Page 10 - index

RESEARCH, ANALYSIS & TRENDS

The crux of the

matter in

eCommerce

Statistically, every 2-3 years a complete eShop relaunch In particular the expansion of the product range or the
is required to stay successful in eCommerce, while integration into a new shop drives the costs up, which
technical enhancements usually already need to start is a true nightmare, especially for multi-shop system
being carried out after 6-12 months. With a Product In- operators. Not to mention, that the online store is only
formation Management (PIM) system, however, the ef- one channel out of many and in fact a trend that is
forts of such a relaunch could be significantly reduced. steadily developing with new trends looming almost
every day.
Contentserv AG, for instance, a software vendor for En-
terprise Marketing Management Solutions (EMMS), is Express into the net
able to support all your marketing, creative media and
communication processes. Without professional exper- However, if the product information is maintained and
tise, catalogues, websites, eShops, portals as well as kept in a central Product Information Management
online and print advertising media can be implemented (PIM) system, new channels can be integrated quickly
via a web browser and fed with content from the central and securely. Another advantage is that if a technology
product information. In other words, processes are cen- change occurs, for instance in the shopping system, no
trally optimized and achieve high cost and time savings, product information is at risk to get lost.
with the convenient side-effect of achieving faster time-
to-market with product communications, hence, having So, taking a look at Contentserv’s solution could be
a competitive advantage.
worth it, as it is providing a specially developed PIM
system for the requirements of multichannel manage-
Technologies come and go - product data remains ment, in which all product information, media, and
translations are managed centrally and efficiently. It
We know that the product data is the most valuable as- makes it easy to deliver data flexibly to electronic
set of a company, especially in the fast-paced eCom- channels, shop systems, print channels and many
merce world. Generated, structured and classified with more channels and formats. The automated transfer of
great effort, the data ensures on the one hand to be the all product, image and video data in real time ensures
holy grail for many years to come but on the other hand timeliness without effort.
it needs to be constantly updated. With an e-shop re-
launch or expansion to other distribution channels you However, while out on the market everything networks
are again facing the challenge to provide this data con- at a tearing pace, it still seems to me as though man-
sistently across all channels every time. agers inside of organizations nonetheless waste valua-
ble time with hierarchy posturing, delusions of control
Multichannel - more than an online store and silo management. Unfortunately, formalisms, com-
mand and control, as well as customer-unfriendly
Nearly every smartphone or tablet user buys and gets standardization delusions are currently the largest ob-
informed via mobile: on the road, on the couch or in the stacles on the way to a new world of business. So
shop – often right after searching online for information keep in mind that new ways and methods are con-
about the products. For the multichannel retailer though, stantly needed as technologies come and go. Be open-
it is not enough to optimize online stores for mobile de- minded and strategically strong to remain optimally
vices. Uniform, current product information is essential, positioned for new channels and technologies in the
especially in eCommerce. future. ◊

If the product information has to be administered repeat- By Daniela La Marca
edly in different online stores, this causes enormous
maintenance expenses.

10 Asian eMarketing November 2014 - Cross-, Multi-, Omni-Channel & Everywhere Commerce