Simplify E-commerce: Manage Products, Data & Promotions

What is Simple Retailpath?

Retailpath is a retail marketing solution with three tightly integrated modules:

• Retail Marketing PIM – A central repository that stores, organises and manages all your product information, including images and video, and integrates to your website, e-commerce and marketplaces.
• Retail Promotion Management – A module that helps build and approve content for all of your retail promotional activity – eDMs, catalogues, website promotions and marketplace events.
• Vendor Onboarding – An automated solution that sources product information from your supply chain with built-in quality assurance and enrichment workflows.

 

Who uses Simple Retailpath?

Product experiences and marketing promotions is created by the teamwork of several departments.

• Marketing Teams:
  Set up Promotions such as eDMs and catalogues. They select the appropriate template and invite the merchandise teams/buyers to add their products to the eDM and/or relevant catalogue pages. After merchandise teams have added products to a promotion, marketing reviews the product submissions and submits it to production for design refinement and final approval
• Merchandise Teams /Buyers:
  Their primary functions are to manage the products in their categories and to add products to promotions. Once products are added to a promotion, they can simply drag and drop them on to a template product spot. The merchandise teams use the Quickview Feature to view the promotion before it is briefed to the Studio with an online Mud Map.
• Production (External Agency / Internal Studio):
  Designers use the visual Studio Ready file that contains all of the promotional products with copy, images and pricing as the brief. The visual brief with content saves time as it removes the need to collate content and the visual nature expresses placement. This drives efficiency as it minimises touch points, revisions and multiple approvals.
• Digital / Web Teams:
  Extended web copy and images are maintained in the PIM and flow through to websites as new products are created and existing products are edited.
• Vendors:
  Vendors are invited to enrich their products uploading images, videos and detailed product information, attributes and specifications. Images pass through quality assurance to ensure that they meet the minimum specifications. This transfer of data can be manual or through an API aided integration.

 

Which are some of the challenges that Simple Retailpath solves?

E-commerce has become very fast paced and there is pressure to get products to market in very short time frames. The customer journey is more sophisticated and the online product buying experience needs to be compelling. This creates several challenges for merchandising, marketing and promotion teams.

• Rich Product Information:
  The more information provided about a product, the more informed the buying decision. The information has to be accurate, onbrand at multiple touchpoints and customised for different e-commerce marketplaces That’s why a powerful, sophisticated PIM is the first step in preparing products for e-commerce. A product library with high quality visuals – images and videos, clearly written product description, accurate product attributes allows merchandise, marketing and promotion teams to churn out great product experiences very swiftly and keep the inventory moving.
• Aligning information for Different Product Types:
  No two products are alike. Some products share common information while others have unique attributes. Retailpath allows for information to be created appropriately for different categories of products. Shared information – such as sizing information and colours for apparel, can be applied for a whole range of products easily, saving time and driving efficiency. Similarly information such as warranty, returns policy can be applied more selectively, while shipping details may be more universally applied.
• Consistent, Accurate Details:
  With products in so many channels and events/promotions by multiple teams, it’s important to ensure that only approved, updated and accurate product information is pushed. That needs a powerful PIM that synchronises data across channels. A single source of truth that does not involve error-prone manual data entry ensures accuracy of information. All teams source the same information from a central source, slicing and dicing it to their needs.
• Robust Approvals Process:
  With so much collaboration around promotion material, it’s important to have the right signoffs, and this can create a huge bottleneck, blowing out timelines and impacting competitiveness. Retailpath’s templated approval pathways ensure that every box is ticked and all parties sign-off on the final versions. This process is built for speed with online proofing and mark up tools, collated feedback and change logs.
• Marketplace Customisation:
  Selling through multiple marketplaces is the norm and products need to be presented in formats consistent with the platform. Retailpath allows for products information to be customised with functionalities like Cropping, Swatch creation, changing viewing sequence of product images. Mandatory information fields can be provided to enable customers to compare products.
• High Visibility, Single Solution
  Several vendors, large volume of products and retail marketing projects in the pipeline can be difficult to manage and control. Retailpath, with its powerful PIM, comprehensive promotion and vendor management modules, allows managers to have high visibility of the entire process with a single solution. Problems and bottlenecks can be sighted early and rectified quickly. Resources can be planned with data driven decisions and customised reporting helps keep an eye on important metrics.

 

What are the benefits of using Simple Retailpath?

A powerful PIM loaded with rich product information is an invaluable starting point for efficient e-commerce operations, creating experiential customer journeys and keeping inventory moving.

• Accurate product information, synched across retail channels
  Reduce errors by relying on a single source of truth (master database). Eliminate manual data input and updating. Ensure that regardless of the touchpoint, all your product information is consistent and on brand, ensuring a great product experience for customers
• Integrated data in multiple formats
  Speed up time to market with backward integration with vendor ERP to import product data. By validating the quality at upload, ensure that the information meets your quality standards. Push the approved product information swiftly into multiple marketplaces, merchants and POS for an unbeatable competitive edge.
• Simplified marketing promotions
  With a single, rich product database it’s easy for promotion teams to create marketing collateral such as eDMs, catalogues, flyers and brochures swiftly, on brand and compliant, further enhancing the customer journey and increasing sales.
• Decluttered operations
  Using a single online solution for product information, promotions and vendor managements eliminates the clutter of spreadsheets and multiple databases, creates a single, manageable process from vendor to marketplace.