A new whitepaper from leading eCommerce and multichannel retail consulting firm FitForCommerce found that retailers who are quickly moving toward an omnichannel approach are placing a significant amount of effort on ensuring that their product information is accurate and consistent across all touch points and channels.
The paper titled PIM for Retailers: The Importance of Product Information Management in Omnichannel Retail discusses how consumers have assumed control of the buying process, resulting in extremely high expectations when it comes to the shopping experience.
To meet the demands of the hyper-connected and empowered consumer, retailers are rushing to establish additional sales and marketing channels to support their growing omnichannel strategy. However omnichannel strategies require more than simply adding additional channels. Delivering a superior shopping experience involves good product content that goes beyond simple product descriptions.
Highlights:
The creation and management of good product content is a large task and, omnichannel retailing requires that content is shared across all channels to ensure accuracy and consistency. Because of this competitive reality, retailers are constantly fighting to capture the attention of the fleeting consumer and convert them into loyal customers. Product Information Management (PIM) solutions help retailers collect, manage and share product information across all internal departments and with external partners and suppliers, creating a single, trusted source of product information across all relevant touch points.
Many retailers recognize that they lack effective management for sourcing, creating and managing product information. In order to overcome this challenge in the most effective and efficient way possible, a centralized product information management solution is recommended.
With a PIM solution, retailers have a centralized hub for sourcing, editing and managing data across the enterprise that, at the same time, ensures that accurate and consistent information is distributed across all relevant touch points. With this centralized repository in place, retailers are one step closer to providing the superior shopping experience required to attract customers and encourage loyalty.
Stibo Systems’ master data management solution STEP helps retailers develop the level of agility needed to improve operational profitability, increase customer satisfaction and reduce risk. Stibo’s solution delivers real-time, consistent and highly accurate operational information about products, suppliers and customers that allows retailers and online merchants to improve decision-making and provides a seamless, merchandising platform.
FitForCommerce Quote
"At FitForCommerce, we regularly work with retailers who are facing operational challenges because they did not sufficiently consider the infrastructure or backend foundation before launching an eCommerce channel,” said John Kinsella, EVP, FitForCommerce. "Product Information Management carries a lot of weight in omnichannel retailing. As consumers travel interchangeably between channels, consistent, accurate and timely product information instills the trust that is so critical to achieving long-term customer loyalty."
Stibo Systems Quote
"Consumers are faced with an enormous amount of choices when it comes to how, what, when and where they opt to shop," said Christophe Marcant, Vice President of Product Strategy for Stibo Systems. "Stibo Systems' master data management solution improves profitability and increases customer satisfaction by helping online retailers to present information that is complete, accurate, consistent and easy to digest."
