management: data governance: marketplace connectors; and product data synchronization with ERP, PLM, sales, and marketing applications. Kyle also pointed out the big wins that Akeneo delivered to his enterprise and these included much improved enterprise agility, product data consistency and portability, enhanced productivity, and IT system consolidation related cost savings. He concluded his presentation by listing in what specific ways SHOP.com will leverage Akeneo to simplify how they handle their digital commerce and compliance requirements.

*****

Both presentations were received very well by the attendees, who had insightful questions and comments both during and after the presentation. The joint presentation describing why enterprises should consider PIM, benefits of enterprise-grade open source distributions, and details of the Akeneo case study at Market America / SHOP.com can be downloaded here on our Downloads page – be sure to click on OPEN SOURCE PIM.

More information on the 11th MDM & Data Governance Summit can be found here.

StrikeTru will be speaking at a major IT industry conference, MDM and Data Governance Conference 2016, in New York City on Nov 9, 2016. StrikeTru and SHOP.com will present an Akeneo PIM case study on how SHOP.com used PIM to modernize its IT & digital commerce operations.

Below is a copy of the official session abstract.

CASE STUDY: Enterprise-Grade Open Source PIM – An Important Option for Modern IT

Vik Gundoju, Partner, StrikeTru
Kyle Christiansen, Applications Architect, Market America/SHOP.com

Legacy operations involve high cost and complexity in aggregating, managing, and sharing an ever increasing amount of product information with customers, trading partners, regulatory agencies, and consumers. A PIM solution makes it easy to manage and distribute product data. An enterprise-grade open source PIM solution has the best chance of helping IT reduce costs, operate more efficiently, and gain quick access to innovations in PIM. Despite the success of well-known commercial open source technologies, many IT leaders often do not fully understand the benefits and value of open source technologies.

This session will review key open source MDM capabilities including: master, reference and metadata management; digital asset management: data governance: marketplace connectors; and product data synchronization between ERP, PLM, sales, and marketing applications.  Specific attention will be given to Akeneo which is the market-leading open source enterprise PIM.

To further the understanding of open source PIM, a case study discussing Shop.Com’s leverage of Akeneo to modernize its IT landscape will be presented.  This enabled the enterprise to become more agile in managing its global, multi-site, multi-language, multi-currency, and multi-channel commerce operations.

To highlight how open source PIM can accelerate enterprise success, StrikeTru and Shop.Com will present these topics:

• Understanding the business & technology benefits of enterprise-strength open source technologies for PIM
• Overcoming the prejudices & misinformation that plague open source decision-making
• Planning for the next generation of digital commerce

The 11th annual MDM and Data Governance Conference will be held Nov 8-10, 2016 at the Hilton Hotel in Midtown, New York City. It will attract an audience of over 500 Master Data Management (MDM) professionals at all experience levels looking to exchange ideas and build connections with the MDM community.

Vik Gundoju from StrikeTru will share the stage with Kyle Christiansen, an Enterprise Applications Architect at MarketAmerica/SHOP.com, a StrikeTru customer.

For more information including the full conference schedule, visit http://www.information-management.com/conferences/mdmnewyork/.

We’re excited to announce that our new and redesigned website is live now. Our goal for this new website is to provide our visitors an easier way to learn about StrikeTru’s services and solutions. The refreshed site includes changes to content and navigation, and emphasizes our focus on Product Information Management (PIM) solutions and the Akeneo platform. We improved content presentation and readability to enhance your site experience and make it easy to find information. We have also added several new graphics, and some videos to make the site more engaging and easier to use. The site contains additional integrated social media buttons for Youtube, Facebook, and Google Plus to enable improved communication with prospects and clients.

We added more information about Akeneo, and announced our new Akeneo cloud PIM solution packages and pricing for small- and medium- sized businesses. We added several new pages such as Why Akeneo, Why StrikeTru, Akeneo to Magento Integration via PIMGento, Akeneo to Adobe InDesign Integration using Pim2catalog, Akeneo Connectors, StrikeTru Extensions for Akeneo, and Downloads (for downloadable collateral like PIM related presentations and case studies). The blog and other resources including case studies continue to be available. On our youtube channel, we have aggregated several Akeneo PIM related introductory and feature overview videos.

Our goal is to be a trusted source of information for our site visitors, and help them research and evaluate our offerings. We will be constantly adding new content including helpful information, articles, blog postings, company announcements and client successes.

We hope you like what you see, and if you have any feedback, please email us or call +1 832 303 3257.

Our friends at Akeneo are doing a webinar on on Tue, Sep 20, 2016 from 10:00AM to 11:30AM CDT. Akeneo has just released version 1.6 of their Open Source PIM product. This webinar presents a preview of the new features, what has changed and what has been improved! There will time for Q&A at the end of the webinar. To register, click https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/7371042765947112196

If you have questions about why you need PIM or how Akeneo PIM makes it easy to aggregate, enrich, and disseminate product content to e-commerce and other channels, please contact us at [email protected]. We’d be happy to consult with you about your specific needs, and also organize a custom demo. Akeneo is a feature rich, open source PIM software product that comes in both Community and Enterprise editions. We have implemented both versions for our clients, and can provide you necessary Akeneo consultants and developers to deploy and customize the Akeneo software to address your specific product content management needs.

We implemented Akeneo PIM for Steal-A-Sofa, a furniture retailer. Akeneo is an open-source PIM system for retailers and brand manufacturers looking to replace cumbersome excel based product data management processes with a simple and intuitive web based system.

A global leader in software solutions, this multi-billion dollar company needed to re-platform their legacy Product Master Data Management (MDM) software solution.

Challenge

The company’s current Product MDM system was a highly customized Siebel CRM tool. This legacy MDM system had no support and was difficult to maintain and enhance, severely limiting the company’s ability to manage, maintain, and effectively use its product master data. There was a need to resolve issues with product sales reporting, accounting (cost, revenue, and royalty allocations), and software product distribution management processes.

Solution

StrikeTru and iClassicMDM assessed the company’s requirements and collaborated with system users to deploy a modern Product MDM system (based on iClassicMDM) to pave the way for replacing the legacy system. The scope included configuring a complex product data model consisting of multiple product entity types, product relationships, hierarchies, life cycle management, governance, and data standardization policies that replaced and augmented existing functionality.

Result

In a very short time, StrikeTru and iClassicMDM delivered a modern, cloud Product MDM solution that simplified the management of complex product master data. The project also demonstrated iClassicMDM’s flexible services based integration architecture that simplifies the task of integrating iClassicMDM with various enterprise systems. Impressed with the extensive functionality delivered, and with the pace and cost at which it was delivered, the organization has decided to deploy iClassicMDM as its global enterprise Product MDM system.

This fashion designer and manufacturer is a global leader in the design, innovation, and marketing of fashion lifestyle and accessory products. With hundreds of stores worldwide and a strong global e-commerce business, the company’s products were sold to department stores and specialty retail stores in over 150 countries and 12 languages across the world through company-owned sales subsidiaries and a network of independent distributors.

Challenge

To cater to customers across the globe, the company localized their main website. Realizing the importance of product searchability on its website, the company also localized product information stored in over 50 data fields. The company produces four seasonal catalogs each year. Considering that the company adds thousands of new SKUs each season in addition to updating data for tens of thousands of existing SKUs, the product content translation effort represented a significant undertaking for the company’s content managers. Generating all product content including translated values in time for each season required a lot of manual effort and coordination and often resulted in data quality issues and missed deadlines.

To overcome these challenges typically associated with managing large SKU counts, the company decided to invest in a PIM and automate the product content translation and localization processes. They chose Akeneo PIM and StrikeTru’s Akeneo2GlobalLink Translation Connector.

Solution

The company was already using Translations.com for translation services, and its GlobalLink Project Director solution to manage all enterprise content translation projects. Users manually submitted batches of product data stored in excel files to GlobalLink Project Director to execute their translation related workflows. The cost and complexity involved in this semi-automated workflow was significant. There was a need for a solution that streamlined initiating, automating, controlling, tracking, and completing all aspects of content translation and localization workflows.

StrikeTru worked closely with the company and with the Akeneo team to deploy and integrate StrikeTru’s Translation Connector Akeneo2GlobalLink. With product data centrally managed in Akeneo PIM, the StrikeTru connector automated the collection and delivery of content to the GlobalLink system via APIs. Translated content was automatically retrieved and posted back into product data records stored in Akeneo PIM.

This powerful combination of StrikeTru’s Akeneo2GlobalLink Translation Connector and the extended localization workflow capabilities of GlobalLink Project Director gave this Akeneo customer a robust solution. One that enabled the company to deploy product content for markets around the globe with minimal effort and little IT involvement.

Result

Time Savings

Content managers no longer need to email excel files or process translations in periodic batches. Translations can be done continuously and in smaller chunks as product data gets prepared for publishing.

Cost Savings

Thanks to GlobalLink’s Translation Memory, phrases translated once are remembered and not charged for again. As a result, translating an increasing amount of product content doesn’t necessarily increase costs in a linear fashion. By automating translation processes, more work can be done with fewer resources, which also results in additional cost savings.

Enhanced Collaboration

For the eCommerce channel, translated content has to be approved by country specific content managers and translators. These people often need to look at other documents such as Lookbooks when approving translated content. The combination of Akeneo and StrikeTru’s Translation Connector make it easy to share product content including Lookbooks and product images with people across the enterprise. Such visibility with appropriate access controls promotes enhanced team collaboration and increases efficiency.

With this integrated solution in place, the company has better control over its product content translation and localization processes and the capability to support digital marketing and commerce initiatives more effectively.

StrikeTru Can Help Your Business Too

If you are facing product content management and/or localization challenges, StrikeTru can help you. We work closely with Akeneo PIM and Translations.com to solve our customers’ challenges and welcome an opportunity to assist you. For more information, check out our Akeneo2GlobalLink page. You may also contact us at [email protected]

This industrial distributor managed its product content and digital assets in a legacy catalog management system, and was looking to replace it with a modern PIM system to better support its digital marketing initiatives that included enhanced e-commerce and print publishing, and SEO rankings.

Challenge

Product data was structured poorly and was not rich enough for robust SEO or e-commerce. The integration between the legacy catalog management system, an AS400 based ERP (Magnatron), and the Magento website was complex and prevented timely publishing of product content on the website. User frustration, delayed product releases, and inability to scale the assortment were significant challenges. The company wanted the ability to advertise and sell (including via dropship) thousands of additional SKUs, as well as leverage rich e-content (product taxonomies, granular data, and digital assets) obtained from Affiliated Distributors (a purchasing group) e-Content initiative. It needed expert help to execute these digital initiatives.

Solution

StrikeTru recommended replacing the existing catalog management system with Akeneo PIM, a user friendly, robust, and flexible PIM system. It comes with PimGento, a connector that dramatically simplifies the task of synchronizing rich product content and digital assets stored in Akeneo with a Magento e-commerce website. StrikeTru worked closely with the company to develop and implement robust PIM data structures (based on Affiliated Distributor’s taxonomy) in Akeneo. StrikeTru helped enrich and migrate content and assets from the current systems into Akeneo, and configured PimGento to enable easy syndication of product content to the e-commerce website.

Result

The company has a more robust taxonomy provided by the AD industry e-content initiative, enriched content, and improved product content management and syndication capabilities. Internal resources can reliably update content, pricing, and availability information on its website, and do it more frequently than before. The company is currently expanding its product assortment aggressively, enriching SKUs from multiple vendors and industry e-Content sources, and advertising and selling more products online to help drive incremental sales.

StrikeTru is honored to be recognized as the first US based Akeneo Silver Solution Partner for our contributions to promote and deploy Akeneo PIM solutions. Since 2014, we have been working closely with Akeneo to market, sell, and deploy Akeneo in the US market. Combined with Akeneo’s next-generation PIM software capabilities, our implementation services help clients simplify how they manage and disseminate high quality product content to e-commerce and other sales channels.

Customers today rely heavily on digital product content to research and buy products online and in stores. Poor product content lowers brand equity, search engine rankings and sales, and raises operating costs. The stakes are high for companies struggling with legacy content management operations that involve high cost and complexity. StrikeTru leverages its rich industry and Akeneo deployment experience to help companies improve product content management capabilities, meet rising customer expectations, and ultimately compete better in the market place.

Join StrikeTru and Nuxeo for a live webinar to:

• Understand why “homegrown” systems and spreadsheets simply cannot serve as an effective PIM
• Discover winning use cases for PIM, by business function and industry
• Review key features and functionalities essential for a successful enterprise PIM application
• Review best practices in deploying enterprise PIM solutions

Click here to register for the event.

Vik Gundoju will be speaking about Product Information Management (PIM) at ChannelAdvisor’s Catalyst Americas 2016, an influential annual e-commerce conference taking place April 11-13 at the Aria Resort & Casino in Las Vegas. ChannelAdvisor has recently announced that top branded manufacturers like Deckers, Hoover, Johnson & Johnson, Samsung and Whirlpool EMEA are attending Catalyst Americas 2016 and participating in the conference’s Brands track. Catalyst offers brands and retailers an opportunity to network with peers and hear valuable keynotes from some of the top influencers and visionaries in e-commerce.

The theme of Catalyst Americas 2016 is “E-Commerce, Future-Proofed.” This year’s agenda will be broken into three tracks: Brands, Focus and Innovate. The Brands track will cover how recent e-commerce innovations are affecting the way brands sell online. Vik will be making the case for why branded manufacturers must deliver high quality content to their retailers and establish a strong digital presence for revenue, cost, and brand benefits. He will discuss the typical barriers to publishing great content, and why Product Information Management tools are essential to overcome those barriers. He will talk about how brands can leverage best practices in PIM to transform their legacy operations so they can deliver consistent and high-quality content across all channels.

For more information about the event, please visit the conference website.

StrikeTru will be at the 2016 Magento Imagine Conference (Apr 11 – 13, 2016) in Las Vegas, Nevada. As a premier PIM and MDM solution provider, StrikeTru works with clients that implement Magento e-Commerce software and seek PIM or catalog management solutions.

Imagine 2016 is the premier Magento commerce conference. Now in its 6th year, this event brings together 2,500+ merchants, partners, developers and commerce experts from 40+ countries to network, exchange ideas and build relationships.

Imagine 2016 offers an opportunity for senior executives, marketers, developers, merchandisers and eCommerce visionaries from leading merchants, web design agencies, system integrators and technology innovators to collaborate and share the latest inspirations, technologies, techniques, and strategies transforming commerce.

Please visit imagine.magento.com and check out #MagentoImagine for updates and more information about Imagine 2016.

A global medical device manufacturer and leader in new product development and medical education in orthopedics, this company needed a PIM software solution with GDSN connector to comply with the FDA Unique Device Identification (UDI) regulation.

Challenge

As a medical device company, this firm was subject to a new FDA UDI regulation and needed to submit standardized product data to the US federal government by a certain deadline in the near future. A subset of this company’s thousands of products were subject to regulation, and these needed to be enriched with the right data and approved for submission to the FDA. The process and system being used to gather and submit data had to meet applicable regulatory requirements including 21 CFR Part 11 that deals specifically with electronic signatures, audit trails, and electronic records. Building such a system in-house would have compromised the company’s ability to meet the submission deadline and its ability to continue selling those devices in the US.

Solution

The company selected the Innovit MDM platform to master its UDI product data and submit to the FDA. The Innovit MDM tool has a GDSN Connector (for Global Data Synchronization) to the 1WorldSync data pool that served as a gateway to the FDA UDI database (GUDID). StrikeTru worked with Innovit to deploy a PIM software solution that mastered authoritative, electronic product records with appropriate data validation and access controls to maintain data. This helped the company comply with the FDA UDI regulation to submit UDI product data to FDA GUDID database.

Result

StrikeTru and Innovit delivered a PIM software solution that helped this firm comply with the FDA UDI regulation by submitting device product data in a timely manner. This system contained authoritative, electronic product records with appropriate data validation and access control mechanisms built-in that allowed the company to also demonstrate compliance with FDA 21 CFR Part 11 requirements – with regards to validation efforts, electronic records, audit trails, and electronic signatures. The company also made plans to leverage the Innovit PIM solution to master all of its product data, orchestrate product data management workflows, and integrate the PIM system with other enterprise systems (PLM, ERP, etc.).

StrikeTru, Akeneo’s solution partner in the US, participated in the recently held Akeneo Partner Summit in Paris (Dec 1-2). A number of Akeneo Solution Partners from around the world (Europe, USA, Australia, etc.) participated in the 2 day event that included plenty of updates from Akeneo, networking, and sales and technical track workshops related to the Akeneo open source PIM product. There were also presentations from Akeneo’s technology partners (Naolis, Mirakl, and Serenzia) that demonstrated their solutions that augment the capabilities of the Akeneo open source PIM software in the areas of print publishing / print automation, marketplace integration, and data quality (efficient cleansing and transformation).

In addition to networking and workshops, there was also a partner round table with the Akeneo executive team to discuss in a more informal setting the momentum Akeneo is seeing in the market, and how it is responding to it. StrikeTru, and other Akeneo Partners, had an opportunity to provide feedback on the product pricing, features and roadmap, and Akeneo partner program specifics.

Petra, a leading US distributor of consumer electronics, mobile audio/video, custom installation, and appliance connection supplies, needed rich product content to support its eBusiness growth strategy

Challenge
Having experienced significant success selling to large customers like Amazon and BestBuy through the traditional EDI channel, the company wanted to grow sales via its many small and medium sized resellers. Critical to this strategy was a best-in-class eCommerce operation that provided rich and timely product content to the company’s eCommerce customers. To develop this capability, the company was implementing an Akeneo PIM system, and needed to capture and provide rich product content that would directly impact eCommerce and other channel sales.

Solution
The company approached StrikeTru to identify and address gaps in its organizational product data and meta-data. After assessing the data, StrikeTru recognized the need to develop a proper catalog structure (product hierarchy, product categories and attribute schemas, lists of values), classify existing products, and build out granular, rich product content including specifications, images, and PDF collateral documents. By working closely with the company, StrikeTru developed best practice based catalog data structures, built out rich product data, and delivered those to help populate the Akeneo PIM system which powered the company’s eCommerce and other channels.

Result
In a short period of time, the company obtained rich and granular product content to support its eCommerce and PIM strategy. A revamped and modern eCommerce website with rich product content was launched shortly after StrikeTru’s engagement ended. To further assist the company’s commitment to a PIM strategy, StrikeTru recommended best practices related to product data management organization structure, roles and responsibilities, PIM use cases, and PIM implementation road mapping.

A global manufacturer with operations in 70 countries and sales territories worldwide, this company evaluated multiple PIM software solutions to re-platform its existing PIM software for its Global Data Synchronization Network (GDSN) operations.

Challenge

This manufacturing company used the GXS system with a GDSN connector to aggregate and publish product data to the GS1 Global Data Synchronization Network (GDSN). GXS was going out of support and needed to be replaced. This company’s customers, many of who are large US retailers, depended on GDSN to get new and updated product data routinely, and an interruption here would have impacted sales negatively. Being a large global company with multiple business units, this manufacturer had complex product information management and data synchronization requirements and needed a robust PIM/MDM tool with a GDSN connector to meet its needs.

Solution

Innovit MDM was chosen as the system to replace GXS. StrikeTru worked with Innovit to define 3M’s requirements for an improved PIM/MDM solution that was to replace GXS GDSN connector functionality and provide improved data management and GDSN capabilities. There was also a need to develop in Innovit MDM additional GDSN reports and enhancements to match current GXS features and provide easy visibility into the status of data synchronization with the company’s trading partners (i.e. customers).

Result

The company was able to migrate its GDSN operations from GXS to Innovit MDM before support for GXS ran out. The company also benefited from the enhanced usability and data management features that the Innovit tool provides via its intuitive user interface, data staging, and built-in GDSN data validation capabilities.

StrikeTru will be at the 2015 GS1 Connect Conference (May 31 – June 4, 2015) in Austin, Texas.

GS1 is a neutral, not-for-profit organization dedicated to the design and implementation of global standards and solutions to improve efficiency and visibility in supply chains. It is an organization that develops global standards for identifying, capturing, and sharing product information.

GS1 and its subsidiary 1WorldSync are engaged in multiple initiatives to improve consumer confidence in digital product information. 1WorldSync is a global product data management and data pool solution provider helping companies share trusted product information with one another and with consumers. StrikeTru is collaborating with Innovit to deliver GDSN and UDI compliance solutions (based on its iICE Connector product) for the supplier and recipient GDSN community in healthcare, manufacturing, and other industry sectors. For the second year running, Innovit is an exhibition partner and sponsor of the Healthcare tracks at the GS1 Connect event. Innovit is also a global certified solution partner of 1WorldSync.

StrikeTru will be at the 2015 Magento Imagine Conference (Apr 20 – 22, 2015) in Las Vegas, Nevada. As a premier PIM and MDM solution provider, StrikeTru works with clients that implement Magento e-Commerce software and seek PIM or catalog management solutions.

Imagine 2015 is the premier Magento commerce conference. Now in its 5th year, this event brings together 2,500+ merchants, partners, developers and commerce experts from 40+ countries to network, exchange ideas and build relationships. Imagine 2015 offers an opportunity for senior executives, marketers, developers, merchandisers and eCommerce visionaries from leading merchants, web design agencies, system integrators and technology innovators to collaborate and share the latest inspirations, technologies, techniques, and strategies transforming commerce.

Please visit imagine.magento.com for updates and more information about Imagine 2015.

These are typical problem statements we heard from companies that invested in PIM. Often times, these problems exist because product data is managed in a fragmented fashion across disparate systems and spreadsheets. If you’re experiencing similar challenges, please contact us for an introductory chat to explore how we can help you. As McKinsey said, integrating data sources into a single system that is accessible to everyone in the organization will improve the “clock speed” for innovation. In other words, the organization will become “agile”.

We recently completed implementing an Akeneo based Product Information Management (PIM) system for Steal-A-Sofa, a furniture retailer. Akeneo is an open source PIM system that is specifically targeted for retailers looking to replace their cumbersome excel based product information management processes with an simple and easy to use web based system.

We recently wrapped up the implementation of a Nuxeo ECM (Enterprise Content Management) platform based Product Information Management (PIM) and Digital Asset Management (DAM) system for PTS America, one of the world’s largest vertically integrated manufacturer of ceramic tableware. StrikeTru managed a vendor selection process and helped choose Nuxeo based on a number of criteria that were relevant for this specific client’s needs.

Phase 1 of the project enabled the client to start migrating and enriching existing products and digital assets. Phase 2 of the project rolled out functionality to orchestrate new product development processes by configuring appropriate workflows and reporting.

Assisted Riversand in delivering enterprise PIM projects for their clients. Riversand is a leading PIM and MDM solution provider.

Sample projects include:

• PIM for a Fashion Retailer (Revenue: $5-$10B)
• PIM for a Welding and Cutting Equipment Manufacturer (Revenue: $1-$5B)
• PIM for a large Canadian Integrated Energy Company (Revenue: $10-$25B)
• PIM for a Batteries Supplier (Revenue: $30-$50M)