Digital Transformation Blog | Frank Riedijk

Look, the world is trending towards more attention for PIM/MDM/social..... Click here

Now this is quite a data-technical question. One for the experienced data-PIM (Product Information Management) architect. A question however that many companies will have to answer to play in the modern era of online sales. Let me fist give some context: product sales companies promote their products, in catalogs, in a CMS-based promotional site, a webshop, the Point-of-sale system, etc. This data has to be stored somewhere in the companies' systems. Until a few years ago the question where to store it was easy. Via EDI or incoming files the product data would be imported into the ERP. The ERP would be the single source of truth about article-number, product dimensions, prices, descriptions, etc. In the mean time ourwebbased sales channel has multiplied the amount of attributes per product. Added promotional information, visual representations, etc. This is well beyond the capabilities of the average ERP. Try using the product description of an ERP-based product in your webs...

As my earlier posts suggest: we are investing in capabilities in our IT-solutions to ensure customers are recognised and served. We all know that the essence of our monetary economy evolves around gaining the trust and "euro" from our target audience. So, we have invested in CRM and webpages. Followed by an online shop to ensure we can match the proposition of our competitors. It turned out we also needed to ensure "one source of truth for product information" (PIM) to base our promotions on. However now we face the next challenge: cross channel integration. An example? I used to be very happy with my Palm Treo. My first real smart phone based on the windows platform. Yes, a beauty (in my eyes :-)), because it was a mash-up of the smart Palm hardware and the "open" (I know, many other opinions state differently) Windows mobile platform. When I was walking through a city center with my family I realised that I still wanted to have two cradles, to charg...

Quit a few of our customers -and prospects- are in the process of implementing new web-solutions. Shops, portals, webpages, etc. What are the drivers we see? Well, mainly real business-drivers, in B2B and B2C alike. It seems that the current economic climate has not only raised the awareness that costs need to be reduced, it seems it has also revived the idea that an online shop can improve business value. Competitors are online, and our buyers (mostly marketing driven) are aware that they need to attract the audience. As described before in the whitepapers on this blog, the audience is quickly growing and maturing! Because of the need for control and quick updates, customer are looking to invest in technology that offers them a solution that ensures 'one data truth' for prices, marketing data and an assured relation to the logistical data. Not many have yet identified the connection from that data for online presence, to the fact that the same data is used for physical appeara...

In this whitepaper Mr. Riedijk describes how companies go online, what development technology shows and what kind of very quick evolution your customer audience is making. His conclusion: No time to loose!! Move now, or watch competition take over a serious share of your market, by interacting with your customers. And you may have noticed: He who talks with the customer, hás the customer .... Catch up on your reading quickly, Click here for the new whitepaper of Mr. Riedijk or mail Frank.Riedijk@Unic.com for a copy or a conversation.