Get in touch
In the third blogpost of our ongoing series about the AOE B2X Commerce Cloud, we will take a look at the PIM solution Akeneo, the “engine that drives the legs” of the commerce solution. The first two parts of the blogpost series focus on the performance marketing solution Adobe (part 1) and the e-commerce solution Magento (part 2) as part of the AOE B2X Commerce Cloud.
The clean, consistent and central management of product and customer data is a key factor for successful e-commerce platforms. Or viewed from the other side: outdated, redundant or poor quality product data are the nightmare of every e-commerce manager. Well-maintained high-quality product data is a cornerstone of a good conversion rate. We show how we use Akeneo PIM as data backbone in our marketplace solution B2X Commerce Cloud.
Think your PIM solution merely organizes your product information? Think again!
If we add legacy systems, distributed IT infrastructures, and numerous ERP solutions to the flood of data, data management can quickly become a nightmare. Disconnected data quickly leads to intransparency and inefficient communication.
In terms of commerce, this means that product information is often found in a variety of different internal and external sources (photos on storage media, product descriptions as documents in the cloud, prices in Excel spreadsheets, additional information in printed catalogs or data sheets, etc.). Often the data is not available digitally at all.
Under these conditions, no company can operate E-Commerce successfully and on a long-term basis. This problem can be solved by sophisticated product information management (PIM). A PIM solution not only manages your product data, but also serves to expand and optimize your business and customer relationships.
In the competition for customers, those companies stand out that offer an outstanding customer experience, because only this experience guarantees successful sales.
It is therefore obvious that good product data is essential for the optimal customer experience, because the sales process revolves around products that are not only of high quality, but also that this quality is reflected in the data. In other words, good product data- or product information management is also good relationship management. For this relationship management, companies that operate commerce (whether online or offline) need the correct product data in all channels used by customers. The data must be organized and constantly updated, and it must be ensured that the information is correct. In addition, the data must customized for each channel and each customer experience.
For the reasons mentioned above and others, companies place high demands on their PIM solutions. Three factors play an important role for E-Commerce:
Product information and attributes are often maintained manually, which significantly increases the risk of errors. However, if the PIM solution is operated as a container, all data for this container can be configured and provisioned. Changes in the data are automatically synchronized. This new approach minimizes manual interaction with product data, thus ensuring a high level of data quality.
AOE ensures data security and integrity of each user’s data within their PIM in several ways. So haben autorisierte Nutzer Zugriff auf Daten in der Commerce Cloud. Die Einschränkungen werden durch die Zuordnung von Rollen kontrolliert. Auf der operativen Seite werden PIM-Import und Händler strikt voneinander getrennt.
For example, only authorized users have access to data in the Commerce Cloud. The restrictions are controlled by the assignment of roles. On the operational side, PIM import and dealers are strictly separated.
In addition, AOE complies with GS1 Standards to improve efficiency, security and identity of product data.
To make maintenance easier, one individual PIM is set up for each customer. AOE needs approximately one week to set up a PIM in a new environment (Docker Kubernetes). When users have a new use case, they can use an existing container (with product data) for that new use case. Regardless of product or industry, with this approach effectively and efficiently using the PIM system becomes much easier.
AOE runs Akeneo PIM in the cloud, specifically AWS. This helps lower costs while also providing a virtually unlimited storage capacity. In addition, all image data is stored in a Content Delivery Network (CDN). This has the advantage that images receive a unique ID and a link to the PIM and are therefore available faster and more flexibly.
Akeneo PIM provides its users with a future-proof, scalable and high-performance solution to manage product data even in complex, multiple environments.
For more information, please visit our Akeneo PIM product page and AOE Tech Radar. AOE is a certified Akeneo PIM partner, consulting various enterprise projects. Also read in our blog the Akeneo PIM 2.0 test.
