multi-channel content management for large retailers
DESCRIPTION
Content, its applications and transactional capabilities are the pillars of a digital commerce experience for large retailers. The ability to deliver them in a multi-channel environment brings ubiquity and continuity of experience across user platforms—thereby building trust and driving conversion.TRANSCRIPT
Multi-Channel Content Management for large retailers
Authored by Andre Engberts and Arpit Jain, August 2013
TABLE OF CONTENTS 3
4
6
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INTRODUCTION
THE NEED FOR CHANNEL DIVERSIFICATION
USER EXPERIENCE IN A MULTI-CHANNEL CONTEXT
CONTENT MANAGEMENT PROCESSES
END-POINT DEVICES AND DELIVERY ARCHITECTURE
THE VISION: THE CONTENT HUB
CONCLUSION
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Internal vs. External content sourcing and content aggregation
Content usage scenarios - Content types
Overview
Multi-channel content processes - Pre-authoring tasks - Authoring tasks - Publishing tasks
Transactional performance impact on the integration between a cms and a commerceengine
Multi-channel synchronized content delivery
High-level content pipeline architecture
- Content delivery integrates product and non-product content domains
- The importance of content services in a multi-channel content architecture
- The special case of content management for print
- Matching delivery services options with channels
Illustrative scenario
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4
6
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14
20
2425
This discussion note will cover both the complexity of content management within retail and the
technology challenge of content management for both a multi-channel business environment and a
highly scalable transactional platform.
We will also discuss other architectural transformations related to the general business trends in
retail. We will explain how the retail industry is converging towards a consistent vision for content
management and publishing across both digital and traditional channels, and look for innovative
applications of content that span guest experiences both online and at the store.
Large retailers have had to solve unique problems resulting from their size — how to integrate the enormous amount of content they publish with an ecommerce platform that is optimized for very high transaction volume, specifically.
Large retailers have unique challenges that come from the size of their catalog, the volume of sales
transactions, the large number of shoppers and their dispersed geographical locations.
Like other businesses that have gone digital, retailers have published their catalogs on site and mobile
applications and most of them have implemented ecommerce. In addition to creating another selling
channel, digital user experiences are also a way to drive customers to stores and provide a tool for
product research, promotion and advertising.
Wal-Mart, Target, Walgreens, Best Buy and many others have invested for years in their online channels.
But the endeavor for these retailers (visit stores.org for a list of the top 100) has been different than small
to medium size commerce sites such as REI, Williams-Sonoma or even AT&T.com for mobile.
3
INTRODUCTION
Large retailers compete for a fixed population of consumers, knowing that the sum of offerings from each retailer
is larger than what the market can consume as a whole. Winning the attention and purchasing transactions from
the consumer is a challenge that requires retailers to be constantly top of mind when consumers are planning a
purchase or about to make a purchase.
Maintaining the constant attention of the guest and “being there” when a transaction can take place is what has
led to a multi-channel diversification of interactions between retailers and the guest in the digital space. This
diversification includes:
THE NEED FOR CHANNEL DIVERSIFICATION
Multiple independent or combined offerings: the main online store is complemented by registries for
wedding or baby.
Competitors and partners:retailers have created joint offers for guests with
competitors like Target and Neiman Marcus, or with
partners like Groupon.
Social media: all large retailers are on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
Frequent refresh of offers:on the site, mobile apps, microsites or weekly ads.
Multiple form factors:consumers can use a desktop/laptop as a high-speed,
large format platform, a tablet for more mobility, and a
smart phone that adds current location as the leading
context.
The physical world:stores have in-store devices for viewing additional
information while purchasing or to support flexible
fulfillment. Anticipate that physical digital presence to
extend beyond stores, to other showcase situations.
Multiple brands: large retailers have absorbed other brands or created
their own (e.g., Neiman Marcus with Horchow and Last
Call). Promoting brand individuality while maintaining
a family look and consolidating content management
infrastructure is a complex design problem from a
visual design, content management and technical
architecture standpoint.
Multiple languages: Wal-Mart is leading all retailers in providing
ecommerce to multiple countries. Target is moving
soon to Canada. The following table shows some
examples of who is doing what in retail across
multiple languages.
no
yes
yes
yes
no
yes
yes
no
yes
no
yes
no
no
yes
yes
yes
yes
TargeT
Wal-MarT
aMazon.coM
cosTco
Kohl’s
Toys”r”Us
BesT BUy
Kroger
safeWay
Macy’s
sears
JcPenney
The liMiTed
gaP
zara
Bed, BaTh & Beyond
iKea
core
hardlines
grocery
a&a
hoMe
considering
ParTially
yes
no
considering
yes
yes
no
no
considering
yes
no
no
no
yes
no
yes
in inTernaTional MarKeTs
in Us/esPañol
5
Compelling content and content that is synchronized across channels, adapted and made available in the right context and at the right time are critical requirements for a multi-channel content architecture.
Consistency and continuity drive more trust in the brand in the mind of the customer. This drives the impression that offerings and messages are well thought through and cared for.
1. Establishing a presence that will provide guests with enough value and substance for rapid and long-term adoption.
2. Maintaining consistency of message
from one channel to the next to maintain overall brand impact.
3. Enabling continuity of experience as guests conduct their research and transactions using a random combination of devices, at different times and in
different locations.
As a retailer diversifies its presence across channels, corresponding user experiences are unified to bundle the benefits of
digital and traditional commerce on behalf of the customer. Complementary offerings like wedding and baby registries
drive traffic to the online channel; having an in-store kiosk connects the digital and real-world experiences in a way that
use of one drives more use of the other. To achieve cross-channel benefits, three high-level principles are followed:
USER EXPERIENCE IN A MULTI-CHANNEL CONTEXT
Content sources are not just internal but also external. The content management infrastructure stores, organizes and ranks
content, but also moderates inputs for publishing in near-real time. That last aspect is one of the innovations taking place
around content, where the content management infrastructure can aggregate and leverage content dynamically from a
number of different “external” sources. Most CMS systems now provide a foundational capability to deliver this.
Internal vs. external content sourcing and content aggregation
Marketers may need to leverage content from multiple sources and bring it all together in the context of a campaign or brand story. The ability to aggregate product and brand content from other sources in real time (whether these are conversations in the social space, or extended product data for product partner/reseller scenarios), tie it together semantically and then use it to drive use cases such as “related content” or “similar content” is another key differentiator. CMS and search technologies are leading the way here.
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Content usage scenarios
In order to launch new experiences and
marketing campaigns simultaneously
across multiple channels, we want to
reuse content, components, pages and,
sometimes, entire sections of a site. For
instance, many content components from
the main site will find their way on the
mobile web version, possibly in different
form factors for tablet or mobile phone.
Or, if you have an online gift registry, you
will reuse most of the product browsing
section of the original site.
So synchronizing content that’s planned for different properties is important; however, not everything is reused from one
experience to another and reuse is not necessarily hierarchical. In a multi-channel configuration, the graph of content
sharing and dependency is a complex network, as illustrated above.
Main site
m.commobile app
registry site
m.registry.com
Microsite and campaign sites
In a network of digital properties, a variety of content types are being published and potentially shared. Content is grouped
into two major areas that are managed separately but published jointly: product and non-product content. For product
content, we find:
Product item information, the core of the retailer’s digital data. Millions of Stock Keeping Units (SKUs) are potentially published, and product
information is a collection of data properties, taxonomy information, images, copy text, videos, reviews, and much more.
Product categories, the data structure to group products. Categories can have content types attached to them such as
copy text, size charts, user guides, videos, images and more.
The process of creating and acquiring product information for very large amounts of items that are sourced from a variety
of vendors requires a different process than web content management. Product information is also as data intensive as it is
rich in content. A retailer will typically use PIM (Product Information Management) processes and technologies to manage
that information. For non-product content, we find:
Components, which are composite content types that integrate text, images, data, videos and links to create digital ads,
offers and other page elements.
Non-product copy for marketing content that appears on category pages and other landing pages.
Site templates that define the layout of pages.
Non-product images and animation or video assets for marketing purposes.
Third-party syndicated copy content for stories around a content category and inspirational content.
A retailer will typically use CMS (Content Management System) processes and technologies to manage non-product
information.
In a multi-channel environment, the product and non-product content domains come together into a unified content
delivery architecture to minimize the responsibility of each delivery end-point in assembling content from different sources.
In the next few sections, we will focus on the key technology and process enablers for content in a retail environment,
outlining solutions for the management of content in a scalable data, transactional and multi-channel environment.
Content types
The creation, composition and management of content for frequent site refreshes and for large amounts of product
can take up to hundreds of workers focused on four major processes:
1. Digital planning and asset acquisition, the process of creating, buying or searching for assets given
the specification of a new user experience or a new campaign.
2. Digital asset ingestion and storage, how created or purchased assets are uploaded into a common
Digital Asset Management (DAM) system, associated with folders and metadata for use by content
management workers, and to create user experiences within the CMS or other tools.
3. Web content management is where we create templates and assemble content into components or
pages. This is also where we run the review and approval workflow, version content and create multiple versions
for different form factors.
4. Content publishing and delivery is the process of selecting the subset of the content that will be
deployed at a given time. The specifics of how that gets done depend on the delivery architecture, covered later.
Overview
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CONTENT MANAGEMENT PROCESSES
Let’s review next each of these processes in the context of multi-channel content management.
These four processes include capabilities listed on the figure below:
MUlTi-channel cMs caPaBiliTies
capa
bili
ty a
reas
capa
bili
ties Digital Planning
and Asset Acquisition
Media Asset Authoring Tools
WIP Workflow
Distributed Process Management
Integration with Digital Media Management
Process Integration with Digital Planning
and PIMReview Workflow
Content life-cycle management
Content metadata and Taxonomy management
Syndicated content management
Access Control
Author Search
Reporting
Syndicated content partner integration
Caching
End User Search
Content Analytics
Personalization and Targeting
Multi-site management
Video Management Preview Site Integration
Asset IngestionTemplate
ManagementReal time Content
Delivery
Multi ChannelPublishing
Content Storage and Organization
Copy Content Authoring
and Usability
Digital Asset Ingestion
and Storage
Web ContentManagement
Content Publishingand Delivery
From a tooling standpoint, the coordination of distributed content management in pre-authoring tasks
is mostly process. The digital planning process functions as team-independent activities with joint
deliverable reviews triggered through workflow.
For asset creation and ingestion, let’s assume we have multiple marketing campaigns that are going to
focus on the same product set. In this case, planning is done upfront for a comprehensive acquisition
of images, copy and videos, which are then tagged and organized to make it easy for all projects to
identify common assets to reuse.
This sounds trivial, but you would be surprised by how little reuse happens when you have hundreds
of millions of assets and no effort for coordinating their reuse. Assets are expensive to produce or
create from scratch. Reuse is a lot cheaper.
1. Pre-authoring tasks
Assuming a multi-site content management process, where site “A” is the
parent site and site “B” is the sub-site, using content from site “A,” we can
look at the coordination of respective teams on three process segments:
1. Pre-authoring tasks 2. Authoring tasks 3. Publishing tasks
Multi-channel content processes
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asset acquisition/creation
digital application “a”
“B” uses content from “a”
digital application “B”
Team “a” performs the asset acquisition for both “a” and “B” on shared content
Both teams produce their own complete set of digital designs, with joint reviews for consistency
digital Planning digital asset ingestion and storage
all digital media assets are shared and accessible to both “a” and “B” and tagged for filtering and search
The authoring process, on the other hand, leverages from the collaboration and content sharing features
of the content management tools.
Reuse of content is planned by creating an initial “blueprint” of an experience—a content component,
page fragment, entire page or sub-site. That blueprint is then duplicated as “synchronized copy” for use
by a different channel. The copy is kept in sync, and is not a reference to a common object.
The synchronization mechanism is such that it is up to the consumer of the copied content to decide
when to use what may have been changed on the blueprint.
Note that the CMS allows you to decide what you expose as content that can be reused and what you
want to keep private to the site. Content access control lets you decide not to allow some sections of
your site to become copied in another channel.
digital application “a” digital application “B”
content only used
by “a”
content reused
from “a”
content used only
by “B”
content made
available to share with other apps
create new content
review and approve new
content rollout new content
content available and visible to site
“B”
create content “synchronized copy”
2. Authoring tasks
The publishing process is executed through a publishing workflow. Different digital properties will go
through publishing independently from each other.
Once content is created and made available to multiple channels, you want each site to remain in
control of when they synchronize their updates and publishing actions. It can be simultaneous or
deferred, or manually triggered. That all depends on what the channel management policies are.
3. Publishing tasks
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authoring Publishing
digital application “a”
“B” uses content from “a”
digital application “B”
content has been reviewed and approved for both sites independently from each other
content is published to channels “a” and “B” independently from each other through separate workflows
END-POINT DEVICES AND DELIVERY ARCHITECTURE
Before we get into a CMS site delivery architecture overview, let’s go over why large retailers represent a special
architecture case, due to the combination of high commerce transaction volume and high amounts of content to be
displayed.
Here are some examples of performance numbers around one US holiday period when purchasing
is at a high:
To achieve such performance, a few architectural principles are being followed:
We have discussed content types and processes in a multi-channel context to understand the complexity of the
management of large amounts of diverse content for large retailers in a multi-channel context. Let’s look now at the
technical architecture for delivering content to application platforms for different channels. This architecture has to
address both performance and multi-channel synchronization.
Transactional performance impact on the integration between a CMS and a commerce engine
• 3,000+ transactions per second• Response time ≤3 seconds• 70K+ orders per hour• 110K carts per hour• 100% promotion on every customer shopping cart• 2.3 million searches per hour
• Caching at every level of the architecture.• Tight coupling of everything that is used for the rendition of the user experience. • Low-level code optimization.
1. Applications should not have to assemble content from multiple sources. Content is delivered as a whole at only two levels
of granularity: pages and components.
2. Static versus dynamic content is transparent to the end-user application.
3. Content is served to all channels following a common framework. So, as you add a new channel, you don’t have to re-
engineer the content acquisition. The same content can be pushed simultaneously to all channels.
4. Content authoring is supported by an immediate, high fidelity content preview within the CMS.
Multi-channel synchronized content delivery
High-level content pipeline architectureIn this section, we will assume that the CMS can be configured in both “fried” content publishing (the CMS being the live
site platform) or “baked” content publishing (where the content is pushed asynchronously to the site delivery platform). Most
leading content management platforms provide both capabilities. Content is delivered to the end-user device through oane
of three methods:
Once we diversify the delivery of content across multi-channel, we need to simplify how we build content-consuming applications
and, in particular, how end-user applications assemble the content for display. This surfaces four main requirements:
1. Directly through the CMS, configured as a site delivery platform. The CMS engine is used as both a
content delivery platform and as an application server (behaving as a content portal). For instance, Adobe CQ is built on a full-
service Java application framework (Sling) that allows for managing content as well as building complete web applications.
Open Text acquired Vignette as a portal that’s integrated with the content management backend. Autonomy has developed
its own product, LiveSite, as a complementary offering to TeamSite—the “baked” offline version—and Sitecore and Ektron are
tightly integrated with the .Net framework for web application development.
2. Using content services. Content can be delivered via content services for mobile native apps or mobile hybrid apps.
Here we are illustrating two types of services: real-time content services where the content is pulled by the delivery platform
at the time it needs to be displayed and offline content services where the content is pulled by the delivery platform ahead
of display time and is stored locally by the delivery platform. The difference between the two implementations is about
performance. Real-time content services need to be scaled for run-time performance; offline content services do not.
3. Pushing “baked” content to an application delivery platform, such as an application server (e.g., IBM WCS,
Spring Framework, Oracle ATG). This approach enables the development of ecommerce applications that integrate a different
framework for ecommerce page development with the CQ content framework. This configuration option is where we get the
performance gain required for transactional performance—the ability to sustain high transaction volumes at a fast rate.
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Ideally, product content and non-product content could come together in the CMS so that users can build and preview
complete pages.
A retailer’s volume of products, however, makes it impractical for authors to process the complete integrated content
in the CMS. Doing so would require product information to be first pushed to the CMS and then pushed again to the
delivery platform—a huge, redundant data flow. Instead, product information is moved directly to the delivery platform
(the commerce product data catalog). The diagram on the following page shows how the commerce catalog or the
corresponding service is used by the three delivery configurations above.
cMs authoring execute
Publishing workflowdigital
application
cMs application
server
front-end caching servers
Page delivery
real-timecontent service
offline content service
content deployment
module (custom)
non-cMs delivery platform integrates
commerce framework with cMs-managed
content
con
Ten
T se
rVic
es
native app on end-user device (phone, kiosk)
fat client (e.g. Kiosk) or e-mail delivery (exactTarget, epsilon,...)
Web or mobile site on end-user browser
Web or mobile site on end-user browser
Content delivery integrates product and non-product content domains
Product content integration with content services: the content service layer accesses the product
catalog via a service.
Product content integration with CMS page delivery: pages being run on the CMS applications server
use components that list products retrieved from the commerce catalog through the content service layer.
Product content integration with the commerce delivery platform: if this is the case, the delivery
platform is exemplified with WCS and product information is retrieved locally from the catalog.
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cMs publishing
commerce product catalog
cMs Publishing
offline content push
accessed as data in the commerce
platform
native app on end-user device (phone, kiosk)
Web or mobile site on end-user browser
cMs Page delivery
Wcs
Wcs catalog
commerce delivery platfrom (e.g. iBM Wcs) integrates commerce framework with cMs-managed content
Web or mobile site on end-user browser
content services
Product infocatalog product
data service
The importance of content services in a multi-channel content architecture
Content services play a critical role in the multi-channel content architecture, through two main functions:
1. Delivering content to server-side or client-side applications. The content is delivered by the
service by default in either one of three formats: XML, JSON or HTML. Content delivered by services are page
fragments. It would not make sense to use the content service option to deliver entire pages. For complete page
delivery, “fried” or “baked” site configurations would be more effective.
2. Integrating product and non-product content for the consuming application. End-point
guest applications should not have to deal with the intricacies of managing and coordinating content from multiple
sources. An end-point guest application should request content at the granularity of components, assuming that the
complete component is delivered by a single service call, containing both product and non-product content.
The consequence of the first point is that layout composition for print cannot take place on a web-based interface, but requires a highly interactive client application (e.g., InDesign from Adobe) where zoom-in actions are better implemented.
The consequence of the second point is that computer-based preview will be a low-fidelity preview from a color rendition standpoint.
The CMS is still very valuable for managing printable content and deliverables, especially if there is a possibility of tight integration between the print document format and the CMS storage document representation. With Adobe CQ, for instance:
The special case of content management for print
Content management and delivery for the print channel is a special case of the content architecture for two reasons:
1. “Pixels” in digital prints are of a much finer grain density than digital pixels on a computer, tablet or mobile device screen. A large monitor with fine resolution would still provide 2 to
3 times less pixel density than a 300 DPI print, itself an average-to-low print resolution.
2. The print color palette is different from the digital set of colors. Digital devices use the RGB
color scheme, based on three base colors and apply a color additive process to create all other colors (from pure
black to other colors). Printers that are above desktop-companion grade use at least a four-color scheme, CMYK,
and create additional colors using a subtracting process (from pure white to other colors). Fine, higher quality
printing can use a six-color scheme, CMYKOG, which provides a much greater color gamut (the subset of the total
color space that is reproduced).
Matching delivery services options with channels
Looking at the different channels listed earlier, and having identified integration options between CMS at the site platform,
content services and content pushed to an application delivery platform, we can map one or more options with each channel:
• The Adobe toolset can integrate the InDesign server with CQ content management workflows, allowing print
deliverables to follow authoring, review and publishing workflows using the same process management tools and
processes as other channels.
• The initial composition of print designs can use the same asset creation tools and repositories as other channels
during the digital planning process.
• A low-fidelity preview of final designs is feasible to at least validate the general composition of deliverables.
• Push content to the commerce application server. • A template-publishing framework (e.g., FreeMarker) translates the page produced by the CMS
to a page format that the commerce engine can process.• Product information is accessed directly from the commerce catalog.
Main site
• Native apps are running within the device (e.g., iOS, Java Android apps, Java BlackBerry apps, Adobe AIR apps, Windows Mobile apps, Java or .NET client apps, PhoneGap apps).
• Native apps access dynamic content via content services (e.g., promotion and marketing components).
• Commerce data and content are integrated by content services so the mobile app does not have to assemble both.
Native mobile apps
• Create components that are published for a third party via content services.• Create co-branded microsites using either the CMS hosting platform or an application delivery
platform.
• Directly hosted by the CMS platform if that capability is available.• Commerce functions, if any, are provided via commerce engine web services.
Adjunct sites (e.g. a gift registry) where commerce is not a critical function
• Directly hosted by the CMS platform if that capability is available.• Commerce functions, if any, are provided via commerce engine web services.
Mobile web
• For in-store devices that render the UI through HTML, the same implementation strategy is used as for adjunct sites for large devices or mobile web for smaller devices (i.e., tablet size or below).
In-store devices — HTML compatible
• See “The special case of content management for print.”Print
• For in-store devices that are implemented as native applications, content is provided via content services, similarly as for native apps.
In-store devices — native applications
Partner sites
• Facebook page accesses content components via content services.Social media
CHANNEL INTEGRATION OPTION
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The potential use and management of content is rapidly expanding beyond the traditional capabilities of content
management systems:
• Content usage is across more channels and for new content types.
• Content management reaches out upstream to the digital planning process in order to streamline content
management and planning.
• New applications of content are emerging (e.g., augmented reality, monetization).
This innovation related to content is captured by the concept of the Content Hub, which will bring new capabilities
to the enterprise including:
• Creation and delivery of campaigns within minutes of a public event, like the Oreo impromptu social media
campaign during the Super Bowl blackout in New Orleans.
• Augmented reality via mobile devices to view additional content while browsing shelves at a store.
• Content for sale for DVM: create an ad inventory and sell it in real-time to a third party.
• Real-time content optimization: dynamically rank content based on popularity and display accordingly.
• Content aggregation with internal and third-party content: leveraging content networks to build “stories” around
items being sold.
The Content Hub is an ecosystem of tools and technologies assembled to meet existing and future needs of a broad
set of end users. Target industries for that vision include retail, manufacturing, consumer packaged goods and travel
(hospitality in particular).
THE VISION: THE CONTENT HUB
• Integrating methods for creating content and assets with creative tools, studios and external feeds.
• Adding content-related application capabilities for personalization, contextualization, monetization, content optimization
and financial assessment of content performance.
• Linking content to data for personalization and monetization scenarios.
• Merging the delivery of content on traditional channels with the approach used today in digital channels.
In this picture, evolution and innovation will take place at the periphery of the diagram:
This vision is progressively being implemented by the top CMS vendors who already possess powerful, scalable
platforms for content, asset management and delivery through both sites and services. Adding to that, these vendors
are all addressing the coordination of content creation and organization for concurrent delivery methods and multiple
languages. The next step is for vendors to develop an architecture where the platform packages content for emerging
and future applications like the ones listed above.
Recapitulating these points, we can put together a capability-based picture of what a multi-channel Content Hub
would look like.
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relaTed To conTenT hUB
conTenT hUB
Planning Workflow dynamic delivery
conTenT relaTed
caPaBiliTies
channels
Tra
diT
ion
al
cha
nn
els
dig
iTa
l ch
an
nel
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campaign
Planogram
MrM authoring
cMs cs
Videos coPy sTylingiMages docUMenTs
acTiVaTiondeliVery
PlaTforMs for TradiTional
Media
conTenT serVices
siTe PlaTforMs
dynaMic asseT rendiTion
sTreaMing
cdn
PersonalizaTion
conTeXTUalizaTion
aUgMenTed realiTy
MoneTizaTion
a/B TesTing
analyTics
financial PerforMance
PrinTMagazinesignagePacKagecoUPonreceiPTflyer
eMailMoBile
in-sToredeVicesiTes
Main siTeregisTry
social Media3rd ParTy
drM Transformation
asset repository
Metadata
dataPiM – guests – analytics
Publishing
Promo
Merchandising
As an example of the future use of the Content Hub, let’s consider this example of a merchandiser launching a
new line of summer clothing for teenagers. The merchandiser enlists the marketer to promote the new collection.
As they and their teams work through each task, they use the suite of tools provided by the Content Hub.
The campaign is rolled out a couple of days ahead of the product launch and analytics are collected on the
campaign’s success. Immediately, data shows a strong interest by the product’s targeted audience.
Monitor campaign success across all channels using a fine-grain analysis at content level
Task
1. Collect click data on campaign assets on site, mobile and email2. Make user experience adjustments through A/B testing
Analytics integrated with site, mobile and email; content tagging; A/B testing infrastructure
Steps
Tools
Produce the digital assets to view the new collection online Task
1. Suppliers upload their assets2. Merchandising team takes photography of samples3. Merchandising team uploads product assets in DAM4. Merchandising team solicits external content contribution from third-
party syndicated content sources if applicable
PIM; DAM; Photography Studio; Vendor Product Portal
Steps
Tools
Create a seasonal launch campaignTask
1. A campaign project is created and members of the marketing and merchandising teams are assigned to the project
2. A campaign brief is produced3. Assets are retrieved from the DAM for use by the campaign creative team4. Additional photo shoot needs are identified and executed5. Campaign creative concepts are created, reviewed and approved6. The campaign content is produced for all the .com, mobile and email channels7. The campaign content is produced for print channels8. The campaign is deployed across all channels
Campaign management workflow; DAM; creative tool suite; photo studio; CMS authoring and workflow; InDesign server integrated with CMS authoring (integration only available if CMS is Adobe CQ); multi-channel delivery architecture
Steps
Tools
Illustrative scenario
The merchandiser and marketer decide to immediately capitalize on the opportunity and prepare a social media
campaign to follow the product launch on the sale of accessories. The social media plan is to share with friends
the accessories bought together with an item from the collection. The action of sharing wins the participant a
coupon for an online purchase of a collection’s item.
Data associated with the popularity of accessories leads to a higher ranking of the display of the corresponding
content and to the rapid creation of new digital promotions and ads that are published on other sites.
As shoppers walk through stores and come close to the collection being promoted, the social media interaction
comes up on their mobile phones. Comments on the items they are standing in front of are being shown as a
reality augmentation. Accessories popular with this item are also listed. If these accessories are available at the
store, their locations are indicated.
From a DVM standpoint, placement for ads for accessories that can be sold through other retailers have their
prices adjusted accordingly.
Rapidly develop a social media application Task
1. Build social media app with content services for user to view both collection items they bought and related accessories
2. Collect social media interaction data
Content services; social media application framework (not part of Content Hub); analytics
Steps
Tools
Update ad placement strategyTask
1. Collect content click data2. Adjust ad expected click ratio
Content services; content monetization framework
Steps
Tools
Integrate a barcode reader with the mobile social media shopper app Task
1. Retrieve social media interaction data and content with product barcode
Content services; social media application framework (not part of Content Hub); barcode reader API
Steps
Tools
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CONCLUSION
Content, its applications and transactional capabilities are the pillars of a digital commerce experience
for large retailers. The ability to deliver them in a multi-channel environment brings ubiquity and
continuity of experience across user platforms—thereby building trust and driving conversion.
The lines are blurring between the digital and physical, and we can soon expect the physical store
experience to be augmented with virtual reality that involves social interactions.
This new perspective drives new content and experience architectures for large retailers. Working hand
in hand with technology, content management processes are transforming in order to focus on the
channel transparency of the message to the customer—with faster and more streamlined publishing
as well.
Leading CMS vendors are aware of these trends and are acquiring and integrating products that focus
on the next generation user experience for commerce. How these tools are integrated is the current
challenge for large retailers today.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Arpit Jain, Senior Manager Program Management, SapientNitroArpit has been with SapientNitro for over 7 years and has
been involved on multiple engagements across retail, energy
and telecom industries. He has about 10 years of industry
experience around retail ecommerce, program management
and quality assurance domains. Over the last several years, he
has been leading the delivery/future state of Target’s online
platform experience and also driving the future state of content
management for Target’s multi-channel organization spanning
across technology and business. Arpit holds a Mechanical
Engineering Degree from Delhi University, India.
Andre Engberts, Technology Director, SapientNitro Andre has been with SapientNitro since April 2012 and has been
leading a technology team at a large retailer since then. Prior to
working with SapientNitro, Andre had been in the field of Digital
Marketing Technology for 12 years, working with clients such
as AT&T, Dell, Humana and Samsung among others. Andre’s
experience spans both web and mobile technologies with a
recent focus on eCommerce, content management systems and
content strategies. Andre has also provided consulting on process
redesign and enterprise-level technology direction. Andre holds
an Engineering degree in Electrical Engineering from the Ecole
Superieure d’Electricite, Paris, France and an MS and PhD in
Computer Engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology.
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