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Product Data:It’s all about the customerLet the customer experience set your PIM requirementsLasse Staffensen, Team Director, Creuna

Agenda

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1 PIM: Efficiency or Experience?2 Experience: Where the rubber meets to road3 Findability: Where is it?4 Buying decision: It this really what I need?5 Consistency: But you just said?6 SEO: Who even sells this?7 Data linking: It’s not always about the product8 Key takeaways

PIM is …

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… a set of processes used to evaluate, identify, store, manage and distributeproduct data or information.

PIM projects are …

1 …data modelling, quality and governance projects

2 . . .standardization & centralization projects

3 …change management projects

4 …IT projects

Why invest in better PIM?

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EXTE

RNAL

FO

CUS

INTERNAL FOCUS

Digitize Customer Experience

Digitize OperationsPIM?

Digital Transformation

Source: Accenture Digital Strategy

PIM?

PIM?

PIM is about building the organizational capability

to deliver great customer experience

at scale

Agenda

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Customer Experience is (still) the most important battlefield

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Source: Econsultancy Digital Marketing Trends 2019

It’s about retaining customers …

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Source: Genesys Survey

… competing less on price …

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Source: PWC – future of CX

Customer willingness to pay a premium

… and creating consistency acrosschannels

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Product data is the fuel, that powers greatcustomerexperience

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PRODUCTDATA

Agenda

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Customers find products by(inside digital channels)

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Catalog Search Automation

Great catalogs

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• Are constructed from the outside-in (e.g. no SAP material groups)

• Considers how the user groups product (by product type, by task, by style, by gender etc.)

• The customer knows all relevant products are in the catalog

• The customer is (almost) never in doubt which path down the catalog to take

• The catalog has an internal logic, that you can learn to understand

• Each step down the catalog contains reasonable number of choices

• You feel confident that there are no “better” options, once you have found the product you want to purchase.

Catalog Structure

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WHAT:On each level of the catalog the choices presented to the customer should be Mutually Exclusive and CollectivelyExhaustive (MECE), meaning that together the sub-categories cover the entire category, but that no product can adhere to two categories.

WHY:When the user navigates down the catalog the principle of mutual exclusivity ensures that the user never has to go back, as the product she/he is looking for can only be in a single category. When a product manager has to place a product in a catalog, the principle of collective exhaustively ensures that a product does not need to be placed somewhere it does not belong. Together they create a optimal flow down a catalog.

Catalog and filters

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Catalog and filters

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• Filters in catalog nodes requires all users to have the same attributes/class

• Catalog nodes and attribute filters are great for different things

• What is a catalog node and what is a filter should be consistent

• Filters are horrible without enough attribute data

Catalog nodes Attribute filters

Cognitively easy Cognitively hard

It is hard for the users to re-do the choice It is easy for the user to re-do the choice

Does not require the products to be similar with regards to enabled attributes

Requires the products to be similar with regards to enabled attributes

Does not allow selecting multiple values Allows selecting multiple values

One type of “logic”, e.g. product type Several types of logic: “brand name”, “specification”, “sub-type” etc.

Search

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Search

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• Great search is built on a combination of great product data and a great search engine• The key is learning from customer searches:

• Use the data model and governance structure to ensure you have the data customers are using to search.

• Use unsuccessful search as a feedback loop to product management

• Remember that both catalogs and products are used for searches

Automation & AI

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Automation & AI

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• Automation and AI is the next frontier withincustomer experience

• Artificial intelligence is being used to power recommendations, chatbots, voice interfaces etc.

• Artificial intelligence requires data to structured, but can increasingly help to build that stucure

Agenda

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Support the customers buyingdecision

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Structure product governance to optimize conversion by focusing on what makes the customer able to say ”yes”:• Pictures or drawings?

• Technical attributes?• Reviews and endorsements?• Documents and other attachments?

Agenda

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Bridging two realities

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Customer perspective Internal perspective

VestasOnline

ShopVestas

VestasConne

ct

Utopus

Vestas.com

Channel D

Channel C

Channel E

Channel B

Channel A

Cons

iste

nt C

usto

mer

Exp

erie

nce

PIM

: Sin

gle

Sour

ce o

f Tru

th

60%Channels drive value

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of B2B executives say that their customers spend more overall when they touch multiple channels.

21% Increased spending from customers converting from single channel to omni-channel at Rexel

Consistency

• Determine which channels from a customer point of view is part of the ”one customer experience”

• Use PIM to create consistency across those channels

• Remember that customer journeys are not linear, and customer might already have visited a touchpoint with more or different data

Rank # Average CTR1 36,4 % 2 12,5 %3 9,5 %4 7,9 %5 6,1 %6 4,1 %7 3,8 %8 3,5 %9 3,0 %

10 2,2 %

What is #1 worth in Organic Search?

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Ranking factors

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on-page SEO

off-page SEO

positive signals

negative signals

Content

Mobile

Structure

Fresh

Speed

Click-through-rate

Link quality

Number of links

Site authority

Social shares

Social reputation

User signals (localisation)

TitlesThin content

Bad ads

Keyword stuffing

Hidden content

Cloaking

Paid links

Bounces

SpamPiracy

Unnatural links

Source: Moz/Searchmetrics/SEJ

From SEO to PIM requirement

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Requirement SEO logic PIM consequences

Content High quality, unique content attract traffic

Set minimum quality rules for content and stronger rules for important categories. Consider writing unique content / descriptions for key products.

Thin content Very little content gives a bad signal

Create minimum rules for content when publishing to SEO relevant channels.

Titles Titles of contents, images etc. Should match what people search for

Make sure product managers have access to relevant SEO information when creating product information

Click-Through-Rate Pages with low CTR get moved down

Set up product data content review for pages with low CTR

Linking product data

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1) Linking product data is about understanding where the customer journey starts and ends and using that to create a differentiating experience.

2) It’s not always a given that it’s technically the PIM that owns the data, but linking product data is a way to using product information management to create additional value.

Key takeaways

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1 PIM done right is about supporting the organizational capability to deliver great customer experience at scale

2 If you’re a product company, product data is probably a key ingredient in how all of your channels perform individually and together.

3 Know how you expect your customers to find your products, and use that when building product data models and governance.

4 It’s not necessarily about data completeness, it’s about understanding which data is necessary for supporting the buying decision and then investing in building that data.

5 Customers does not know your siloes or visit channels in any given order. Use strong product data governance to support seamless customer self-directed journeys.

6 When it’s important that you products attract organic traffic, align and set SEO strategy and product data governance together.

7 To truly create innovative services, think about what you can gain from linking product data to other data sources.