The digital revolution among industrial manufacturers, wholesalers, and distributors continues apace. For most companies, the digitalization of information flows, order flows, and intra-industry communication is now a matter of survival. And there is a lot more to digitize and automate every day as the routes to market become more complex due to the proliferation of B2B channels. What’s more, most manufacturers either already have or are planning to launch D2C channels.
The ultimate goal is to provide a consistent and compelling experience for buyers shopping on manufacturers’ D2C channels or a B2B partner’s marketplace or online store. All touchpoints must display comprehensive and accurate information if manufacturers hope to increase market share and improve profitability.
Coordinating across channels and keeping data quality high on many touchpoints is no easy task. In organizations where product content distribution is the responsibility of PIM managers or even IT departments, getting product data out to trade partners can be very slow and painful. Without a specialized product syndication solution in place, many teams struggle to comply with ever more divergent data requirements coming from partners.
Organizations using specialized product content syndication (PCS) solutions struggle to harmonize product data across all touchpoints because their B2B, and D2C channels are usually managed by multiple teams using disconnected tools and platforms. In fact, most PCS solutions on the market can’t serve D2C channels in the first place.
Data exports to wholesalers, distributors, and databases
B2B trade partners and large customers place the most extensive demands on product data for most manufacturers. Typically, manufacturers have to provide custom product data exports, each with a specific product assortment, price list, set of product attributes, or classifications like ETIM, ECLASS, or UNSPSC.
Even if a manufacturing company masters product data syndication, it doesn’t guarantee that they can ensure high-quality data across all digital touchpoints, especially those beyond the manufacturer’s direct control. Some clients aren’t adept at adequately using the data they receive, and some resellers down the chain often don’t receive all the data or don’t prioritize data quality. There are lots of risks that have the potential to cause actual harm to a manufacturer’s brand reputation. That’s why it’s essential for manufacturers to utilize the tools provided by hyperscalers such as Google and Amazon, which can overwrite third-party product data.
Product data exports for D2C channels
Although D2C ecommerce represents a small percentage of manufacturing revenue, it’s an area that’s growing rapidly and presents many advantages beyond income alone – such as better insights into customer profiles and the market. Descriptive product data, images, and rich media are essential for effective D2C because consumer behavior has a decisive impact on buying decisions on ecommerce platforms. Because D2C channels are new to most manufacturing companies, onboarding can be a time-consuming process.
Smart product content syndication solutions
Individual business needs vary, but all companies want to enable convenient agile product content syndication. Your tool should cover all – or the vast majority of – relevant data exports and channels globally – both B2B and D2C. The tool has to centralize all exports and harmonize the go-to-market process for all of your product data.
It’s imperative to hand administrative power into the hands of PIM teams and business users, who can quickly react to fluctuating market conditions or launch new products. A transfer of responsibility to non-technical departments enables agile and fast data distribution as it removes the burden from IT teams who, in many cases, are already overloaded with tasks and are overqualified for the type of repetitive work required to produce hundreds of variants of product catalogs for different recipients.
As go-to-market routes are evolving fast, you should ensure that your syndication platform solution offers the basic building blocks required to build any kind of data exports you may need in the future.
It should also offer good connectivity options to all the systems holding your organization’s product data – PIM and ERP.
P2C management for product content syndication and distribution
Productsup offers the most comprehensive P2C (product-to-consumer) platform available. The platform covers all product content go-to-market needs within organizations by circumventing the labyrinth of platform and marketplace specifications – commerce anarchy – and getting product data to new channels with just a few clicks. It can support all the routes – from industry standards such as BMEcat to digital channels like Amazon and marketing channels like Google. A powerful P2C platform enables organizations to centralize and control their data while giving local teams the tools they need to create data exports for all recipients quickly.
To learn more about best practices for different types of channels and what exactly a P2C platform can do for you, download our free guide.