Product information management

1. Product Information Management Why Retail, CPG Distribution companies need PIM

2. Goals of Today’s Session Gain a common understanding of PIM and its value to your organization Understand why managing product information is critical to your Ecommerce / ERP initiative (upgrade or rip & replace) How can Riversand’s MDM Center solution help ensure your digital imperatives meets / exceeds it stated business benefits of effectively engaging with their customers and thereby growing revenue

3. Lets start off with a video about PIM • A Product Information Management (PIM) solution can integrate the data from all channels, far beyond what a traditional ecommerce or ERP system can handle. • PIM brings together complex data sources, including information from vendor feeds, consultants, copywriters, data pools, content aggregators, marketplaces, photographers and agencies. • Forrester points out 5 areas where PIM can directly benefit retailers: • Increased sales • Increased productivity • Cost reductions • Improved customer and channel partner service and satisfaction • Process and SKU on-boarding time improvement http://www.riversand.com/integrating-omnichannel-data-with-pim

4. We’re in the “Age of the Customer” By the end of 2014 1 US cross-channel retail sales will be at $1.4 Trillion US Online sales will be another $294 Billion Web impacted retail (online and cross channel sales) will constitute 52% of the entire retail pie • By 2018 1 • US cross channel retail sales will approach $1.8 Trillion • US Online sales will be another $414 Billion • Web impacted retail is expected to constitute 59% of the entire retail pie. In the “age of the customer” corporations will need to focus on the following four pillars 2to engage with their customer and maximize their revenue potential • Experience Management (B2C & B2B) • Product Information Management (PIM) • Commerce Management • Order management In 2014-15 – What were you focused on? What should the focus be during 2016 and beyond? References 1. Forrester Research US Cross-Channel Retail Sales Forecast_2014 To 2018 , 2. Forrester Research- Commerce Technology Investment And Platform Trends — 2014, 3. WebCollage – Impact of enhanced content on online sales

5. Here’s how your customer engages with you online today Telltale signs you need a PIM Shallow web categories and Navigational criteria reduces page hits and shunts overall search capability to pull right results – reducing overall traffic, conversion rates and increasing abandoned cart rates Showing SKU level product at a major category landing page reduces – overall traffic, abandoned cart rates and conversion rates and increases customer fatigue 1 My Ecom site 2 Sparse product details, identifiers, no color swatches, high quality media for the same style and static cross sell recommendations based on browsing history – reduces average cart size and value, conversion rates and increases abandoned cart rates and overall customer repeat business. 3 Relatively shallow customer facing classification for a major category like Shoes 1 Two colors of same shoe taking up valuable category level landing page real estate 2 Telltale signs you need an ecommerce overhaul 1. 2. 3. Reviews and Ratings Better recommendation Better Search, Enhanced Web classification and Navigational Criteria based browsing Product Data Page features Mobile engagement & Performance No color swatches for multiple colors of the same style sandal. Product description is sparse and not geared towards SEO (both Internal to you website as well as external ones like Google, Bing, etc) 4. 5. 3

6. Here is how one large North American Fashion Retailer is engaging their customers in the Shoes Category ACME Retail Riversand’s MDM Center powers (among a whole host of other PIM capabilities) Multi level Web classification and Navigational Criteria 1 Sophisticated Style to SKU groupings that handles category specific variation like (in the case of Womes>Shoes>Sandals  Brand, Colors, Sizes, Width Product data relationships that feeds into their recommendation engine which now has the most signals (including, static, behavioral from their ecomm engine and cross-sell / upsell relationships from PIM) Syndication from and to data pools like GXS, 1WS GDSN, etc and to their ecommerce engine on a near real time basis across all banners and markets 2 3 4

7. To understand the risk of not doing PIM along with Ecomm or ERP – take a look at Target Canada Must Read the following article  http://www.canadianbusiness.com/the-last-days-of-target-canada/ The investigating team went to Fisher and John Morioka, the senior vice-president of merchandising, with a drastic proposal: Shut down the entire merchandising division so everyone could comb through and verify every single piece of data in the system—manually. The team stressed there was simply no other way to get it done. Hiring an external consultant would take too long, and it was impossible to expect the employees to do such a painstaking, arduous task and their regular jobs at the same time. Fisher immediately gave the green light. Major issues include • Empty store shelves • Incorrect weights and dimensions Thus, “data week” was held in the fall of 2012. Merchandisers essentially had to confirm every data point for every product with their vendors. A buyer might have 1,500 products and 50 to 80 fields to check for each one. The more experienced employees had the foresight to keep records of verified information (dubbed “sources of truth”),which made the task a little easier. Others weren’t so lucky. Complicating matters was the dummy information entered into the system when SAP was set up. That dummy data was still there, confusing the system, and it had to be expunged. “We actually sat there and went through every line of data manually,” says a former employee. “It was terrible.” Target anticipated how awful it would be and designed the week to help keep employees sane. To kick it off and rally spirits, a few employees performed a hip-hop song-and-dance routine on the first day. Ice cream and pizza flooded in to keep employees fuelled up, some of whom stayed well past midnight that week, squinting at screens through bleary eyes. • Inability to locate product across supply chain • Store Shelf labeling Followed by • A whole host of ecommerce issues But data week was successful on a number of fronts. It weeded out the worst of the errors and forced Target Canada to realize the importance of accurate data. It was also a bonding experience—as terrible as it was. “The company came together that week,” says a former employee. “We were all in the trenches doing this unglamorous work.”

8. Why do you need Enhanced Product Information Management Capabilities in addition to Ecommerce overhaul ? • Enhanced product information positively impacted online sales by an average of 6-36% depending on product categories 3 • The above numbers don’t account for web influenced sales which would indicate that each dollar spent online, five to nine dollars are spent offline1 & 2 • Delivering a seamless shopping experience across Follett’s channels and customer touch-points and integrated product data management and analysis capability will be crucial 2 & 4 Online Shopping Activity Impact of Enhanced Content • Here is how enhanced product information impacted the various stages in the purchase cycle for one Fortune 250 cross channel retailer 3 Orders (sales) +9.3% Add to cart +7.4% Add to registry +10.26% Add to wish list +17.26% References 1. Forrester Research US Cross-Channel Retail Sales Forecast_2014 To 2018 2. Forrester Research- Commerce Technology Investment And Platform Trends — 2014 3. WebCollage – Impact of enhanced content on online sales 4. PWC – Multichannel shopping survey – Fig 6, page 11

9. Where and who would PIM be applicable to across your supply chain?

10. Common myths about PIM PIM is Shareable, accurate and slowly changing information that describe products across your enterprise About managing relationships between products and merchandise hierarchies and classifications Benefits PIM isn’t Tactical, quickly changing or transactional data about products that are only relevant to a particular operation About managing point in time marketing promotions or markdowns What PIM does What PIM doesn’t do Increased Sales Shorten product introduction time Improved Customer Service Consistent shareable product data across stores, online and mobile Single Source – create once and share everywhere Easily identify and classify products across multiple channels Promotions and Markdowns Manage and store inventory levels across supply chain Details about where a particular order is • • • • • Top line • • • • Improved vendor collaboration Increased productivity Cost reductions Maximize content via Vendors who make and supply product Manage by exception only what is needed to enhance customer experience and drive sales Automate and streamline the product onboarding process Ensure lowest cost offered by Vendor / Supplier Streamline the operational processes like forecasting, allocations, planning, WMS, etc Optimize the pricing for a given product • • • Bottom line • • • • • •

11. What Challenges could PIM Address for you? TO FROM Brick and Mortar Channel Scale and Readiness – Current merchandising business process are silo-ed for stores, web and mobile sites Multi-Channel Scale and Readiness – True multi-channel business process that can support the product data needs across all Channels you sell through Speed to Market – Integrated and centralized Item induction and maintenance processes across multiple (Follett and vendors) business groups and system touch points Slow & Fragmented Product Introduction / Maintenance – Inefficient processes across multiple business groups and system touch points Item Level Merchandising – Business functions can leverage Item level vs. SKU level entities to better merchandise and support multi-channel needs SKU Level Merchandising – Merchandising functions at which you manage products at a SKU /UPC level incurring significant operational inefficiencies Vendor Collaboration Effectiveness: Multiple touch points (ECOMM, FTP, emails, manual) with vendors for data requests, inefficient data usage across biz functions Manage Vendor Performance: Consolidate vendor touch points via a vendor portal, measure, score and motivate vendors towards accuracy and timeliness of product induction and maintenance SLAs Merchandise Context Aware Attribution: Product attribution is tailored to merchandise category specific context, support multi channel descriptors to support product navigation and alternate hierarchies and classifications that require IT support by exception Merchandise Effectiveness: Product attribution is in adequate , lacks merchandise category specific context, unable to support context specific attribution and requires intensive IT support and coordination to execute.

12. Product Information Management (PIM) Overview Product induction and maintenance related aspects that typically involve merchandisers, buyers and operations. Product setup, approvals, maintenance, syndication across all merchandise categories and lines of business. Product Induction and Maintenance (PI / PM) Organization roles, structures, processes and tools needed to govern product as data asset Data Vendor partners collaborate with and provide or receive product information to/from Follett stewardship and Governance (DSG) Vendor Collaboration (VC) Merchandise hierarchies, classifications and other grouping and navigational structures that are products need to be classified under or are part of Correlating media assets to describe product – typically for web enrichment and multi-channel commerce Hierarchies and Taxonomies (TAX) Media Ingestion and Correlation (MIC)

13. Managing the Product Information Supply Chain

14. Riversand’s MDM Center is a true multi domain master data management solution ready for your future needs as well

15. Summary • PIM helps customers like you drive efficiencies in your business and grow revenues • PIM is crucial to any Ecommerce / ERP initiatives – especially to ensure predictable and sustainable engagement of your customer • Talk to us to help you not only ensure success on these strategic imperatives but lift customer engagement, bring predictability and drive efficiency at your enterprise.

16. Thank you