Interview: How to Simplify Product Information Management In 5 Easy Steps
Unified product information is crucial to providing the streamlined, consistent omnichannel interactions required in today’s competitive B2B landscape, as Dietmar Rietsch, CEO of Pimcore describes.
Below are a couple of steps out of the five, I'd responded to during an interview with Digital Journal. Read it if you're interested in taking a leaf on how to reorganise your product information.
Digital Journal: How important is unified product information for businesses?
Dietmar Rietsch: Organizations are selling their products and services online now more than ever before, and while this is great for business, it’s increasingly difficult for organisations to keep up. Consumers demand access to more channels than ever before. They want to shop via their mobile phones, desktops and sometimes even through voice devices. Because of this, organisations need to ensure that product information is consistent and accurate across each of these platforms, which can be really difficult to manage.
Given the breadth of options to shop online grows larger each day, unified product information across each channel the organisation sells on is incredibly important in retaining customers, and building trust and loyalty. If customers have an inconsistent experience between platforms, they’ll quickly turn to a competitor who can provide the seamless interactions they demand and have come to expect. Unified product information can be the differentiator between a loyal customer and lost business.
Digital Journal: What are the main challenges with managing product data?
Dietmar Rietsch: A primary challenge for managing product data is de-siloing and organising it, so organizations have a unified repository of content. For example, desktop experiences, mobile experiences and in-store experiences require different elements, given user behavior patterns. However, it can be difficult to maintain a consistent experience across each channel, especially if each channel is pulling content information from various data storage areas that aren’t talking to each other. Product data can easily become siloed or duplicated, making it hard for companies to create a holistic, personalised experience for each customer.
Digital Journal: Do challenges increase for business operating across large territories?
Dietmar Rietsch: Challenges increase for organisations operating across large territories, as product information requirements, including languages, measurements, classification standards and legal requirements, vary across country borders and even state lines. This makes it crucial for organisations to invest in a solution that centralises data across channels and is agile enough to quickly adjust product content across each platform since ensuring product specs and regulatory information are constantly updated is essential.
Failing to provide this information instantaneously not only harms business buyers who rely on accurate product information when making investments for their companies, but reduces the organisation’s overall credibility.
In addition, organisations that have on-premise data storage systems across geographies can further struggle with siloed product information. These companies can face issues associated with migrating to more agile solutions like Cloud or open-source technology, which ultimately enable greater flexibility and agility. Companies that are operating in this antiquated way will have a very difficult time aggregating product data in one place and adapting their strategies quickly.
Read the full interview