To be successful in today’s retail world, you have to be able to execute merchandising practices that support a multichannel strategy. Product information management (PIM), as a technology and as a practice, are critical to your success as a retail business. The same is true if you are a supplier or a B2B business. Accurate, relevant product information can make or break sales. And, it keeps getting more complex to manage product information, as you have to proliferate your business through all kinds of new channels.
That’s why, this week, two of our chose articles provide insights about product information management. We want you to understand how critical it is for your business and what you can do about it.
Is Your Data Holding You Back? Product Information Management for Retail – This article does a great job providing a high level overview of PIM, and puts into a multichannel context. (He uses the term “omnichannel”, but I won’t hold it against him.) It also stresses that PIM is a process and business strategy as much as it is a software solution. Being successful with PIM is about marrying how your business operates with a tool that helps it do so more effectively.
Seeing Is Believing–And Selling – The author, Paul Demery, does a good job laying out the challenges of multichannel selling for B2B organizations, like suppliers. It walks through two examples of companies who adopted a multichannel strategy, marrying PIM with their web experience, to transform their businesses. This is the story we tell. This is the problem we are trying to solve in innovative ways. It’s exciting to see suppliers out there who are making their businesses better, by simplifying their technology approach.
Is the Sharing Economy a Threat to Retail? – This article investigates how the sharing economy, largely driven by Millenials, could impact retailers. It dives into questions like, “If people are trading and renting more, doesn’t that mean they are buying less?” It should be no surprise the world is changing. In fact, we get right to that point on this page. It doesn’t mean that retailers are going to disappear, though. You just need to understand how your customers are evolving and provide solutions to their problems in new ways. The good news is that all this change creates opportunities for differentiation and taking down long-tenured industry giants.
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