Why is a PIM solution integral to your growth story:
A significant sentiment that has emerged recently among consumers is the realization of an ‘always shopping’ experience. Today’s consumers are more demanding of rich product information and are not shy about shopping around till they get the information they need.
The expectation of online ordering and seamless omnichannel experiences is the very basic that consumers expect from retailers today, in fact it is valued so much that 86% of shoppers say they are willing to pay more for a positive shopping experience, i.e. price transparency, detailed product information, personalization, free return, etc. They also engage much more deeply with brands and with so many choices available to them, the differentiator for their final choice is based on the product experience.
To keep up with evolving consumers, it is a strategic imperative to provide enriched, trusted and insightful product data to stay ahead in the marketplace. Since consumers rely on superior product content and detailed product information to make purchase decisions, business leaders depend on PIM solutions to provide rich, complete and accurate data to take key data-driven decisions on how to procure, sell and market products.
Product Information Management (PIM) is an application that provides trusted product content for unified commerce, relevant product information for micro-segments and product insights for improved customer loyalty. A PIM solution aligns the digital transformation imperatives of an enterprise by improving operational excellence and engaging with the customer throughout their purchase lifecycle.
Selecting the right Syndigo (Riversand) solution for your needs:
Syndigo (Riversand)’s solutions are offered as three distinct flavors – Ascend, Exclusive and Infinity.
Ascend is an offering that is designed as an out-of-the-box preconfigured solution for customers in a variety of industry verticals. It is meant for customers to be able to use right away, with minimal IT intervention.
Exclusive, in contrast, is a more configurable solution for businesses that want a solution customized according to their needs.
Infinity is similar to Exclusive, but it offers customers more control over their costs and gives them the freedom to scale up their usage and costs as needed.
What is Ascend PIM?
Syndigo (Riversand) Ascend PIM solution is an out-of-the-box PIM solution for retailers, distributors, brands and manufacturers. Ascend is a ready-to-go offering configured on the next-generation cloud-native Syndigo (Riversand) platform.
Ascend enables brands that are in high-growth phases to accelerate their growth by providing access to an affordable, cloud-native solution with quick deployment and minimal IT intervention. Companies obtain a solution that provides quick data onboarding, product enrichment and data syndication to third-party marketplaces and connectors. Ascend PIM means deployment in days as opposed to months/years.
This is made possible due to Syndigo (Riversand) Ascend PIM being a pre-configured PIM solution with all key solutions elements i.e. data model /data structures (attributes, drop/downs, taxonomies, relationships, entities/objects, workflows, business rules, import and export profiles, roles and permissions). All these solution elements are pre-configured based on industry best practices and decades of learning by product data solution and industry experts.
The biggest benefit of the solution is that companies can start small and grow their PIM use case without ever switching to a different software. Since the same software stack and foundation is used, it makes it easy for a customer who wants to switch from Ascend to Exclusive or Infinity.
Features of Ascend PIM
- A native cloud-based SaaS PIM solution built on best-of-the-breed open-source technologies like Apache, Linux etc. However, it is not an open-source software product.
- Very cost effective and competitive for the price you pay.
- Built on the same software stack as Syndigo (Riversand) Exclusive and Syndigo (Riversand) Infinity multi-domain MDM.
- A cloud-native solution as opposed to an on-prem solution or just a cloud hosting of a traditional on-prem solution.
- It doesn’t lock you into a particular cloud provider. Though Microsoft Azure is the default, customers can choose others, like AWS.
- A SaaS subscription with superior product support built into the license.
Who can benefit from Ascend PIM?
- Businesses seeking a quick implementation with minimal modifications
- Businesses with small IT organizations that don’t have resources to contribute to customization
- Businesses that want to start with a more affordable solution
- Businesses that don’t want to re-engage with a new solution provider at a crucial growth phase
- Anyone who wants to get a much quicker return from their PIM investments will benefit from Ascend. This includes not only the small and medium (SMB) companies struggling with product content challenges but also bigger enterprise customers.
Custom uses of Ascend PIM
Syndigo (Riversand) Ascend PIM solution has a couple of variations/flavors. The difference is mainly in an additional feature set for retailers and distributors.
To better understand the Ascend PIM flavors it’s important to understand the flow of product data as explained in the picture below:
PIM DATA FLOW
Onboard & Ingest: This refers to the capabilities which allow the product data onboarding from suppliers or vendors. This includes use cases – supplier collaboration, dynamic data governance, integrated data and digital assets onboarding – all a part of the integrated supplier portal in the solution.
Enrich, Contextualize & Govern: This refers to the capabilities which allow Internal collaboration for enrichment and information updates, contextual data management – Seasons, Channels, Countries. Data governance extensibility, managing data in multiple locales and data visualization.
Publish: This refers to an ability to easily and seamlessly integrate with applications (upstream or downstream) within the customer’s ecosystem as well as data sources or endpoints and channels external to them. Default channels – Blob Store, Event Hub, SFTP. Multiple formats (JSON, CSV/DSV), REST API for data extraction, connectors for eCommerce, Marketplaces, e-tailers.
Variations of Ascend PIM
Ascend PIM solution for retailers/distributors: This variation of the Ascend solution covers use cases in all the steps of the data journey i.e. Onboard & Ingest, Enrich, Contextualize & Govern and Publish.
Ascend PIM solution for manufacturers/brands: This variation of the Ascend solution covers use cases in all the steps of the data journey except the Onboard & Ingest i.e. It covers use cases in the Enrich, Contextualize & Govern and Publish steps of the data flow.
Read: Rapid Digital Transformation Through Ascend PIM
