The explosion of communication channels presents a unique challenge to overworked marketing professionals. Having a handle on your retail product information is the answer.

  Times were much simpler for retail marketing and advertising directors when our media choices were limited to print and broadcasting. Even in major markets, picking the most suitable newspaper or radio station to advertise your stores’ value was relatively easy. Traditional ads and store flyers could reach just about everyone.

Everything is different today. It seems like a new digital channel is born every day, and even the existing ones are getting more complex. Most media channels are bi-directional, transmitting what customers say and do at least as much as a retailer can tell them. Even an e-commerce mobile app can be a two-way channel. In a sea of multichannel noise, a retailer’s message is complex to hear clearly, if at all.

  One thing that is clear, however, is that every retailer has many, many products to sell. Most merchandising planners also have a good idea of who they are selling to and what products will sell well. So, to address the complexities of today’s multichannel world, they must first have a rock-solid approach to product information management (or PIM), the systems it touches, and how it relates to the needs and habits of actual customers.

Put Customers First

Today’s shoppers are much more likely to search for the products they want—and less likely to wait for you to talk about them. On one hand, that means you are competing with everyone on the internet, starting with Amazon. On the other hand, it also means there are positive things you can do to meet that need better than anyone else! But to do that well, you first need to have product data that is compelling, timely, accurate, easy to find, and suited to the customer’s preferred channel. Comosoft’s  PIM system, part of the LAGO workflow, accomplishes this seamlessly. The product information in every campaign is accurate and consistent across multiple channels, from print to web to mobile app. It can even be customized (or versioned) by region or store location, and the data can be exported to mobile apps. This feature allows mobile users to find a particular featured product in their local store, as was done for Lowe’s home improvement chain.

Improve the Data

A retailer’s product data comes from scores of individual manufacturers, each of whom may have a different way of labeling and structuring the data. Typical PIM systems often need help reconciling data inconsistencies. When flawed product data makes its way into a marketing promotion, it can result in unwanted costs, returns, and damage to the retailer’s reputation. To guard against this, the retailer’s merchandising planners and IT team must take steps to harmonize its product data and all the accompanying metadata, aiming for a “single source of truth” for all the products it sells. Fortunately, this formidable task is one that Comosoft addresses regularly via its ongoing database administration services.

Provide More Value

Accurate data on all the products a retailer sells is good when managing inventory and controlling costs. However, when PIM system data are used to help create marketing campaigns and promotions, the data increases value to the retailer and its customers. Comosoft LAGO’s collaborative workflow helps marketing and advertising directors and merchandising planners create more effective campaigns across multiple channels and measure the success of each campaign. In addition, marketing managers can now utilize artificial intelligence to optimize their LAGO campaigns and increase overall profitability.

Integrate With Other Systems

The intrinsic value of a retailer’s PIM system is multiplied when it is seamlessly integrated with other systems, including the retailer’s digital asset management (DAM) system, pricing, inventory management, and other common data sources. Even when a retailer’s data infrastructure includes legacy systems, Comosoft’s custom systems integration services can combine the pieces to form a powerful whole. Besides normalizing the data (on-site or in the cloud), LAGO also integrates with a retailer’s print publishing workflow via its Adobe InDesign plugin architecture, as well as its digital publishing and other marketing production requirements. Production managers and their teams can use LAGO to access all the data about a particular featured product all at once, no matter where the data are located, saving valuable production time and producing a greater volume of promotional content—including regional versions—in far less time.

Remove the Silos

The bane of legacy IT, including conventional PIM and DAM systems, is the persistence of isolated or siloed data sources—a holdover from when company databases, however powerful, were created for predefined use cases. Such single-use databases were often made on platforms and in programming languages that newer, more robust ones have superseded. Most were also hosted on local, on-premises servers. Today, cloud-based services, automation, and advanced, modular programming are expanding the potential for a more efficient data ecosystem—essential in a complex, multichannel world. However, legacy systems’ burden keeps some retailers from realizing that potential. Comosoft’s project management and consulting services are designed to undo the silo effect and streamline the retailer’s overall planning and production processes. Starting with discovery, our teams can optimize existing data workflows and develop new ones, realizing cost savings between twenty and fifty percent in many cases.

With a Twenty-First-Century data ecosystem, including a integrated approach to PIM, DAM, and production automation, any retailer can rise to the challenge of multichannel marketing communications.

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Find out more about Comosoft LAGO’s powerful approach to integrated product information management—and its potential to transform your multichannel marketing strategy. Or you can book a demo to see for yourself.