Productsup Launches New Platform To Help Businesses Address Growing Commerce Anarchy Crisis

Leading commerce data integration company helps businesses radically rethink the entire global value chain

Berlin, 7 September 2021

Productsup, the leading commerce data integration company, today announced the launch of a new platform to combat commerce anarchy - a term Productsup coined to describe the struggle companies face managing the increasingly complex paths between products, services, and consumers.

Global retail ecommerce sales hit $4.2 trillion in 2020 alone and are projected to grow to $5.4 trillion by 2022. But commerce anarchy now threatens the online buyer/seller relationship, resulting in confused and fractured interactions between vendors and digitally-empowered customers across marketing and retail channels.

“The relationship between online platforms and businesses has switched from co-existence to competition. The situation worsens by the day as many factors converge,” said Marcel Hollerbach, Chief Innovation Officer of Productsup. “Research* tells us that 94% of vendors state they now compete with the very hyperscale platforms they need to use to digitally reach their buyers and just one in seven trusts the data they receive back from these platforms.”

Solving digital and influencer sprawl

Manufacturers, brands, retailers, and service providers are juggling multiple omnichannel business-to-business (B2B), business-to-consumer (B2C), and direct-to-consumer (D2C) processes in an attempt to manage ever-more-complex paths between products, services, and consumers. Research* amongst Chief Digital Officers and board members highlights that the impact of the chaos caused by digital channel and influencer sprawl is the most pressing issue reported. Solving this problem is a key management challenge.

“Commerce anarchy is, for sure, the major challenge we are dealing with in order to establish a strong and successful ecommerce offer,” said Margit Gosau, CEO of SPORT2000, one of the world's largest purchasing cooperatives of independent sports retailers, with 3,800 stores in more than 20 countries. “More concretely, it is the complexity of processes, data, sources, and channels which we have to juggle in order to fulfill today’s customer needs in omnichannel retail.”

Managing product information value chains

Productsup knows that successfully navigating a world of commerce anarchy requires a radical rethink of the management of the global product information value chains which connect manufacturers, brands, retailers, and service providers to their online customers. A product information value chain covers all the information flows needed to enable buyer transactions. These include supply chain logistics, product information management, and social media buying signals.

To date, many businesses have adopted a piecemeal approach to managing such complex systems. Optimizing a feed here, a product description there. But optimizing alone does not help, it just adds to the chaos. In addition, research* reveals that product information is typically handled by an average of four systems in each organization. A lack of integration of these systems to successfully aggregate, optimize, contextualize and distribute product content means global product information value chains cannot be managed in real time, fast-moving opportunities to sell are lost and brand relationships with buyers are damaged.

Taking advantage of complexity and change with the Productsup Platform

The Productsup team has drawn on its experience at major enterprise software firms such as Siebel, IBM, Oracle, HP, TIBCO, Informatica, and Qlik, to deliver the world’s first platform to manage the product information value chain. The Productsup Platform is trusted by over 1000 global brands, such as Coca-Cola, Sephora, and ALDI, across more than 2,500 marketing and retail channels and handling more monthly data requests than Google’s consumer search service.

“Productsup is aimed at creating high-performing and scalable campaigns across markets, redefining product, brand, and service experiences, delivering control over commerce anarchy,” emphasized Hollerbach.“It also comes with a sophisticated set of modules and features that are built to help brands, retailers, and service providers reach more customers and maximize sales.”

The Productsup Platform provides a single solution to effectively manage product information value chains and their constant feedback loops, enabling manufacturers, brands, retailers, and service providers to turn complexity and constant change to their advantage. Using Productsup, Chief Digital Officers and their teams can take ownership, without coding, but with full data transparency and compliance across all value chains.

To learn more about commerce anarchy and Productsup, meet the company’s thought leaders at DMEXCO 2021 today and tomorrow.

*The research was conducted according to Market Research Council guidelines by Coleman Parkes who polled 750 respondents in senior ecommerce positions across 14 countries, in 2021.