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TURBOCHARGING PROFITS VIA PRODUCT DATA
Making sure that product data is up to date, organised and relevant is a must for maximising a merchant’s online sales So why do so many in the industry still struggle to get to grips with it, asks eCommonSense founder Andy Scothern.
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ttempting to get your product data in shape can feel a bit like painting the Forth Bridge. Not only can it be hugely time-consuming, but it can also appear to be a thankless and endless task and doing it on your own is about as daunting as it gets. Then as soon as you get to what looks like the end, you have to start all over again.
It is no wonder that so many merchants and the industry, in general, has at various points, thrown in the towel. They have no made a serious commitment due to the expense and time involved trying to get hold of the data and then organise it in a consistent and usable format.
But the fact is that without reliable and up-to-date data, you will be missing out on sales and allowing operational inefficiencies to dwell in your business, such as rework, miss- picks and human effort where none should be required. This is especially true online, where customers will only have the information that is on screen. If they can access the right product data, it will also reduce the chance of choosing the wrong product, which will result in returns and possible complaints.
So what do we mean by product data? Everything that a merchant sells will have attributes that describe it, whether it is the colour, size, specification, compatibility, price or description. Without this data, there is no way of distinguishing it from another similar product.
Products are arranged into categories or families depending on these attributes, which then allows them to be catalogued and found more easily. In days before the Internet, data could be found by reading the box or container or by merely looking at and handling the product. Now that product research and spend is increasingly being done online, all of this data needs to be digitised.
So how do you get hold of the data? The simple answer is direct from the manufacturers and suppliers. The reality though is that some are better than others in supplying this information. If it does arrive, it is often in different formats (PDF, Word, Excel or others),
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incomplete and will need rekeying into your systems. Double keying is time-consuming, costly and prone to errors.
For every builders’ merchants to take on this task individually is inefficient and costly, which is why the project has not got off the ground in a meaningful way to date - it would also be a fool’s errand as many merchants sell the same core products.
Thankfully there is a more straightforward and more cost-effective way to get the data that you need. That is to use specialist software to harvest and organise the product data - much of the information is already out there on the Internet, it is merely a question of finding it. This software is something that we have spent years developing and refining at eCommonSense. We have now collected the data for more than 250,000 products, and the number keeps growing daily.
Once you have the precious data, you need to store it in a place where it can be easily updated, accessed and published. The software is called a Product Information Management system, or PIM for short.
With a PIM system, you can set up access permissions for different users depending on suitability. You can then see what each person has done because there is a full audit trail. This creates a sense of ownership and responsibility and allows for individuals to be responsible for different categories.
It’s often said that data is king and those that have access to it will be the ones that survive in the digitising economy. Any online solution that does not include data at its core will be inferior to ones that do. Just have a look at the emerging online competitors such as Amazon and Screwfix. Their sites are rich with data, and at their hearts, they are data businesses.
We believe so strongly in data that we developed a PIM system that connects suppliers directly to merchants, in a similar manner as Linked in connects employers, jobs and job seekers in one platform, where everybody can see who and what is there. Many suppliers consider this as the only way forward, as they don’t want to have to supply the same data
hundreds of times to individual merchants, effectively keeping ‘painting the bridge’. They would prefer to provide it once in a way that many can access.
Effective product data management also benefits many other areas of your business. It can be used if for all sorts of publications: print brochures, price list, adverts, posters and other marketing assets can all be created in a fraction of the time previously required.
From an operational perspective, high-quality data can be published onto invoices, picking notes and trading systems. It will also allow staff working on the counter to identify and describe the right products consistently and reliably.
So, if you are still not convinced about the power of data, it is worth listening to the inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners- Lee, who said: “Data is a precious thing and will last longer than the systems themselves.” The evidence is there for everyone to see. In 2019 we won the best website and digital initiative in the Builders’ Merchant Awards with the Inter-Line website. On the surface, it is an excellent website, but it is only useful because it is underpinned with high-quality data and a PIM system to manage it.
To draw an analogy on the importance of data, if the website is the house, then the PIM system provides the foundations upon which it should be built.
Building a house in any other way than first laying the proper foundations will mean it will need to be rebuilt in the future. BMJ
www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net April 2020
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