Customer Experience Meets Supply Chain
When it comes to supply chain mechanics, most of us understand its importance. In the least, you’ve heard about some specifics of supply chain from departments outside of your own since you’re dealing with item and product data. It’s now possible to bring the aspect of customer experience into the supply chain. With the extension of the Content Supply Chain it’s feasible make the processes around product data in your company visible and relevant. The Content Supply Chain: A concept that you need to be aware of, both as a retailer and as a manufacturer, in order to ultimately achieve a successful customer experience.
A company’s key to achieving a successful customer experience is done by everyone working together. Typically, the last “link” in the chain controls the activities to make customers happy. The last department is usually provided by the colleagues from sales or eBusiness or eCommerce. However, success cannot be achieved from here alone, but rather develops through research & development, purchasing and production, and logistics. Throughout the entire supply chain, a product ultimately reaches the customer that makes them happy.
A parallel to the game of soccer can be quickly drawn here. Attackers are the ones who are named everywhere when the team has won. They put the perfectly presented ball into the goal. What happened up to that point? Goalies or the defense have intercepted the ball at the very back or initiated the move. The midfield continued to follow up and put the ball in such a way that the attacking players were able to finish successfully. That was all? No! A team consists of more than the 11 players on the pitch. There are the reserves who back up the eleven and are there when they are needed. There are the physiotherapists and the medical staff, who (hopefully more) are used off the pitch and take care of the health. There are the bus drivers, who carefully drive the players to the training grounds and to the games. And many others who contribute to the success with services.
Using soccer as an example, the scenario is strikingly similar for the supply chain of an organization. The flows of goods to your customers (i.e. the success), are usually hidden in the background, but they are absolutely essential for the overall success of the company- which is ultimately triggered by sales and eCommerce. Information flows are even less visible if you are part of a manufacturing or trading company. Perhaps you are familiar with it firsthand: processes concerning article and product data are often not documented internally or are still accompanied and handled in a rudimentary way- despite the fact that product data is extremely relevant for your success in the ever-growing eCommerce business, as well as increasingly for your performance success with wholesalers.
Extended by the processes, systems and strategies of the item and product data, the content supply chain in your company forms the framework. The data origin in the company depends on the nature of your company itself. As a manufacturer, initial article data is already created during the research and development of your products, or is initially built up and continuously enriched in your product data management. In retail, you can benefit from the work already done by your manufacturers and collect the product data from them and enrich it again as desired. .
Data is rarely the same. From basic data to technical information to media data- they are all structured very differently. Therefore, as a manufacturer as well as a retailer, you must be able to manage and organize these different types of data in a structured way. As a result of doing this, your produced data is prepared for dispatch to customers, marketplaces and eProcurement portals in the proper format to be processed by the receiving company. If you as a company can ensure customer-specific data preparation, you achieve another important aspect of the successful customer experience.
What makes us nexomites?
nexoma GmbH are IT specialists for software development and consulting from the beautiful Sauerland. We love what we do!
nexomites from nexoma know their way around your content supply chain. In addition to consulting, we develop our own software solutions along the content supply chain. Our customers confirm the expert status of our software for the processes before and after their own central systems such as PIM and ERP.
Our team focuses on everything to do with product data. We offer customer-oriented applications and our own software products such as CatalogExpress and Supplier-Portal for product data exchange in eCommerce as well as in classic retail and distribution structures. Our partnerships with priint also complement our range of services.
Our knowledge base, which has expanded for more than a decade, is comprised of many different languages - for example, the dialects ETIM and ECLASS from the language of classification models and BMEcat from the language of exchange formats. We are happy to apply this knowledge along your content supply chain.
Your solution for feed management and data syndication challenges
CatalogExpress is the perfect tool for inter-company communication of your product data (e.g., between manufacturer and retailer or retailer and marketplace) along the content supply chain.
As a rule, your relevant article and product data are located in different systems or even files. Your product information is located in the PIM. Price information is managed by your ERP. "Very special" sales data is housed in EXCEL files. CatalogExpress performs the data syndication and combines your data from the different sources. With standard interfaces to Contentserv, Pimcore, VIAMEDICI and others, as well as standardized file imports for EXCEL, XML, etc., access to your data from various locations is easy and fast.
The challenge remains that customers, marketplaces and eProcurement portals demand different data structures and data formats for integration. Delivering the appropriately valid eCatalogs is a tremendous opportunity as a data provider to differentiate your company from the competition and provide a service that is a key part of the customer experience. CatalogExpress supports you with templates for marketplaces such as Amazon and guides you in building custom output formats such as EXCEL, XML, CSV and JSON. As a company from the technical sector, BMEcat templates are available in both versions, as well as the integration of classifications such as ETIM. In addition, it does not matter whether you prefer to send an electronic catalog such as BMEcat, ETIM, GS1/atrify, ECLASS or FAB DIS or if you need the connection to a print & publishing solution.
CatalogExpress collects your data from various source systems (such as PIM and ERP), checks it against schemas and then delivers product catalogs individually according to customer requirements and for each marketplace. The fast performance of catalog creation ensures that your data is always up to date, resulting in increased sales on marketplaces such as Amazon, mercateo, Conrad or in your own storefront with our Shopware 6 Connector. Better data means an increase in your visibility in eCommerce. From this point forward, you no longer must maintain data manually for each individual channel.
For the next step in your customer experience, integrate CatalogExpress headless with your existing customer systems.
Finally structured supplier data
Supplier-Portal is our supplier portal that handles data onboarding for you. The automated requesting and checking of relevant data ensures consistent data quality and transparent product data management right from the start of the content supply chain.
A supplier portal has the function that only the checked and structured data of the suppliers are stored in your central systems (PIM, ERP, etc.). The data that does not meet your quality guidelines as a data recipient remains in the portal and is reported back to your suppliers.
Optimally tailored to the requirements of trade and industry, this solution guarantees you efficient, data-based supplier management. The time-consuming back-and-forth communication to your suppliers that data has not yet been delivered, that data is incorrect, or that data needs to be updated is eliminated. You support your supplier with automated and digitally provided templates as well as detailed audit results and industry-proven data processes.
Your supplier can manage himself independently in the Supplier Portal as a self-service portal and provide you as a dealer with data in various formats such as EXCEL, TXT, PDF, CSV, XML, BMEcat. Classifications and standards such as ETIM, ECLASS, Datanorm, GS1, FAB DIS, etc., can also be taken into account.
Supplier Portal is flexibly configurable and designed for standardized and automated processes. Therefore, you can start with the first suppliers after only 2 weeks.
The perfect interaction - do you have your content supply chain in view?
Where do you get your data from? Which systems do you use to support the processes? Where is your product data management located?
With the Supplier Portal for upstream processes (data onboarding, supplier data management) and CatalogExpress for downstream processes (data syndication, feed management), nexoma's nexomites support you both as a manufacturer in B2B processes and as a retailer. Due to our long-standing know-how in the implementation of Pimcore and as an integration partner of priint, we complement our product portfolio with further professional solutions.
Would you like to learn more about your personal content supply chain? Contact us directly or talk to your contact person at priint to learn more. .