The supply chain operates on a manual, spreadsheet-based system. This type of system is insufficient for exchanging information at the pace and scale of modern commerce because it is outdated, time-consuming, and prone to human error.
There are extreme shortages and delays within the supply chain. These situations increase consumer frustration and anxiety, which can hurt businesses by decreasing sales and damaging customer loyalty.
The supply chain lacks efficient tracking systems. When a problem arises at one point of the supply chain, a centralized tracking system to locate the point of origin and alert other nodes of the supply chain network is lacking. For example, if there is an outbreak of E. coli linked to romaine lettuce, it can take up to 6-8 weeks for the source of contamination to be identified and 10-14 weeks before the product is recalled. This exacerbates the spread of illness, upsets customers, and hurts the producer’s brand image.
Digitization replaces costly, labor-intensive work with automation. Greater trust in machine-driven computation can augment human intelligence and help build company resiliency. With less money, time, and effort, automation can contribute to better systematic flow, increased productivity, streamlined communication, more cost-efficient use of materials, and shorter workweeks.
There is much to gain from supply chain digitization:
Digitization builds visibility in the supply chain. Due to the interconnected nature of the supply chain, problems at one link of the chain will inevitably affect other links. Supply chain visibility enables operations at each point of the supply chain to identify and alleviate problems at the source. Digitization provides an accurate tracking system to locate each shipment of individual products with lightning speed. This yields better customer service and increased regulation of products within an organization.
Digitization enables rapid access to information about an organization’s supply chain, empowering businesses to utilize data to improve performance. Online and remote tracking of information eliminates the need to shuffle through endless spreadsheets because all the data you need is digitized and instantly accessible at your fingertips. When data is organized, tracked, and analyzed to identify operational deficiencies, businesses can assess and optimize productivity levels at each stage of the supply chain.
Digitization strengthens communication between producers and consumers, increasing brand loyalty and trust. The future of the supply chain is digital, and this will play out in various innovative ways in global retail. Businesses will establish stronger, more direct relationships with consumers. For example, if someone purchased a contaminated product, they could receive a real-time alert about the hazard if a company uses technology that optimizes supply chain tracking and transparency.
The pandemic has exposed the weaknesses of manual processes governing supply chains. This triggered growing urgency among organizations to build more intelligent supply chains to remain resilient and competitive. Interested in future-proofing your business by automating data transfer within your retail supply chain? Contact us to learn how Venzee can accelerate digital transformation at your company.
References
Ahluwalia, H. (2021, June 11). Why supply chain spreadsheets can cause major supply chain issues. The Owl. Retrieved February 28, 2022, from https://www.theowlsolutions.com/post/why-supply-chain-spreadsheets-can-cause-major-supply-chain-issues.
Breteau, S. (2021, September 1). Council post: Digitizing for end-to-end supply chain visibility. Forbes. Retrieved February 28, 2022, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2021/09/01/digitizing-for-end-to-end-supply-chain-visibility/?sh=6ecc6eb57c30.
]]>Here are a few things to consider:
Manual data entry is no fun. It's inefficient, too. With Venzee, you can stop wasting admin hours on data entry and use the time to optimize your business instead.
Two ways to grow your eCommerce revenue are to 1.) offer more SKUs or 2.) sell on more channels. Either option means more data and more time on spreadsheets. Venzee lets you do both with minimal impact on your time.
More SKUs mean more manual data entry, which leads to more errors. The manual process doesn’t provide any way to fully validate your product information, which means you’re spending more time on submissions. Venzee validates submissions and identifies errors right away.
Stop playing ping pong with your buyer. You won't have to redo submissions when you submit complete, accurate product data the first time. Venzee gives you more control over how quickly you get your products online.
Every week your products aren’t online costs you money. Think of it this way: if your annual revenue for a product is $50K, you lose $1,000 for every week that the product isn’t online. Venzee gets products to retailers faster, so they can get them online and in front of customers more quickly.
Amazon, Walmart, Home Depot, Wayfair, Costco, Overstock, Shopify, and many more! We offer a growing list of 500+ retail channels. Check out our retail connections and get started today.
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The Venzee platform automates product data transfer to hundreds of global retailers, providing a simple syndication solution that increases speed to market and guarantees accuracy of product data across all selling channels.
Automatically upload product data to all of your selling channels. No more manual product submissions. Venzee automates product content organization, transformation and delivery to your selling channels.
Accelerate time to site with automation. Artificial intelligence completes error checking and validation for you, getting your products live to site 90% faster. No more back & forth communication with retailers and distributors.
Level up with intelligent content control. Simulate digital marketplace environments to show exactly how content will look when it goes live. Receive automatic updates when errors occur or retailer requirements change so product content is always consistent and up-to-date.
Contact us to learn how Venzee can help modernize & scale your business.
Manufacturers, distributors and retailers today rely on linear supply chains to get product content from origin to consumer. Unfortunately, these supply chains aren’t built to handle exponentially increasing industry demand. Despite significant investment in technology solutions, retailers still rely on too many manual processes to handle product data. Fragmented content handling processes add friction to the flow of products from manufacturers all the way to consumers, incurring additional costs, preventing growth and affecting the bottom line for the entire supply chain.
In order to evolve to meet the demands of retail today, manufacturers, distributors and retailers need intelligent connectivity. API-connected supply networks replace manual input with technology, eliminating friction by streamlining the flow of product information from brands to retailers.
API-connected networks are an eventuality. Here are 7 reasons why modern retail needs intelligent digital connectivity.
The entire retail industry is in a transitional period where dated systems, manual processes, and teams of humans are being replaced with technology. At the same time, competition in retail continues, and too many retailers are seeing the ill effects of not evolving quickly enough. Retail is dealing with a number of challenges, including narrowing margins, increasing consumer expectations (often set by technology-forward leaders in the retail space like Amazon and Walmart), shifts in consumer purchasing from physical to online, and changes to order fulfillment, logistics, and customer service.
Retailers face growing pressure to invest in digital business transformation solutions. They are increasing spend on technology solutions that prioritize analytics, digital marketing, mobile applications, ecommerce platforms and artificial intelligence (AI). Organizations recognize that these technologies are crucial to success, and we’re seeing the industry as a whole make its push toward digital maturity.
Replacing legacy retail processes with automated, digital solutions will grow network connectivity and minimize loss or slowdowns due to gaps or delays in service. Connectivity supports efficient change management for even the biggest of enterprises.
Returns due to inaccurate or incomplete product information cost online retailers billions of dollars annually. These costs include return shipping, vendor chargebacks, and the loss of future sales. Mistakes are largely the result of human error and are driven by the lack of scalable, efficient content delivery technology.
The quantity of data that flows through the retail supply chain is enormous. To manage this non-stop flow of information, brands, manufacturers, and retailers use a number of different technology partners whose systems are not interoperable. This means that staff often have to manually alter spreadsheets to a format partner technology can process. Venzee replaces this fragmented, spreadsheet-driven process with automation that processes information faster than humanly possible to the real-time requirements of retailers - eliminating the potential for human error.
Better-connected networks reduce manual processes, minimizing opportunities for error. Consistent, accurate, and complete product data passes from system to system, reducing loss due to return shipping, vendor chargebacks, or the loss of future sales due to poor customer experience.
The majority of retail suffers from long onboarding cycles for new products. It’s not uncommon for a big box retailer to take anywhere from a month to several weeks to onboard new product lines. The slow onboarding issue becomes more obvious (and expensive) during the holiday season. To prepare for the holiday rush, large retailers like Walmart may need to onboard 5-10 million new products onto their marketplace. To manage the increased throughput, retailers increase the size of their content teams and hire data entry clerks to manually update product data, but manual labor costs a lot, and it isn’t a solution that effectively scales to meet demand.
Better-connected supply networks would reduce the speed to market dramatically. In an API-connected supply chain, retailers wouldn’t have to relegate product onboarding to peak seasons. Product availability wouldn’t be limited by labor constraints, it would be a retailer’s strategic choice.
Retail still runs on spreadsheets - and that’s bad. With spreadsheets serving as the backbone of content distribution, product information originates from manufacturers and is enriched (and sometimes stripped, depending on the receiving system’s constraints) as it’s passed along a linear supply chain where it’s moved from spreadsheet to spreadsheet. Even the most sophisticated spreadsheets rely on humans to input content. With such fragmented processes, it’s no wonder that retailers struggle to get complete, accurate product information.
Connectivity replaces spreadsheets with machine-to-machine connections that collect, transform, validate, and distribute product data automatically. Connectivity facilitates faster updates that are unhindered by human input.
As consumers drive the market, companies must consider how to better collect, manage, and analyze the data from consumer engagements. In most supply chains, this data is relegated to silos by organization, and often further siloed within organizations by department or function. The lack of connectivity makes it impossible to analyze data effectively, let alone action any learnings from the data that would improve brand experiences across systems and touchpoints.
Connectivity empowers brands, manufacturers, suppliers, and retailers to share data across organizations seamlessly, enabling them to respond to learnings with urgency with unified strategies to improve brand experiences across the entire customer journey and impact business results in a measurable way.
Rolling out changes in retail supply chains that are made up of numerous external relationships takes too long. With the volume of data increasing as well as the number of parties involved (both internal and external), the challenge becomes even more complex. A key limiting factor in retail response time is the speed with which organizations can distribute product data.
And when unforeseen external factors come into play, brands and retailers must deal with the fallout, often to the tune of millions. For example, In October 2018, the US Postal Service announced an increase in rates to send packages. Credit Suisse analyst, Stephen Ju, reported this hike could cost Amazon between $400M & $1.1B, which doesn’t include the cost of system-wide price and third-party site changes (CNBC). How will Amazon scale these changes?
Competing and succeeding in retail requires agility. Brands and retailers must be positioned to respond actively to consumer data and analytics.
Connectivity enables rapid delivery of information and feedback across supply networks, and intelligent content distribution supports the growing range of product information standards and facilitates compliance with numerous regulatory standards and content quality and completeness requirements set by retailers.
Retail’s data needs are growing, and reliance on manual processes prevents retailers from growing to meet consumer demand. Here are a few obvious areas where scale comes into play:
In each of the above examples, retail requires streamlined processes to manage product data. Without connectivity, retail can’t grow. Venzee offers connectivity that positions brands, manufacturers, suppliers, retailers, and technology partners to manage growth in all of these areas.
Connectivity facilitates scale. Period. Replacing manual steps with connectivity removes any limits on the speed of data exchange between trading partners. Once speed is no longer an issue, enterprises can evolve to become more adept at managing data and responding to the market.
Venzee facilitates the seamless connectivity that modern retail requires. Our intelligent content distribution platform is the easiest way for content management systems to connect to thousands of retailer channels.
With Venzee’s AI platform for product data, organizations can benefit from the following:
Serving as the infrastructure for the seamless exchange of product information, Venzee securely connects the data management technology of retailers, brands, and distributors, and their enterprise software partners via a single API. Read more about how our intelligent distribution platform can help you transform and delivers product information for limitless SKUs to unlimited retail destinations at venzee.com.
]]>Suppliers and retailers struggle with the last mile of product content delivery (i.e., the stage of getting enriched, complete, accurate product information to retailers and in front of customers). In a time when speed matters more than ever, accelerating speed to market will be a key differentiator for space leaders.
Organizations can improve last-mile delivery with automated solutions that build more efficient data-driven supply chains. Companies risk falling short in the competitive online retail space if they fail to implement modern solutions that accelerate product content delivery.
Here are three reasons a faster last-mile matters more than ever in e-commerce.
Online purchasing is increasing across the globe, and retailers continue to pursue a moving target to meet consumer demand.
High-level expectations include the following:
Many online shoppers say speed is a large factor when choosing to purchase online over brick-and-mortar. Convenience and ease of use are additional perks that drive online purchases. Retailers cannot rapidly grow online sales if they fail to simplify and optimize the customer experience.
Omnichannel commerce continues to be a concern for retailers that have both physical and digital storefronts. These retailers struggle with delivering real-time data to customers, unifying in-store and online shopping experiences, and leveraging online product listings and the physical store experience to be more attractive to customers (e.g., online ordering with in-store pickup, in-store shopping with online ordering, or searchable product listings that guide customers to particular products and precisely where to find them in-store).
In retail, the concept survival of the fittest rings truer by the day. Many organizations are trying to adapt to the evolving retail landscape with intermediate technologies that are cumbersome, expensive, and difficult to implement. These solutions are not future-proof. Brands and retailers can better compete if they invest in intelligent technologies that modernize and streamline processes and tech stacks.
Consumer expectations for shopping experiences are mainly driven by retail behemoths like Amazon and Walmart. Platforms like Amazon, which are predominantly, if not exclusively, online are digital at their core and therefore positioned to be more responsive to improving digital experiences for customers. Such businesses are able to do more with less when compared to those that are brick-and-mortar first.
As margins continue to shrink across the board, proactively addressing inefficiencies, cutting costs, and maximizing revenue opportunities are absolute necessities for all retailers. For retailers with both physical and digital storefronts, aligning the physical and digital experiences for customers while also getting faster and more efficient at all other operations is a challenge online-only retailers don’t need to worry as much about.
For online stores, improving speed to market is key to maximizing uptime for products and keeping product information up-to-date and accurate. This gives customers what they are looking for and, in turn, positively affects customer retention. Overall, the retailers and brands that are faster to market with products will have a competitive advantage over those that aren’t.
Speed to market is crucial to success for brands and retailers, as it directly impacts revenue. Slow speed to market delays revenue. Slowdowns are typically caused by inefficient content handling processes on the side of the retailer or the brand (or even a content service provider that sits between the two). Products don’t go live until product content is ready to be seen by consumers, and every minute product information isn’t in front of customers is a minute the product isn’t being purchased.
With current content management processes, a bottleneck occurs when product information is passed between organizations. Before products can be pushed live to site, product data must be prepared or adapted to suit the end platform. Regardless of who is bearing the burden of adapting product content, manual processes and disjointed systems on the brand or the retailer side mean that it takes more time to get products live than it would if the process of product transformation and distribution was automated – preventing faster speeds to market for brands and retailers alike.
The submission process for brands to sell products to retailers is complex. Accurate communication and delivery of product data is already a time-consuming process for brands and suppliers, who face additional challenges as they expand their catalog and retail partners.
Every retailer has unique product data categories and subcategories, and brands must make sure they submit product data in accordance with those categories. Keep in mind that this process doesn’t consider country-specific sites and other languages. When a brand updates product information or adds new products (which we can assume is a minimum of twice a year and anticipate that the frequency of product information updates made by brands will increase as online retail grows), it must again adapt information according to current retailer formats and product data requirements.
Understandably, this process takes a long time, especially when you consider the approvals and other manual steps that happen on the retailer’s side once product information is received by their system and content team.
Accelerated speed to market is important for scaling revenue and gaining a competitive advantage in the retail space. Too many organizations hinder their growth because they use inefficient processes for preparing and distributing product information to retailers so it can be viewed by customers sooner. Organizations can save significant time and effort by automating these processes.
Fortunately, technology exists today that displaces inefficient product content distribution methods with intelligent, machine-driven solutions that increase revenues, drive sales, and improve speed to market.
Venzee solves the product content bottleneck with its artificial intelligence platform for product data. Venzee specializes in automating the transformation, validation, and delivery of product content for new products. In addition, Venzee conducts product updates faster and more reliably than the manual, standard methods of emails, spreadsheets, and retailer portals.
Venzee sits between brands and all of their retail channels, offering digital connections that unlock intelligent product data syndication to any global retailer via its Mesh Connector™ product.
Regardless of where your organization sits on the digital supply chain, Venzee can guide you to content efficiency. Speak to us about how you can exchange product data faster and more efficiently at venzee.com.]]>“Working with Venzee, we now spend 1/10th the amount of time on syndication than we did before.”
-Adam Ryan, DecoTeak Analyst
DecoTeak offers one of the largest lines of teak shower benches in the industry. Regardless of style and taste, customers are sure to find a teak shower bench that fits perfectly with their bathroom decor.
DecoTeak sells on a wide range of retail sites, including Amazon, HomeRoots, NewEgg, Wayfair, and Bed Bath & Beyond. With such a unique product and design, it is important for DecoTeak to communicate all their product attributes to consumers through their different selling channels.
With Venzee, DecoTeak improved their brand image by providing more consistent product data across all retail channels - while eliminating wasted time manually plugging data into spreadsheets.
DecoTeak’s team was responsible for the tedious yet essential process of manually organizing and distributing their product data to their retail channels. This, however, meant that the company lacked the time to focus on business development and marketing.
When information is manually loaded onto a channel, there is greater chance of human error - information can be easily overlooked or submitted incorrectly. Manual product data distribution does not guarantee that consumers receive accurate, updated information when they make a purchase.
“Prior to Venzee, not only was our team overworked, but we were also dealing with fractured brand identity because our products would appear differently on different retailer websites.”
DecoTeak needed a solution that took this work off of their team’s shoulders, while also providing consistent and accurate product data on all retail channels.
When DecoTeak completed onboarding with Venzee, they no longer had to worry about inaccurate product data being sent to their retail channels. Venzee organized their data and syndicated it to DecoTeak’s retailers.
“Venzee is efficient and completes all the data requirements. Products appear the way we want them to on our retailer websites, and we can now retain consumers with a consistent brand image.”
“Venzee catches many errors, like missing characters and digits and anything else that would bypass retail channels. This greatly helps consumers by making product information accurate and available. Consumers know exactly what they will get when they purchase a DecoTeak product.”
Hours of work were cut down to a mere 30 minutes a week with Venzee - saving DecoTeak 90% of the time they previously spent syndicating. DecoTeak could finally focus critical time on business development and customer service instead of manually plugging in product data for all their retail channels.
“The Venzee Platform preloads a lot of data. Venzee also deals with the troubleshooting and the back-and-forth, rather than having us handle it. This has been a tremendous help. If all the product information is ready, Venzee greatly expedites the syndication process.”
Learn more about how Venzee can help optimize your business.
Learn how Giant Art used Venzee to scale their business, expand retail selling channels, and grow revenues.
“We were able to survive due to Venzee’s help. They saved the day by allowing us to expand to different channels.”
-Itzia D. Aubut, Business Development Director at Giant Art
Giant Art is a manufacturer of canvas items for art, creative images, and content. With multiple channels of distribution throughout the world, they continue to build on their reputation of providing curated quality work by the best artists, galleries, publishers, owners and creators of content.
Giant Art used Venzee to send product data to some of the largest retailers in the world, including: Lowes, Wayfair, Houzz, Home Depot, Amazon Vendor Central, Macys, and Fancy.
Giant Art was struggling with the time, effort, and costs associated with manually distributing data to their retailers. As a small team, they had many other things to deal with and didn’t have time to manually input numbers and images - resulting in a loss of sales and revenue.
“We were doing everything manually - copying and pasting the product data to every single retailer. One image would create ten SKU’s. If we had to upload 70,000 images, we would have 700,000 SKU’s. That’s impossible for a human to do alone, but it’s possible with automation.”
Due to decreased sales from heightened competition, Giant Art needed to expand to more channels in order to survive. After some research, Venzee solved their most urgent problem of dealing with the vast amount of product data demanded from retailers. At only $250 per Mesh ConnectorTM, Venzee was the most affordable solution on the market.
“The team is extremely organized, very helpful, and a pleasure to collaborate with. They make it easy to understand all steps, provide a complete plan to move forward, are always on time, and are quick to understand the product. They made this experience flow smoothly and they are a fantastic team in every sense. They are experts in the industry.”
With Venzee, Giant Art was able to focus on growing their business, rather than dealing with the overwhelming amount of product data their retailers required. Giant Art reported a revenue increase attributed to a drastic increase in sales after using Venzee.
“It was the perfect solution for us. All of those things we had to do before, we didn’t have to anymore. Before it took forever to upload all the data into the retail channels. It’s not just populating the spreadsheets - there’s just so many aspects like back and forth communication and fixing errors. The never-ending process became just a 15-20 minute weekly call with Venzee.”
Learn more about how Venzee can help optimize your business.
Circularity, Transparency, and Traceability
Circular supply chains recycle and reuse old products to create new products.
Transparency is the commitment to honestly communicate and voluntarily disclose information. It involves the collection, storage, validation, and sharing of data surrounding supply chain operations, from all parties involved.
Traceability supports transparency, allowing consumers to directly connect an individual product and its ingredients back to their sources. For example, consumers could find out where the palm oil in a skincare product is from and whether it was ethically produced.
There is no doubt that a more transparent, traceable, and circular supply chain would benefit the environment. Businesses would exhaust fewer resources and be held accountable for environmental and human injustices.
However, supply chains today are a long way from reaching this more ethical, sustainable kind of supply chain. Why is this the case?
Pros and Cons of Sustainable Supply Chains
Some businesses are hesitant to adopt a sustainable supply chain because they believe:
Product value is not necessarily decreased when using recycled materials because quality manufacturing can recover that value. Most consumers wouldn’t even notice the difference between a product made from new materials versus recycled materials. In fact, many consumers go out of their way to buy products made from recycled or biodegradable materials, which increases the value of those products. According to a McKinsey study of 7,751 consumers, 87% indicated they were concerned about the environmental and social impacts of the products they buy (SSIR).
While there are upfront costs associated with implementing a transparent, traceable, and circular supply chain, the long-term benefits and cost reductions — for both the environment and the business — outweigh them:
The Future of Sustainable Supply Chains
Many businesses have already discovered creative ways to innovate their supply chains. For example, salmon farmers in Norway use blockchain technology to make their supply chain more transparent and traceable. Consumers can simply scan barcodes to receive all information about provenance, welfare, and farming. (Harvard Business Review)
There are countless opportunities to make supply chains more sustainable using the power of technology. In episode 62 of Rethinking Supply Chain, BOEX Founder and CEO Sean Copeland envisions a future where the supply chain is so digitized, you could visit a local department store and 3D print a product on the spot. You could know the exact measurements of an online product without needing it shipped to examine the dimensions yourself. According to Harvard Business Review, this might actually be the future of supply chain as 3D printing becomes more widely adopted. This type of supply chain is sustainable because it increases the use of local and reused — rather than new — materials and decreases the carbon emissions from shipping.
How Can Businesses Develop a Sustainable Supply Chain?
Here are some actionable tips:
Mass production to meet global consumer demands has been an enormous contributor to the climate crisis and environmental degradation. However, it is not too late for business manufacturers to shift operations and adopt a more circular supply chain that is both transparent and traceable.
About Venzee Technologies, Inc.
Venzee is a platform that utilizes AI, machine learning, and blockchain technology to digitize supply chain for consumer brands so that they can easily send product data to any global retailer. For more information, visit venzee.com or follow Venzee on LinkedIn and Twitter.]]>According to a survey conducted by Automation World, only:
These statistics are problematic.
As mentioned in our previous blog, “COVID-19: A Story of Two Supply Chains,” global trade is largely governed on the foundation of the physical supply chain. Implementing technology that automates supply chains can help optimize and synchronize operations between businesses. In addition, digitizing supply chains can improve tracking abilities and increase transparency to better regulate both physical and digital supply chains.
Here are some aspects of supply chains — both physical and digital — that are not yet digitized, according to Rethinking Supply Chain Episode 40:
If businesses don’t invest in a centralized digital supply chain, they risk:
Implementing even one of the above can help decrease labor costs while increasing efficiency, productivity, and profit.
MHI, Deloitte, and CB Insights have researched the number of supply chains that are currently digitized, the expected growth in this number, and surveyed business executives about their perspectives on digital supply chains. Here is what they discovered:
Source: The 2021 MHI Annual Industry Report
Source: The 2021 MHI Annual Industry Report
Source: The 2021 MHI Annual Industry Report
Digitization is a trend that more businesses are starting to adopt and investors are starting to take interest in.
There is no doubt that supply chains can benefit from increased digitization. Businesses that invest in digital strategies can obtain significant advantages over competitors that continue to waste time and labor on inefficient, costly operations.
To learn more about digital supply chain technology, visit Venzee at venzee.com or connect with Venzee on LinkedIn and Twitter.
The 1st wave of supply chain innovation began in 1948 with the Berlin Airlift. As countries were delivering goods - such as coal, food, and medicine - to Berlin, they discovered they needed a more effective method to coordinate with other countries. Their solution was EDI, or Electronic Data Interchange, technology.
EDI utilizes the computer-to-computer exchange of business information, such as purchase orders and invoices, in a standard format. In other words, paper-based transactions were automated and replaced by a standard electronic format, which saved a lot of time from waiting for the documents to be delivered and eliminated a lot of costly errors caused by manual processing. (IBM)
EDI fulfilled the needs of the UN and was really useful in the 1940s. For the first time, people could easily communicate hundreds of product attributes and data, such as when a good has been sent and when it would be arriving. EDI also enabled basic data transformation, and so, units can be easily converted from pounds to kilograms, for example.
Example of EDI Coding
The 2nd wave of supply chain tech began in 1974, when Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit chewing gum was the first product marked with a scannable barcode. This barcode was created with the help of GS1 (Global Standard 1), a non-profit organization that develops global standards for business communication, such as barcodes and GDSN (Global Data Synchronization Network) technology, which allows real-time data storage, synchronization, and transformation. Since then, companies have been able to display thousands, rather than hundreds, of product attributes. It became standard to have a different barcode on every individual item, which enabled easier identification and tracking of products. It also became standard to display images of a product so consumers could better understand their purchases. Last but not least, it became standard to use GDSN technology, which means that all businesses share data in the same format, and thus, speak the same language.
GDSN Data Flow | Source: GS1
Although 1st and 2nd wave technologies were revolutionary and good for their times, they are insufficient solutions for the pace and scale of 21st century digital supply chain management.
The problem with EDI is that it’s too simple. It can only encode around 100 product attributes and cannot produce images. These limitations hold EDI technology back from fully meeting the demands of brands and retailers that sell thousands of products with hundreds of thousands of product attributes associated with each product.
In addition to only being able to encode product attributes in the thousands range, the problem with GDSN is that it is difficult to add attributes in the first place. In order to add a GS1 GDSN standard, it must be brought to GS1’s attention. GS1 would then have to agree to approve - or disapprove - of the addition of the specific standard. This could lead to a series of meetings and calls that takes years before a conclusion is reached. This delay is especially detrimental in the healthcare industry, where there are life-or-death situations, and expressing a specific attribute could save a person’s life.
EDI and GDSN having limited product attribute encoding abilities make it hard for businesses to curate content to specific audiences. The market now demands unlimited product attributes due to the infinite digital aisle. Unlimited product attributes are how you get a consumer to actually be interested in a product since they allow consumers to envision what it’s like to own the product and feel a connection to it.
The digital supply chain needs an innovative reformation. There is no reason for companies to still be using 1940s and 1970s supply chain technology when technology itself has advanced so much in the past 80 years.
The 3rd wave of supply chain tech began in 2016 when people began experimenting with automation, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to address the problems of 1st and 2nd wave digital supply chain technologies. These cutting-edge technologies allow businesses to convey an unlimited number of product attributes. This means that not only does an intelligent supply chain software cover all the benefits of EDI and GDSN technology (data delivery, imaging, real-time data storage, real-time data synchronization, and real-time data transformation), but it also allows businesses to tailor their products to all retailer channels and audiences.
How is Venzee leading the 3rd wave of digital supply chain innovation? As crazy as it sounds, most supply chain management companies these days still use 1940s and 1970s technologies. But at Venzee, we are not settling for 80-year-old technology and comfort; we want to disrupt the supply chain. We believe that automation, AI, and machine learning are the future of supply chain management and our technology is paving the way for that future.
Learn more about the 3 waves of supply chain tech in episode 68 of our podcast Rethinking Supply Chain: https://rethinking-supply-chain.simplecast.com/episodes/the-3-waves-of-supply-chain-innovation-continued.
Learn more about Venzee’s disruptive supply chain innovation, Mesh Connector™, at venzee.com.
The 3 Waves of Supply Chain Tech
]]>The supply chain chaos that precipitated because of the COVID-19 pandemic began with people hoarding toilet paper, hand sanitizers, disinfectant wipes, and more. Supply chains weren’t able to react quickly enough to these sudden surges of demand; businesses hadn't predicted or planned for these disruptions, so many found themselves in a sticky situation where shelves were empty or where they lacked the resources to speed up production. Low supply of stock and high demand caused prices to skyrocket - for example, $8 for a single roll of toilet paper.
Not long into the pandemic, there was already a glimmer of hope for normality. Research institutions were learning all they could about the COVID-19 virus. Pharmaceutical companies were racing to create a vaccine. They entered the testing stage within a few months, but it took an entire year to accomplish a nationwide vaccine rollout.
The answer has to do with how there are two disconnected sides to the supply chain: a physical side and a digital side. The disconnect between these two sides contributes to slow, inefficient processes and a lack of resilience when faced with disruption.
The digital side of the supply chain deals with information. This side of the supply chain flows smoothly, allowing product information to be sent in mere seconds. In the case of COVID-19 vaccines, information like medical research and specific attributes associated with vaccines were digitally exchanged to help with their production and distribution.
Meanwhile, the physical side of the supply chain deals with the acquisition of the materials needed to make the vaccines and their packing, as well as their distribution. The physical supply chain isn’t as fast. This partially stems from the challenges that come with moving a physical item around: it could get delayed, broken, or lost in transit. But it also stems from the disconnect between the digital and physical supply chains, with a heavy reliance on the latter.
What’s even worse is that there is an even bigger disconnect between the US supply chain and the global supply chain, which is evident from how countries - such as India - are still struggling to obtain basic hospital supplies.
So should we simply accept the disconnect and the way things are? No. The gaps within the supply chain can be closed with a few steps.
Currently, a good is considered "received" only when it touches a recipient’s dock. If a storm hits and the good is lost at sea, the ownership still belongs to the sender. In the case of brands, they are prone to losing a lot of money, rather than shipping companies or retailers, despite the fact that there is technology to keep track of these goods.
Many companies are realizing that they need to keep track of many more product attributes - such as temperature and movement, not just location - and many have been doing so with radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags. This is a prime example of intersecting the digital supply chain with the physical supply chain.
Although many companies have been embracing technology, simply switching from clipboards to spreadsheets is not enough. Data input and transformation is unnecessarily manual and can and should be automated.
Mesh Connectors™ utilize AI and machine learning to automate the process in which companies send product information to retailers. With a few clicks on SyndicationSolutions.com, brands can effortlessly send their products to hundreds of retailers to sell.
Mesh Connectors™ and Syndication Solutions are powered by Venzee Technologies. For more information, connect with Venzee at venzee.com or on LinkedIn and Twitter.
More Product Attributes = More Time and Opportunities for Error
Unique products possess many unique product attributes. Brands manually compile thousands of product attributes into spreadsheets that will eventually get sent to retailers. Imagine a brand needs to input 100 products with 50 attributes each to be shared with 10 retailers. That adds up to 50,000 pieces of information, or 50,000 opportunities for error and chaos.
Retailers Have Specific, Ever-Changing Rules & Requirements Associated with Spreadsheets
Once a brand has compiled all of its product information, it must transfer that data to its retailers. Brands run into problems when the standards governing their spreadsheets do not align with a retailer’s specific standards. When this happens, brands return to their spreadsheets to transform the information to meet retailer requirements. This adds another layer of tedious, manual labor and takes valuable time away from brands’ speed to market.
Brands experience so much friction in product content syndication that the whole process may never fully “end” for them
Let’s say that you’re a brand that makes jewelry and you want to sell your jewelry through Walmart. There are plenty of Walmart brands, so you managed to find a spreadsheet online. You spend 3 months inputting your jewelry information into the spreadsheet to send to Walmart to request your products to be sold in their stores and site, but a couple weeks later, they respond saying you used the wrong spreadsheet. You shrug it off and put in another 3 months of work, and finally, your jewelry is on Walmart’s website and stores.
Then, you notice something is off: the names of certain products are mixed up and some of their measurements are wrong. You email Walmart about the issue, only to receive another spreadsheet. You get the drift: there’s a lot of back-and-forths and delays within the traditional supply chain, which can make the process last forever..
Why Tolerate Product Content Syndication Processes that Take Months to Complete?
Imagine how inefficient the banking system would be if it took say 9 months to communicate a transaction. Nowadays, all you need to do is take a picture of a check on an app, and the money would shortly be at your disposal within 1-3 business days. Back in the 70s, you could deposit and withdraw money by going to an ATM, if not the bank itself. If a 9-month process like this isn’t tolerated in the banking industry, it shouldn’t be tolerated in supply chain management either.
A Friction-Free Digital Supply Chain
Here at Venzee, we are building a friction-free digital supply chain with the help of automation. Once Venzee receives your product information, we can quickly and easily transform the data for you so that it’s accepted by all retail channels. We’ll even cover your last mile by synthesizing the data and sending it out ourselves.
Interested in a frictionless digital supply chain?
Simply connect with retailers with the click of a button at syndicationsolutions.com or learn more at venzee.com.
]]>Thanks to e-commerce and the digitization of supply chains, it only takes consumers a few clicks to purchase any product they desire. Accurate and detailed product descriptions on retail sites have never been more critical as buying decisions are increasingly based on information seen online.
Product attributes, or characteristics that represent a product like size or color, are the building blocks of quality product descriptions. If a consumer is deciding between two similar products online, they will likely choose the option with a more complete product description full of specific product attributes. What happens if this product information isn’t accurate or accessible?
Inaccessible and Inaccurate Product Attributes
Products possess many unique product attributes. However, it is uncommon for consumers to have access to all of those attributes while making a purchase. In many cases, we buy products without knowing enough specific information to guarantee we chose the best option.
For example, imagine you recently bought an electric bike online. You were provided basic information like the product name, color, size, manufacturer, but little else. What is its power output? What is the battery pack size? What are its replaceable parts? None of this information is presented on the retail site, so you would have to attempt to find that information yourself.
Solution for Brands and Retailers
The problem of inaccessible or inaccurate product attributes can be tied to reliance on outdated, manual syndication processes that move product information across the digital supply chain. When tedious syndication processes are manually performed, the likelihood for error increases. In addition, precious time is taken away from employees that could be focusing on improving business operations, product quality, and customer satisfaction.
In order to solve the problem of inaccessible or inaccurate product information, more companies need to digitally transform their supply chains. Digitalization enables a smooth flow of product attributes across the supply chain and ensures manufacturers, brands, and retailers have consistent, accurate information about their products.
For more information about product attributes and issues with current supply chain systems, listen to our podcasts “Are We Ready for Network-Based Supply Chains?” and “Why We Need Additional Product Attributes in Supply Chain.”
To learn more about Venzee, visit venzee.com and follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter.
]]>What is syndication?
Syndication is the movement of information from one location to another. When product data undergoes syndication, product attributes, or things that represent a product, are transferred from a manufacturer to a retail selling channel. For Venzee, this refers to the transfer of data across the digital supply chain from manufacturing clients and PIM partners’ source files in a readable format for corresponding retailers.
Sending product attributes from one place to another sounds pretty straightforward. However, the process can be extremely tedious, time-consuming, and costly when completed manually.
Syndication should be simple. Why is manual syndication so complicated?
Traditionally, the syndication of product information has involved the manual exchange of spreadsheets between manufacturers and retailers. This involves numerous steps that require enormous attention to detail, including the organization, validation, transformation, and transportation of product attributes. This process can take months to complete.
Manufacturers — those that make products to sell to retailers — struggle to connect and comply with a growing, endless, ever-changing set of sales channel data requirements. Since different retailers use unique selling platforms, brands and manufacturers must learn how each unique portal works through training or their own research.
If overcoming this learning curve for one retailer sounds time-consuming, imagine repeating the process for hundreds of retailers. This averts energy from company operations that could be focused on more value-added tasks. In effect, manual syndication lacks rapid scalability because of the time and resources it takes to integrate with new selling channels.
Automated syndication is simple and scalable.
Automation is the key to simpler syndication. Tools like artificial intelligence and machine learning can streamline and accelerate the monotonous transfer, transformation, and delivery of data.
Here at Venzee Technologies, we use automation to figure out retailer requirements and translate product information into an acceptable format. As an end-to-end syndication technology, we deliver transformed data across the entire digital supply chain — including last mile delivery to retailers. This helps our clients win on the digital shelf.
Brands no longer need to deal with thousands of spreadsheets for different retailers. At Venzee’s new Syndication Solutions store, brands can simply connect to global retailers with the click of a button. All they need to do is look through our list of over 400 retailers, add them to their shopping cart, and make a purchase. It’s that simple.
Many companies that have maintained decades of consumer loyalty are realizing they will lose business unless they establish a digital connection that informs and engages consumers. When consumers shop online, they need accurate and complete product information to make informed purchases. In addition to persuading consumers to buy their products, brands and retailers need to guarantee consumers receive exactly what they purchased.
Without a doubt, digital supply chains are necessary for more accurate and accessible product data. At Venzee, we try our best to remove the complexity of syndication with intelligent supply chains so brands, manufacturers and PIM partners can optimize operations, save time, and accelerate sales.
For more information about syndication, listen to our podcasts “What is Syndication?” and “Revolutionary Selling in the Digital Supply Chain Industry.”
To learn more about Venzee, visit venzee.com and follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter.
Key Terms:
Channel: A connection to a retailer
Syndication: The transfer of product information. For Venzee, this is referring to the transfer of data from manufacturing clients/PIM partners source files to a format that is readable for the corresponding retailers
PIM: Product Information Management. To us at Venzee, PIMs are our partner organizations who manage and distribute product information from our manufacturing clients. PIMs provide the user interface (UI) platform for our manufacturing clients.
]]>Inefficient product content management costs companies a lot. As retailers evolve to be more competitive, a major change we’re seeing is that they’re requiring more product content from suppliers to meet growing consumer demand for information. Today, the retail industry predominantly relies on linear digital supply chains to get product content from origin to consumer, but these systems and processes aren't built to handle the exponentially increasing demand for content. For some perspective on retail's growing data challenges, read this interview with Riversand's Director of Product Management, Data Syndication and Strategic Alliances Sudu Gupta.
Venzee is fixing the problem with technology that facilitates digital supply networks--where trading partners are interconnected and data flows freely from endpoint to endpoint. With API-powered integrations and Mesh, our powerful transformation engine, Venzee is relieving the expensive burden of product content distribution and delivering complete, accurate product content to retailers.
To put it simply, Venzee improves content handling and automates content distribution through better-connected supply networks. Venzee simplifies the process of product submissions with technology that sits in between the product information management platforms that brands and manufacturers use to manage their content and the retailers and sales channels they sell to. The process can be broken down into three essential steps:
In this post, we'll go into the details of step one, the content ingestion step.
Streamlining content distribution starts with getting quality product content into Venzee. Venzee works with brands and suppliers that manage their products in content management solutions, like PIM, DAM, ERP, MDM or EDI systems.
Commerce is an industry in transition, so we’ve built Venzee to be flexible. Venzee can work with any content management platform, process, or data format. We have growing partnerships with several content management solutions, including leading PIM, DAM, MDM, ERP, and EDI providers, so the 100,000+ suppliers they serve can take advantage of Venzee’s integrated content distribution, or content syndication, capabilities.
While these systems can export product content that is structured, clean, standardized and up-to-date, our team still sees considerable variation in format from client to client. To handle the range, we have multiple methods of receiving client data and customize solutions based on data format, time, and resources. Venzee supports content ingestion via API integration, email, Cloud drive, FTP, and manual file upload.
Channel partners can integrate directly with Venzee’s intelligent content distribution platform. Mesh API is a fully documented REST API that facilitates system-to-system connections, providing sophisticated, secure, end-to-end integration and messaging to facilitate complete, continuous workflow automation between a client (e.g., manufacturer, brand, supplier) and their content destinations. Mesh features include the following:
[Read an example scenario and business case for a PIM that is building a full API integration to Mesh to provide automated content distribution for its 1,000+ manufacturer and distributor clients.]
Users can import product content into Venzee by configuring workflows that automatically fetch and process product data files. Autopilot, Venzee’s plug-and-play integration tool, fetches data files (e.g., CSV, XLS, and XLSx) as they are detected on FTP or supported Cloud Drive, storing them in Venzee’s File Manager, and imports the product content to ready it for transformation and distribution. Users can also send data files as email attachments to the account’s assigned Venzee email address. All received files are stored in File Manager. During the workflow configuration step, users enter import settings per file set. When Autopilot detects a new file match, it initiates the corresponding import automation workflow, which readies the imported product content for the transformation phase. Autopilot enables clients to leverage content distribution solutions when they lack developer resources or the time or desire to invest in an API integration. Autopilot can be deployed quickly and is an automated content distribution solution for partners that don’t require in-platform feedback for clients. Autopilot features include the following:
Users can import product content by manually uploading data files in Venzee’s Web app, Studio. Uploaded files are stored in File Manager. Users complete the steps to import product content to ready it for the transformation phase. Studio is a low-resource way for suppliers to satisfy the "endless aisle" demands of major retailers. It is a valuable tool for suppliers that require content automation to scale efforts but lack the developer resources to integrate to Mesh.
Studio features include the following:
Trading partners at all points in digital supply networks are seeing an increased need for accurate, timely cross-organizational data, and Venzee helps them meet this need in the short- and long-term. While the ideal scenario of seamless, automated content distribution requires a full integration with Venzee’s Mesh API to flow client product content into Venzee, most partners require intermediate and immediately deployable solutions. Venzee solves this by offering semi-automated and manual content ingestion in addition to full API integration.
Beyond automation’s inherent benefit of speed, there are several advantages to Venzee’s content distribution. It eliminates manual steps, reduces errors in content, streamlines how retailers roll out changes to their content requirements to their suppliers, enables supply chains to optimize product content workflows, gets products in front of customers faster, and maximizes sales opportunities.
Ultimately, Venzee builds solutions that optimize content distribution for a client’s currently available resources and systems and adapts solutions as content management technologies evolve.
]]>Having been in the digital supply chain industry for over a decade now, I have seen significant change in this industry that serves the larger retail commerce ecosystem. The ability for manufacturers to syndicate product information to trading partners (be they retailers or other channels) is slowly becoming more efficient.
That’s not to say that significant friction doesn’t still exist in this digital supply chain--far from it--but I am seeing a focus on attacking the friction that exists along the digital supply chain between manufacturer and retailer. Reducing friction here allows for improved speeds-to-site, getting generally better content to retailers, and a more efficient syndication process for manufacturers. For manufacturers, efficient content syndication saves time and money and gets their products to market more quickly and effectively.
Still, there is friction in the digital supply chain that isn’t being resolved and manufacturers aren’t uncovering the issue. Why not? Because they continue to ask the wrong questions when evaluating solutions to help them syndicate their product content more effectively. When investigating content service providers (CSPs), manufacturers tend to focus more on the number of retail channels and less on the connection or distribution process. (Something to keep in mind: The mission of CSPs is to help manufacturers syndicate content more effectively on an ongoing basis. I’ll repeat that last part: on an ongoing basis.)
Manufacturers are still asking CSPs, “Who do you have?” looking for a list of retailers the CSP will promote that they are connected to.
Many CSPs will answer by flashing a list of retailers whose product category templates (or product category schemas) they’ve collected over several years. Or, they’ll say they have API connectivity with some of the larger retailers that have rolled out or are in the process of rolling out APIs for CSPs and larger vendors to plug into.
Both of these points are misleading, and to challenge the perceived value of retailer lists provided by CSPs and API connectivity, I have two questions:
A CSP’s ability to establish a process with as much automation as possible is what eliminates friction. CSPs must have processes and automation built to not only ingest current product category templates or schemas from retailers as templates evolve, but also to validate a manufacturer’s product content against the latest rules and requirements within those schemas, both initially and on an ongoing basis. How a CSP solves for changing retailer requirements on an ongoing basis is key to evaluating a CSP’s long-term value. Eliminating this friction is what reduces the cost of the full content syndication process and accelerates the flow of content from a manufacturer to its trading partners.
As for the current state of retailer API capabilities, it’s not great. While the larger retailers are exposing APIs (which is a great shift in improving efficiency in the digital supply chain), available APIs are incredibly limited. For example, some large retailers have APIs that can’t receive images. Image submissions are a significant portion of the content submission process, so this means manufacturers must tag on yet another manual process to handle images. The same goes for categories. For the APIs that support very limited categories, manufacturers must go through an additional process to successfully submit content. With such limited API cases being all-too-common, there needs to be a focus on automating non-API aspects of the product content syndication process to truly reduce friction.
This is how Venzee is solving the problem.
Venzee is solely focused on eliminating friction from the digital supply chain. Our API allows for automated ingestion of content from any source, whether it is a manufacturer’s PIM, DAM, ERP, or other content management system. From there, content is validated against current retailer or channel requirements to ensure syndication of accurate and complete product content to a manufacturer’s trading partners. Finally, Venzee aggressively pursues integration with any and all fully-functional retailer APIs where it makes sense and employs artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and other automation in order to streamline and accelerate content syndication from any source to any retailer or channel.
Peter is the VP of Enterprise Business at Venzee. His over 20 years of experience in the retail industry and Product Information Distribution space (PIDS) includes leadership positions at Edgenet and Shotfarm (recently acquired by Syndigo).
]]>The bulk of retail trade relies on linear supply chains, but these supply chains aren't equipped to handle increasing demand. Watch the video below for a quick run through of our 7 reasons retail needs better-connected supply networks. For our case for connectivity in more detail, read our blog post 7 Reasons Retail Needs Better-Connected Supply Networks.
]]>Venzee simplifies life for brands with intelligent product content distribution for multiple retailer connections, enabling brands to deliver content from a single source of truth to more sales channels accurately and with less manual effort and allocated labor. To guide brands to the most value from Venzee’s channel integrations as quickly as possible, Venzee certifies all of our retailer connections based on the level of integration and automation each retailer supports.
Retailers too see immediate and significant value from Venzee. As brands and suppliers are improving the quality of their product content and their processes for managing it, value cascades to the retailer level, where retailers receive complete content that matches their requirements via Venzee’s intelligent content distribution platform. When integrated with Venzee, retailers can phase out fragmented content handling processes, where error-prone and time-consuming manual updates made by human content teams are the status quo.
For retailers, the journey to content efficiency begins with Venzee certification. Read on to find out more about our program and process.
Today, it’s difficult for brands to get product content to retailers. Retailers have unnecessarily cumbersome and complicated content submission processes, and, while not all retailers have the same lack of ingestion capabilities, each retailer has its own unique content collection process. From the perspective of brands and suppliers, no retailer content collection process is ideal, and these dated processes drive labor costs and impact margins for both suppliers and retailers.
According to Brendan Witcher of Forrester Research, “Rising customer expectations for seamless brand experiences underscore how important it is for commerce solutions to work together more closely than ever to harmonize information across systems and touchpoints.”
As demand for product content in digital formats grows, as it inevitably will continue to do, product content distribution will become even more difficult for brands to manage, which in turn negatively impacts retailers. Scaling current content handling processes to meet demand will exacerbate the existing bottleneck, resulting in even lower profit margins for all trading partners.
Venzee solves retail’s prevailing content problem with automation facilitated by system-to-system connectivity. Venzee provides an intelligent technology solution to replace manual product content updates, removing labor costs and facilitating sales channel scale. Retailers and suppliers spend less on content handling and are positioned to earn more revenue.
“Consumer relevance requires brands and manufacturers to move past labor-intensive, error-prone manual processes. Brands winning market share today leverage Venzee's highly automated, intelligent, and cross-functional platform to scale brand engagement across an endless range of global channels,” John Abrams, VP of Partner Development at Venzee said.
Venzee’s intelligent content distribution platform automates the transformation and delivery of product content from brands to retailers. How? We partner with the content management solutions that brands and suppliers rely on to manage their product content and build out integrations so product content can flow system-to-system from brands out to all of their retailers. On the retailer side, Venzee certifies retailer connections and actively manages retailer format and content requirements as they change. Venzee is building a certified network of retailers and technology partners to make product content distribution frictionless through better-connected supply chains.
In Q2 of 2019, we launched the VCN program, designed to guide technology partners to maximum value through simplifying their content distribution process through workflow automation and integration. The program provides a clear path to full integration with Venzee’s intelligent content distribution platform. The VCN and defined ingestion certification levels give our technology partners a way to see how advanced the ingestion capabilities for a given retailer or sales channel are. And, with certification for parties on both sides of the supply chain relationship--ingestion certification for retailers, marketplaces, ecommerce platforms, and other sales channels and distribution certification for content management providers (Product Information Management (PIM), Data Asset Management (DAM), Master Data Management (MDM), and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), the program offers more transparency into Venzee’s structured engagements with partners and retailers.
VP of Enterprise Business Peter Montross said, “We recognize that Venzee is one of the first technology companies to offer true integration to retailers, and by being transparent about our process, we aim to instill confidence in our partners, prospects, and the clients they serve. Venzee certified retailers can leverage connections to thousands of brands and trading partners already taking the steps to improve the quality of their product content. Becoming Venzee-certified demonstrates a retailer's commitment to a more streamlined and efficient content submission process for its suppliers.”
Venzee’s Mesh platform facilitates retailer connections for technology partners; however, not all retailers share the same level of connectivity to Mesh, as constrained by a retailer’s existing technology solution, developer resources, or time. And while some level of intelligent content distribution is available for any retail channel through Venzee, limited integration may affect the efficiency and speed with which technology partners can expect to exchange product data and receive feedback from a retailer. To help manage partner expectations, Venzee certifies retailers, marketplaces, ecommerce platforms, and other retail channels that receive product information from multiple sources and, potentially, in multiple formats for content ingestion. For Venzee, the more advanced a retailer’s capabilities, the more data we can exchange with a partner and brand. Higher certification levels in the VCN correlate to more advanced content ingestion capabilities.
Venzee simplifies the connection process by awarding certification levels based on a retailer’s ability to ingest product content efficiently, enabling brands and their technology solutions to plan distribution support for retailer channels accordingly. Retailers are awarded certification ranging from levels 1-6. As retailers level up, signifying better integration to Venzee, content management systems that are certified for distribution can take advantage of improved content capabilities and data exchange with these retail channels. The higher the certification, the more advanced capabilities a retailer has, and the more value it sees from Venzee. VCN levels can help retailers prioritize internal goals for handling product information from suppliers that will that will result in markedly lower cost, more automation, more revenue. Additionally, Venzee certification levels give retailers a clear understanding of how their technology compares to that of other retailers and provide guidance on the steps they can take to immediately improve how they are ingesting content.
Retailers and brands see immediate value from level 1 certification, and value grows as they advance to higher levels in the VCN. At level 1, retailers start receiving higher quality product content from suppliers and brands that is automatically transformed to current retailer requirements. Higher levels of certification improve cost savings and increase revenue, as streamlining content handling processes (i.e., eliminating manual steps) means less labor, more efficiency, fewer product returns, better scale, and other competitive advantage in the market.
Venzee provides significant value at our most basic level of integration, and the VCN program provides a clear guide for when partners will see increased value from the retailer connections they would like to support. Retailers are all at various stages in developing their platforms, portals, and other supplier solutions. By referring to a retailer’s certification level, Venzee optimizes timelines and implementation stages for our technology partners. Venzee enables our technology partners to avoid building unique solutions to connect to retailers (and the long, expensive development processes required for such solutions) with a pure-play API for intelligent content distribution. Our solution addresses the needs of brands demanding better control over their product content and a better process for delivering content to all of their retail channels. With clear goals, timelines, and guidance set forth in our VCN program, we deliver the most value from Venzee technology as quickly as possible for our partners.
Currently, and only two months after the launch of the VCN, we have rapidly growing certified retailer and sales channel connections in 15 countries across the globe, including Amazon, Walmart, Bed Bath & Beyond, Target, Home Depot, Shopify, Pier 1, and Kroger.
Venzee is solving the problem of distributing content to retailers efficiently with intelligent product content distribution made possible with end-to-end connectivity and automation powered by Venzee’s Mesh API. Retailers, suppliers, and the technology solutions they rely on require connectivity to overcome product data challenges and to scale product data flow to meet the growing needs of digital retail. As Venzee continues to expand its network of certified content management systems and retailers and sales channels, we’re becoming even more adept at distributing content efficiently and elegantly for all of commerce.
]]>We can all agree that spreadsheets suck, right? Yes, they’re great for small databases and budgets, but they are terrible for managing product information on a daily basis. If you’re a manufacturer or vendor you know how difficult it is to manage this data accurately, efficiently, and cost-effectively. Try mapping information for thousands of SKUs across a bunch of sheets – Excel just doesn’t cut it. That’s where Product Information Management comes to the rescue.
Think of Product Information Management as a central hub for all your product info (SKUs, descriptions, prices, specs, images, etc) placed conveniently between your data resources (Excel and other standard files, ERP software, photo/video banks and other rich data sources) and the end users of your product data (retailers, POS systems, e-comm platforms, catalogs, you name it). Instead of constantly updating and sharing spreadsheets around your vendor network, all of your product data can be managed and shared through one system. This ensures all your partners have the correct information all the time.
As your business develops and your product offering expands, your product information grows exponentially. Implementing a Product Information Management tool makes growing more manageable by letting you import, consolidate, organize, update, manage, and share this growing mountain of information effectively. This saves you countless data entry and data management hours, and drastically reduces the human error factor that comes with constantly updating spreadsheets manually.
Consistent product data makes processes and workflows easier to manage in-house. It also makes life easier for your end users and customers. In the ever-expanding omnichannel retail environment, customers are searching for and finding your products through multiple channels, platforms, and online sellers. If they see missing images or out-of-date descriptions they get frustrated and start to doubt the quality of your products and your brand as a whole. That means lost sales, plain and simple.
Clean and consistent product data, on the other hand, will make it easier for customers to find and buy your products. When you supply consistent data to all the channels you sell your products through, customers will see high-quality and accurate product information, and you’ll be able to increase sales, brand reputation, and market-share.
There are good PIM systems, and great PIM systems. All of them will help you manage your data better than a mass of spreadsheets, but the great ones can go a lot further.
If you have thousands of SKUs going to partners like Walmart, Amazon, Wayfair, or Shopify, the biggest problem is translating and exporting that data so it matches the specific demands of each retailer. Great PIM tools offer seamless integrations to export your product info to major retailers, going beyond standard PIM attribute mapping to deliver powerful data manipulation.
When choosing your PIM solution, be sure to consider its speed to innovate and how it adapts and grows to meet the increasing demands of the digital supply chain.
Improving the way your business handles product information will set your business apart and help you scale. Venzee plays well with every PIM solution.
]]>In Q2 of 2019, we launched the Venzee Certified Network (VCN) program, which is designed to guide trading partners through Venzee’s implementation process. The program provides a clear path to full integration with Venzee’s intelligent content distribution platform and sets achievable markers for each stage of integration.
Too often integrating with a new platform for a lot of organizations is a resource-heavy endeavor that seems to have no end. Our goal is to avoid that all-too-common scenario and to keep partners from getting lost in processes by providing a clear integration guide that marks where and when they will see more value from the integration. The partners Venzee works with are all at various stages in their own technology development, so we plan implementation stages and timelines accordingly. Implementing new technology and coordinating development with an external product can be challenging, and it’s never ideal to have open projects drag on. With clear goals, timelines, and guidance set forth in our VCN program, we get our partners to see value from Venzee technology as quickly as possible.
President and CEO Peter MacKay said, “Venzee’s Mesh API connects content management systems to retailers, and the Venzee Certified Network program is our way of letting the market know that there is a clear process to what we’re selling. We recognize that we’re one of the first technology companies to offer true integration to retailers, and by being transparent about our process, we aim to instill confidence in our partners, prospects, and the clients they serve. Scalability is a key concern for most companies looking to distribute content out to multiple retail channels, and Venzee is prepared to show our partners exactly how we’ll achieve it.”
Venzee is an intelligent content distribution solution that eliminates inefficiencies in the digital supply chain by delivering consumer-ready product information to retailers via a peer-to-peer network. Powered by our core technology, Mesh, Venzee automates content exchange workflows that increase margins and accelerate revenue. Through a suite of products, Venzee provides customized solutions for enterprises of all sizes, meeting each client's desired level of sophistication and automation. Venzee operates as a Software as a Service (SaaS), allowing flexibility for enterprise customers of all sizes wishing to improve their digital supply chain solutions.
Venzee works with trading partners that distribute content and ingest content. The Venzee Certified Network is divided into two parts: 1.) content management providers (e.g., PIM, DAM, MDM, ERP, etc.) that are certified for product content distribution and 2.) retailers, marketplaces, ecommerce platforms, and other sales channels or endpoints that are certified for product content ingestion. A trading partner’s certification level correlates to its level of platform integration with Venzee and resultant increasing automation.
Content distribution certification is designed for technology solutions that manage product content for clients (e.g., brands, manufacturers, distributors, suppliers, etc.). The Venzee Certified Network program offers 6 levels of content distribution certification for content management providers.
Venzee enables content management systems to deliver complete, accurate content intelligently and efficiently for all of their clients. For these platforms, Venzee pulls in client product content, transforms it to meet endpoint requirements, and distributes it out to one or more retail channels.
Content ingestion certification is designed for retailers, marketplaces, ecommerce platforms, and other retail endpoints that receive product information from multiple sources (i.e., suppliers) and, potentially, in multiple formats. The Venzee Certified Network program offers 6 levels of content ingestion certification for retailers, marketplaces, and ecommerce platforms.
Venzee enables retailers to get complete, accurate product content efficiently. Venzee’s Mesh API integrates with retailer systems and the systems (e.g., PIM, DAM, ERP, MDM, etc.) that suppliers rely on to manage their product content.
We’re solving retail’s data challenges with intelligent product content distribution made possible with end-to-end connectivity and automation powered by Venzee’s Mesh API. Retailers, suppliers, and the technology solutions they rely on require connectivity to overcome product data challenges and to scale product data flow to meet the growing needs of digital retail. As Venzee continues to expand its network of certified content management systems and endpoints, we’re becoming even more adept at distributing content efficiently, and elegantly for all of commerce.
Intelligent product content distribution is within reach. Speak to us today to learn more about becoming Venzee certified.
]]>Inefficient product content management costs companies a lot. For some perspective on retail's growing data challenges, read this interview with Riversand's Director of Product Management, Data Syndication and Strategic Alliances Sudu Gupta. As retailers evolve to be more competitive, a major change we’re seeing is that they’re requiring more product content from suppliers to meet growing consumer demand for information. Today, the retail industry predominantly relies on linear digital supply chains to get product content from origin to consumer, but these systems and processes aren't built to handle the exponentially increasing demand for content.
Venzee is fixing the problem with technology that facilitates digital supply networks--where trading partners are interconnected and data flows freely from endpoint to endpoint. With API-powered integrations and Mesh, our powerful transformation engine, Venzee is relieving the expensive burden of product content distribution and delivering complete, accurate product content to retailers.
To put it simply, Venzee improves content handling and automates content distribution through better-connected supply networks. Venzee simplifies the process of product submissions with technology that sits in between the product information management platforms that brands and manufacturers use to manage their content and the retailers and sales channels they sell to. The process can be broken down into three essential steps:
In this post, we'll go into the details of step one, the content ingestion step.
Streamlining content distribution starts with getting quality product content into Venzee. Venzee works with brands and suppliers that manage their products in content management solutions, like PIM, DAM, ERP, MDM, or EDI systems.
Commerce is an industry in transition, so we’ve built Venzee to be flexible. Venzee can work with any content management platform, process, or data format. We have growing partnerships with several content management solutions, including leading PIM, DAM, MDM, ERP, and EDI providers, so the 100,000+ suppliers they serve can take advantage of Venzee’s integrated content distribution, or content syndication, capabilities.
While these systems can export product content that is structured, clean, standardized and up-to-date, our team still sees considerable variation in format from client to client. To handle the range, we have multiple methods of receiving client data and customize solutions based on data format, time, and resources. Venzee supports content ingestion via API integration, email, Cloud drive, FTP, and manual file upload.
Channel partners can integrate directly with Venzee’s intelligent content distribution platform. Mesh API is a fully documented REST API that facilitates system-to-system connections, providing sophisticated, secure, end-to-end integration and messaging to facilitate complete, continuous workflow automation between a client (e.g., manufacturer, brand, supplier) and their content destinations. Mesh features include the following:
Users can import product content into Venzee by configuring workflows that automatically fetch and process product data files. Autopilot, Venzee’s plug-and-play integration tool, fetches data files (e.g., CSV, XLS, and XLSx) as they are detected on FTP or supported Cloud Drive, storing them in Venzee’s File Manager, and imports the product content to ready it for transformation and distribution. Users can also send data files as email attachments to the account’s assigned Venzee email address. All received files are stored in File Manager. During the workflow configuration step, users enter import settings per file set. When Autopilot detects a new file match, it initiates the corresponding import automation workflow, which readies the imported product content for the transformation phase. Autopilot enables clients to leverage content distribution solutions when they lack developer resources or the time or desire to invest in an API integration. Autopilot can be deployed quickly and is an automated content distribution solution for partners that don’t require in-platform feedback for clients. Autopilot features include the following:
Users can import product content by manually uploading data files in Venzee’s Web app, Studio. Uploaded files are stored in File Manager. Users complete the steps to import product content to ready it for the transformation phase. Studio is a low-resource way for suppliers to satisfy the "endless aisle" demands of major retailers. It is a valuable tool for suppliers that require content automation to scale efforts but lack the developer resources to integrate to Mesh.
Studio features include the following:
Trading partners at all points in digital supply networks are seeing an increased need for accurate, timely cross-organizational data, and Venzee helps them meet this need in the short- and long-term. While the ideal scenario of seamless, automated content distribution requires a full integration with Venzee’s Mesh API to flow client product content into Venzee, most partners require intermediate and immediately deployable solutions. Venzee solves this by offering semi-automated and manual content ingestion in addition to full API integration.
Beyond automation’s inherent benefit of speed, there are several advantages to Venzee’s content distribution. It eliminates manual steps, reduces errors in content, streamlines how retailers roll out changes to their content requirements to their suppliers, enables supply chains to optimize product content workflows, gets products in front of customers faster, and maximizes sales opportunities.
Ultimately, Venzee builds solutions that optimize content distribution for a client’s currently available resources and systems and adapts solutions as content management technologies evolve.
Learn how Venzee streamlines product content distribution to retailers for content management platforms.
]]>Mesh, Venzee’s core product, is our intelligent content distribution platform. It is Venzee’s answer to retail’s growing connectivity problem that’s becoming more painful by the minute. The market’s need for product data is growing exponentially, and brands and manufacturers (and the technology solutions they rely on to reduce the chaos) are struggling to keep up with demand.
So how are the millions of required data attributes getting from brands to retailers? Right now, the answer is slowly. Sending product data to retailers is a complicated mess with manual steps, errors, content teams, changing templates, and cumbersome platforms with steps specific to each retailer.
Venzee simplifies this process. With Mesh, digital content flows into our platform (We have 3 ways of doing this). There, the content is mapped, transformed and validated against current channel requirements. Next, it’s distributed to any number of retailers and ecommerce platforms.
Mesh API is the easiest way for content management solutions to connect to retailers. Integrating with Mesh gives our technology partners black box content distribution capabilities. Instead of having to manage numerous outbound connections to external systems and channels, content management platforms can connect to multiple retail channels through a single integration with Venzee.
Venzee is building seamless supply networks where digital product content flows from brands and manufacturers through Venzee and out to multiple sales channels, and that’s what we’re selling. Our API is a perfect solution for product information management (PIM), digital asset management (DAM), master data management (MDM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and other content management solutions who want to expand platform capabilities to content distribution.
Venzee continues to deliver technology that gives our partners competitive advantage. In this second generation API, we’ve updated our architecture so we can deploy solutions for our partners faster, optimized high volume data handling, and increased processing speed.
“The new API greatly simplifies how Venzee integrates with other systems. We’ve made it even easier for product information management and other content management providers to add content distribution to their workflows. Venzee can connect to any channel, regardless of API availability or integration method. Every system is different, and our technology enables us to integrate with them all, regardless of complexity,” Chief Technology Officer Markus Westerholz said.
Previously, we announced Venzee’s update to a fully microservice-based architecture, and this new API also features a microservice architecture, so application components can be deployed, tweaked, and redeployed independently without compromising the application's integrity. As a result, we can deploy improvements to our platform faster and focus on optimizing internal and external processes, including the optimization of messaging feeds to partners and clients that provide live updates on product information and status.
Here are the specifics:
Mesh API 2.0 is already in use by two of our PIM channel partners. These PIM providers are focused on digital supply chain solutions for mid-size and enterprise brands and manufacturers globally and have integrated with Venzee to automate the distribution of product content to retailers like:
The release of Mesh API 2.0 marks another 2019 growth milestone for Venzee. Our advancing technology demonstrates the maturity that we have over competing solutions. Our five signed channel partnerships and the two channel partner integrations we’ve had recently in quick succession evidence the urgent need that brands have to modernize how they’re distributing product content to retailers. It also shows that Venzee has the trust of its partners to deliver on its promise for some of the biggest brands in the world.
Mesh features include the following:
Venzee's Mesh API makes product content distribution easy. We relieve the burden of delivering complete, accurate content to retailers for our PIM, MDM, DAM, ERP, etc. partners (for their thousands of manufacturer and brand customers).
]]>Venzee Technologies (VENZ:TSXv) opened 2019 with several channel partner integration announcements. With 34 partners in discussion to utilize its technology, Venzee has recently signed its fourth partner agreement since launching their partner program in 2018. We recently spent a few minutes with John Abrams - a supply chain veteran and head of partner development for Venzee - to talk about what's driving partner interest at Venzee and what it signals about today's rapidly changing retail industry.
By way of background, Venzee is a SaaS-based alternative to traditional, highly regimented, point to point, "data pool" or product content syndication solutions. Leveraging a "connect to everything" approach, Venzee is the most advanced option for automating the distribution of consumer-relevant product information. Venzee’s intelligent workflow technology complements and extends the functional utility for in-place Content Management Systems, ERPs and similar enterprise tools without the "rip and replace" challenge of integrating older or less flexible retail-focused solutions.
Arlen Hansen: Let me get right to it John, what is attracting partners to Venzee?
John Abrams: Frankly, the consumer-driven digital revolution has caught up with retail trade. Consumers are continuing to increase their online shopping and are demanding accurate content on the products they shop for. As a result, brands that can't move fast enough to deliver relevant product information to today's demanding consumer find their market share evaporating. Quickly.
The pressure is on brands, manufacturers, and retailers to rapidly provide useful, accurate, and engaging digital content to the consumer through every sales and distribution channel, all the time, forever. Having incorrect content can lead to increased product returns, lower search rankings, lower sales and missed opportunities to build customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.
If a brand or retailer can't build a digital content connection with the consumer, they're in trouble. The old ways of sharing content - a handful of people sending somewhat accurate spreadsheets to a handful of retailers - just can't scale. Venzee does. We bypass costly, inefficient manual processes, connect to a brand's content management system, and automate the movement of digital content, anywhere, all the time, forever.
Our partners - those we've announced and those still testing our tech - are solution providers that understand how our unique approach benefits retail trade. They seek out our products as a means to quickly move content from brands and manufacturers to retailers, marketplaces, and demanding consumers.
AH: But if Venzee improves content distribution for brands, manufacturers and retailers, don't you end up competing directly with those who partner with you?
JA: Not at all. We partner with technical companies broadly referred to as "Content Management Systems". Our partners provide technical solutions that allow a brand, manufacturer, or retailer to manage and organize a myriad of details about a product. These details include physical properties (weight, shape, size, color, etc.), languages, regulatory, global trade, and other product data management challenges. Our role at Venzee is to extend the utility of these systems - seamlessly connect them to their trade partners - allowing rapid, accurate, distribution of all that information to an endless range of distribution and retail destinations.
To say it simply, our partners are great at organizing a lot of content attributes - Venzee is great at moving all that content to any destination. These are very different functions and require different technical competencies but that blend well together in our partner program.
Our partners are deeply entrenched in retail and provide Venzee a distribution network to reach hundreds of thousands of clients globally and improve content distribution across retail trade.
AH: Ok, I get it, but isn't "content syndication" something that standards-based data pools solved decades ago?
JA: Good question but sort of like suggesting the covered wagon solved for the challenges of distributing physical goods. Times change and needs change. But, let me give credit where credit is due. In 1974 a number of innovative organizations came together to prove that with a machine-readable barcode and access to an organized data structure, the process of grocery check-out could be made more efficient. And, in June 1974, at Marsh’s Grocery in Troy, Ohio a pack of Wrigley gum was accurately scanned at check-out. Amazing stuff. Innovative. Transformational.
But we're in a different world today. That pack of Wrigley gum sits in the Smithsonian and Marsh's went bankrupt in 2017. Yet the organization - and the data structures supporting that transaction some 50 years ago - still persist today in the form of a standards-based database that needs to "synchronize" globally on a nightly basis. Brands, manufacturers, and retailers reliant on that sort of outmoded technology (and there are tens of thousands) are now challenged - and candidly, failing - to provide the type of rich, engaging, actionable data today's consumer demands.
Venzee was built in an era of cloud databases that persist globally with no need to "synchronize." We are API - which is code for “easy to connect with” - on inbound and outbound transactions. And, we leverage deep learning and other advanced tech to recognize, communicate, and resolve anomalies across the whole of the content distribution system.
AH: Impressive. But what does that mean for growth at Venzee?
JA: There are significant implications. Our goal for 2019 is to continue to grow our partner relationships and improve their clients content distribution. We are in the process of integration with our announced partners and expect those to go live.
And, while I don't have a crystal ball, I can tell you that our partner discussions and current engagements all tell us the content distribution pain Venzee eliminates is a critical challenge their clients need resolved to remain competitive.
If that is true - and I believe it is - then Venzee, as a modern, pure-play content distribution solution, is well positioned to facilitate the digital connection between brands, manufacturers, retailers, and consumers on a global scale. I don't exactly know how to assign a value to that statement, but if the choice for a brand or retailer today is between tech in the Smithsonian or Venzee, Venzee wins every time.
AH: Many thanks for your time John,
Please don't hesitate to reach out to me with any further questions or comments.
Arlen Hansen, President, Kin Communications Inc.
Venzee is the easiest way for PIM, DAM, MDM, ERP, and other content management solutions to connect to retailers.
]]>Venzee Technologies (VENZ:TSXv) has recently announced another channel partnership. And as Company continues to execute these technology partnerships I thought it was important to sit down with Peter MacKay, President of Venzee, to discuss who their channel partners are and what Venzee does to enhance the existing digital supply chain software.
Venzee positions itself as a last mile technology solution that helps relieve the $100B pain retailers and brands are currently facing due to inaccurate online product information.
Arlen Hansen: Peter, I see that Venzee has signed a second Channel Partnership agreement with another PIM/CMS software company, for those that don’t know, what exactly is a CMS?
Peter MacKay: That’s a great question. PIM (Product Information Management) is product information technology or otherwise known as Content Management Solution (CMS) and these are the technology companies brands, manufacturers and distributors use to centralize product information within their organization. They organize product information, such as size, weight, color, price, image and other product information that consumers demand. Venzee is the last mile solution that can upload that product information off to the retailer and ultimately the end customer. For the most part, people couldn’t name one CMS company in the world, yet they are the backbone of the worlds digital supply chain that sits behind the consumer-facing brands.
AH: So if the CMS is already the backbone of the digital supply chain, is Venzee trying to disrupt this?
PM: Not at all, we position Venzee as a way to enhance the value of a CMS. These systems are very good at organizing and maintaining product information within an organization. However, Venzee is the critical element in helping that well-curated information get distributed to retailers and ultimately the customers. Our technology automates the distribution workflow allowing brands to move content to more sales channels with less labor.
Instead of competing, we sit in between the content management system and the retailer ensuring the brand and the retailers are speaking the same language. We believe Venzee is the best solution in the world to ensure accurate and consumer-relevant product content is efficiently delivered to retailers.
AH: But don’t the CMSs do this already? You would think that they offer this solution for their clients as part of their service now.
PM: Content Management Systems are complex and are the right tool to help companies pull together an accurate and complete record of a product. But sharing that product record with dozens, hundreds, or thousands of retail channels is a different task altogether. To be exceptional at delivering the last mile to the retailer, is not an easy task. So ultimately, it’s easier, much easier to partner with a proven tech than try to build yourself and this is where Venzee steps in.
AH: Can you dive a little more into the partnership strategy further?
PM: One, the CMSs will recommend Venzee as the last mile solution for either a referral fee or commission, this was the announcement we made this week with a European based content management service.
Secondly, a CMS partnership will sell the Venzee technology as a white label solution to their clients. Their clients won’t even know that Venzee exists yet Venzee will receive a percentage of the monthly fee the CMS sells the solution for.
Lastly, Venzee has a pay per use model, whereas we integrate Venzee API mesh and sit in between the CMS and the retailer. Venzee will get paid every time they use the Venzee plugin to upload the data, and this would be an enormous win for Venzee shareholders. With over 500M products being sold by Amazon alone, you can imagine how many millions of SKUs are uploaded daily to online retailers around the world.
AH: Does this mean you are abandoning the SMB SaaS model the Company originally built its business around?
PM: No, not at all. CMS software is typically enterprise grade and can be very expensive to use. There are still hundreds of thousands of smaller manufacturers and distributors that can benefit from Venzee. In addition to our partnerships, our client base and revenue continues to grow every month, and we believe we have found our sweet spot in positioning Venzee to this SMB market.
AH: Thanks Peter, I think this gives investors a much better understanding of the Venzee technology, but can you wave your arms and tell them what the market opportunity is?
PM: Statistics show that incorrect online product content costs retailers close to $100B a year and we understand we are the only one of few if any, automated data syndication solutions in the world that can address this enormous issues that retailers are trying to solve.
Venzee has a very special piece of technology and we are confident, by working with these channel partners, and onboarding SMBs, we believe Venzee will be a game changer in the world’s digital supply chain.
What’s that worth to someone who is losing $1B a year because of incorrect product data? You tell me.
Venzee is the easiest way to connect to retailers. With our black-box-ready Mesh API, content management providers can add product content distribution capabilities fast.
]]>Riversand, a Houston-based leader in complex data management products for brands and manufacturers in Energy, Healthcare and Food Service verticals, recently announced a partnership with Venzee. Venzee Technologies (VENZ:TSXv) is an intelligent, SaaS-based, content distribution solution for globally relevant brands.
Recently I spent a few minutes with Sudu Gupta, Riversand's director of Data Syndication and Strategic Alliances to learn more about this new relationship and how it provides benefit to brands and across the retail landscape.
Arlen Hansen: Given that retail trade continues to undergo dramatic change, how does the recent Partner engagement with Venzee help your customer base stay competitive?
Sudu Gupta: You are exactly right that the changes in retail trade are significant and ongoing. Our Master Data Management (MDM) and Product Information Management products provide brands and manufacturers with the ability to manage an increasingly complex array of attributes associated with their products. Venzee's focus on highly-automated and intelligent distribution of that well-curated product content Is critical to both brands and retailers. By working with Venzee, we are able to create a highly efficient and friction-free path that quickly moves relevant product information to its destination.
AH: So how do factors such as speed and efficiency help brands and manufacturers grow amid retail disruption?
SG: Over the past decade, consumers have become engaged in the supply chain in ways previously not imagined. Today a consumer can interrogate product information, view, spin, analyze, compare, and make purchase and shipping decisions in seconds using a simple handheld device. Brands able to convey relevant consumer content can thrive even in this unique and disruptive retail environment. Those brands unable to respond effectively to rapidly changing consumer and supply chain needs will find themselves struggling to remain relevant as demand for digital content accelerates globally.
AH: Are consumers the only ones pressing for more and more relevant product information?
SG: Of course not. Retailers now analyze millions of product attributes to determine how best to position a product across multiple selling channels. It is not unusual for a brand or manufacturer to be asked to supply several hundred new or unique product attributes in a given month. These requests - coupled with the need to accurately and instantly distribute new content often outstrip manual capabilities - hence the need to automate from the PIM or MDM solution through to the retailer or target destination. In the old days - like five years ago - product information still moved from point to point across the supply chain in a fashion not dissimilar from that of physical product itself. In that model, moving the data efficiently is not critical and emailing a spreadsheet, while not optimal perhaps, worked. In today's networked landscape, consumers, regulators, distributors, retailers, and other trade partners have an insatiable need to consume and analyze an infinite range of product attributes. Those needs cannot be met using inefficient and manual distribution models. Venzee offers a more intelligent, more efficient, cloud-based means of moving product attributes to where they need to be - often in real-time. We've partnered with Venzee to provide that unique advantage to our client base.
AH: In the most recent Forrester Wave (tm) report on Master Data products, Riversand was ranked as a "Strong Performer" and had a stronger strategic ranking than most in the report. How does your engagement with Venzee fit with your strategic goals?
SG: Good question. The MDM and PIM markets are highly competitive these days. It is critical that we continue to innovate and lead in the market. Our recently announced partnership with Venzee is the result of our analysis and testing of their technology coupled with our shared view of the need to offer tightly integrated, Intelligent and automated workflows that advantage our customers. While we both believe that this partnership will support our market growth goals, we also believe highly automated, friction-free, flexible, and network-based content distribution solutions provide strategic advantage for us and our client base. This advantage will remain critical for growth in a rapidly changing retail trade environment. It is clear that the pressure is on brands, manufacturers, and retailers to rapidly provide useful, accurate, and engaging digital content to the consumer through every sales and distribution channel will not abate - it is up to Riversand - and our new partner Venzee - to provide the modern, intelligent, and relevant solutions brands and manufacturers need to thrive in a rapidly changing environment.
AH: Last question. How can brands and manufacturers learn more about improving content flows with Riversand and Venzee products?
SG: Brands and manufacturers looking to modernize and simplify their content distribution processes can contact either team. Solution implementation isn't a barrier in large part because on the technical side, Riversand's products are certified to work with the Venzee Mesh(tm) product suite through a modern, bi-directional API connection.
Riversand is a global leader in information management that has a vision of assisting companies to make their data useful, usable and meaningful. Its Master Data Management platform empowers its customers to know their own customers better, move products faster, automate processes, mitigate risks and run their businesses smarter. Riversand’s customers, partners and analysts recognize it as a trusted partner, visionary and a leader. For more information, visit www.riversand.com and follow us @RiversandMDM on Twitter and Riversand Technologies on LinkedIn.
Venzee is an intelligent content distribution solution that eliminates inefficiencies in the digital supply chain by delivering consumer-ready product information to retailers via a peer-to-peer network. Powered by our core technology, Mesh, Venzee automates content exchange workflows that increase margins and accelerate revenue. Through a suite of products, we provide customized solutions for enterprises of all sizes, meeting each client’s desired level of sophistication and automation. To learn more about Venzee, visit https://venzee.com/
Venzee is the easiest way to connect to retailers. With our black-box-ready Mesh API, content management providers can add product content distribution capabilities fast.
]]>What do I mean by product content? In the world of retail, product content refers to everything you see in a product listing, including images, pricing, descriptions, lists of features, and more. As product listings get more complex to meet consumer demand for more information about the products they shop, meeting retailer requirements for uploading this content becomes more challenging for vendors and manufacturers. This is the challenge Venzee helps our users solve.
At Venzee, preparing product content for distribution to retailers begins with collecting product content, or product data, from a vendor, manufacturer, supplier, or brand. Too often at this step, I find that clients are working with data that’s inconsistently formatted, incomplete, and disorganized across multiple spreadsheet files. In order to automatically transform original product content to content that meets retailer requirements, the source data must first be standardized. Once the product data is clean, consistent, and complete, the user can take advantage of automated workflows for data transformation and distribution that Venzee provides. Many users achieve clean product data by using a PIM (Product Information Management) software, but an alternative to investing in software that manages your product information, the cost for which ranges considerably, is to build and maintain a master data sheet. This method is especially beneficial to SMBs who don’t have the budget to invest in a PIM or vendors who manage a smaller number of SKUs.
Whenever vendors submit products to retailers, they must match that retailer’s specific formatting and attribute requirements. Not having a single source of truth for their product information becomes a major hurdle when preparing products to submit and leads to all sorts of problems downstream. Errors are harder to correct, submission processes take up more time than they should, and managing the mess eats into the time products could be live in front of customers on a retailer’s site, and this problem is amplified when vendors submit to multiple retail channels.
When I work with vendors who want to upload their products to retail marketplaces like Amazon, Wayfair, and Overstock, they don’t always have a product data file ready to pull the accurate information they need for product uploads and submissions. Too often, they need to dig through endless email chains, reconcile multiple versions of undated spreadsheets, and reach out to different departments to request separately managed data points, only to end up with inaccurate or incomplete information. Maintaining a master data sheet helps solve such problems. For these organizations, learning how to create and sustainably manage a master data sheet might be one of the most profitable lessons they could learn as their business grows.
When implemented well, master data management procedures will streamline any process that involves retrieving product data and, thus, prevent delays in getting products online and ready to sell. Though such a process change requires thought and resources to start, keeping a master data sheet means up-to-date product data can be easily accessed by anyone who needs it in an organization.
Across ecommerce, providing rich product information for every SKU is essential for earning, enticing, and keeping online shoppers who--now more than ever--demand photos, bullet points, and detailed product specifications before making a buying decision. With the understanding that meeting consumer demand for information is crucial to survival, online retail giants (like Bed Bath & Beyond and Home Depot) are demanding more and more product data from their suppliers. This demand translates into increasingly complicated submission templates and more and more attribute requirements for vendors. The number of product data attributes required when adding new products to various ecommerce websites or retailer sites ranges anywhere from five to 80+ attributes, all of which must be completed with the retailer’s end consumer in mind. This may include a specific number of bulleted points, romance descriptions, key search terms, and categorizations. There may also be further content and formatting requirements for a given attribute, that restrict character counts, accepted characters, possible multiple choice values, etc. To top it off, these requirements may change on a weekly basis as retailers adapt requirements based on consumer feedback. Retail is transforming and retailers must be able to change rapidly to compete in the space, and so must vendors, which starts with changing how they’re managing product information.
The ability to syndicate enriched product data to multiple endpoints relies on a vendor’s knowledge of their own products and how well they communicate or transfer that data to their partners. Any business in the retail industry looking to scale will recognize the need to optimize data management procedures, which includes maintaining an impeccable master data sheet. In principle, a master data sheet is a spreadsheet that is a supplier’s single source of truth for all available product data relating to existing SKUs. A master data sheet is typically composed of information that’s been compiled from multiple files and/or sources. In the master data sheet spreadsheet, each body row contains one unique product or SKU. In the header, one product attribute or characteristic is assigned per column, so a SKU’s attribute data stretches horizontally across all columns. The resultant file contains values for price, dimensions, color, materials, and many more characteristics for every product, or SKU.
For vendors who don’t have a master data sheet from which to pull the required information, the process of getting required product data across to their retailer partners becomes a much more difficult process. Learning how to collect and maintain this data strategically can help tremendously in delivering content for high-converting, customer-facing product pages.
To keep up with multichannel, complex networks between vendors and retailers, a master data sheet must follow several guidelines:
Benefits of a master data sheet:
I have encountered many cases in which I am unable to meet a retailer’s requirements for even basic product information such as shipping method, dimensions, color, and retail price because the client’s data sheet lacks the information for those attributes. Although the client usually has the knowledge either memorized or stored separately, they have never thought to flesh out their basic price list by adding the information they will need across all their ecommerce endpoints. Having this compiled information on hand for each product upload saves much more time and prevents many more errors than filling in every separate form from scratch.
Even if data exists for these basic product attributes, clients still may omit basic data attributes simply because their organization has not created the columns to start recording it in the master data sheet. For example, some vendors selling items with multiple components or shipping cartons will not separately list the dimensions for each piece, even though their retailer partners require this information. So, instead of referring to one spreadsheet for the information they need, vendors find themselves scrolling through a separate sheet with shipping data, another with retailer-dependent prices, and yet another for product romance copies and different bullets.
The more data you record in your data sheet, the better for avoiding these extra steps. This way, you know all the information you need is in one organized place, and you have many options for converting your data for different criteria on different platforms.
These days, most ecommerce platforms will accept bulk product submissions in the form of a formatted spreadsheet, with designated custom columns and regulated values that are read and validated by their software. Because this process is automated, consistency of the values within each column of your data sheet is essential for correct interpretation by the platform you are working with. Any differences in syntax, however small they seem, will be read as an entirely different value, which may increase the frequency of errors and stretch the time it takes to get products live on-site. Fixing the problem from the root involves making sure data is initially entered into the central source using a uniform protocol, rather than trying to fix multiple outputs from an error-filled file. This will make data much easier to work with when transforming and distributing to different destinations.
Most retailers will request data in a form that designates separate columns for the smallest units of information. For example, rather than providing a single column for “Item Dimensions” to be recorded together, retailer setup sheets will primarily use separate columns:
If your source data sheet has dimensions combined in one cell for every SKU, you would need to split up the information in order to provide the specific bit of information for each column in the submission. But if you store these data points separately in the source data sheet, it would eliminate the work of splitting up the components for every submission. For any retailer that also requests the dimensions listed together in one cell, the separate columns can also be easily combined using a formula.
Similarly, for shipping carton dimensions:
Or
This goes not only for dimensions but for materials, which are often separated into:
Or
Some retailers also mandate multiple feature bullets, each in their own column, which will be much easier to provide if they are separated already in your master data, rather than copying and pasting parts of a long paragraph of text contained in one cell.
For those who just want the basics of building and managing a central spreadsheet from scratch, here are some tips:
You may want to start off by gathering information for attributes that are generally required across all retailers, for example:
PC, model number, product dimensions, shipping dimensions, color, ship type, cost, retail, country of origin, product title, longer romance copy and/or multiple feature bullet points, materials, product type or category…
To get a sense of which additional attributes to include, you should answer the question: What fields are required by my retailer partners? These will be the fields that you frequently need in your product submissions; thus, either recording these systematically or adding additional columns into your existing basic data sheet will save you the most time.
One way to do this is to take the following steps:
You can also identify additional columns that are valuable to record during the process of preparing a submission:
To ensure that your data is standardized and free of errors, follow these steps:
Instead of spending time extracting parts of data contained in one cell, splitting up the information into the smallest units possible will adhere much better to most retailer requirements. Small chunks allow you to be more flexible in the ways you can combine and convert information, and can be handy for synthesizing formula-based titles, dimensions descriptions, and extra bullet points.
One example can be seen below for dimensions. The first column contains general dimension data combined in a single cell. A better way to record this data is to split up each product dimension into its own column: length, width, and height. So 9”x2”x3” will read 9, 2, and 3 respectively in each column. 5 in by 5 in, 2 in thick will change to 5, 5, and 2 respectively. 5 round will convert to a length, width, and height of 5. Notice that when each discrete value is split up in its own cell, there is no need for the extra text and punctuation surrounding the numbers.
This principle can also be applied to products with several different dimensions (i.e. folded dimensions and extended dimensions should be separated into columns), materials lists, feature descriptions, etc.
For many vendors, rehauling their data process is an immense project that doesn’t happen overnight, but the long-term benefits are clear. No company aiming for ecommerce success can achieve significant expansion without a way to organize product data in a central repository. Investing the effort now in order to improve data quality and update data management procedures will have great impact on your organization. Among the clients I have worked with, those who have invested in improving the way they manage product information have made their product upload process significantly smoother and turned what was one of their most tedious and time-consuming processes into a much less daunting task.
As retailers face ever-growing competition for online consumers, their ongoing need to quickly, efficiently, and cost-effectively receive accurate and complete product information from their brands becomes more critical than ever to their success. New research shows that 94% of consumers say product information plays a key role in their purchasing decision (i.e. Content is king.), and better product information (e.g., more images, more specifications, better descriptions, etc.) can help drive sales. For retailers, getting the right product data and images, ensuring the data is good quality, and doing so both quickly and cost-effectively can mean the difference between success and failure.
In this post, we talk about some of the challenges common to product content collection for both retailers and vendors and offer a better way for us all--a solution that uses technology to do the heavy-lifting instead of humans.
Many retailers continue to invest massive amounts of time and resources in product content collection, or collecting product data, images, and rich additional information from their vendors (e.g., suppliers, brands and manufacturers). Product information is key to building out compelling product pages that attract consumers and result in sales. Each year the demand for more and richer product information has increased and will continue to increase if the trends hold. This means that the content burden will continue to grow for both the retailer teams responsible for product content collection and vendors. Growth is happening very quickly in this space, as retailers chase the endless aisle--pushing for more and more SKUs. And, with content collection processes being build out piece-by-piece atop this shifting landscape, and with such urgency, it’s not surprising that these stopgap solutions share a few challenges and points of friction.
The status quo for content collection suffers from three key issues: manual processes, errors, and less-than-user-friendly systems. We talk a bit more about each below.
The processes most retailers currently follow to collect content are far from efficient. Retailers have built vendor portals, but, for the most part, buyers and content teams spend vast amounts of time reviewing content received from vendors to check for errors, data completeness, and formatting compliance. With expanding product catalogs and product information requirements that are increasingly detailed, manually reviewing product information will always result in a bottleneck that slows the speed with which products can go live and be shoppable online, delaying revenue.
Finding errors in vendor submitted product content is all too common. When a retailer encounters errors in the product content they receive from a vendor, typically the assigned buyer must contact the vendor to inform them about the error and then communicate back and forth with the vendor until all issues with the submission have been resolved. This process can be a long one. SPS Commerce reported that it takes 13 messages on average to get a vendor to respond. Add into that the different parties on the retailer’s side that need to work with the vendors’ content (e.g., image team, copy team, etc.) and the amount of communication required among those teams (and likely even vendors) about missing or insufficient content, and the result isn’t great. As you can imagine, this process leaves retailers with a very high cost-of-SKU-acquisition, slow speed-to-site, and lost revenue opportunities.
Whatever a retailer’s content collection process is, if it involves filling in a spreadsheet provided via a portal or as a Microsoft Excel template with built-in validation, then vendors probably find it difficult. Whether the struggle is due to a dated or cumbersome vendor portal, product data templates that require too much time and effort for vendors to upload product content into, changing and ever-expanding content requirements, or the endless back-and-forth communication between vendors, buyers, and other retailer teams, the result is a resource-intensive process, slow speed-to-site, inadequate product pages, a poor consumer experience and, ultimately, poor online revenue performance.
To make it easier on vendors and encourage timely submissions, some retailers have chosen to address this issue by accepting whatever product information their vendors send them. While this lessens the burden on vendors, retailers end up spending a lot more time manually reviewing and enriching the content on their end (refer to point #1). Regardless of which side bears the burden, it’s still a burden that must be carried.
The good news is that retailers are starting to recognize that a more efficient product content submission process for their vendors is necessary for online sales and survival and success. Collection processes need improvement across the board, and this is where vendor onboarding programs can be a great investment.
Venzee’s Vendor Onboarding Program addresses common challenges in content collection, removing friction from the content collection process for both vendors and retailers.
As a retailer, what if you could offload your team’s task of having to hunt down and review content, communicate back and forth with vendors about incomplete or error-filled content, and push content to the appropriate teams and workflows? This is the problem Venzee solves. Venzee has created a vendor onboarding solution for retailers that streamlines and accelerates the product content collection process. Our program addresses the common inefficiencies we mentioned above, while also helping retailers improve the quality of online content, accelerate speed-to-site, provide a better consumer experience, and increase online sales. In short, Venzee applies people, process, and innovative technology to streamline the collection, delivery, and validation of product content.
Here are the key features and capabilities of our Vendor Onboarding Program:
Venzee’s vendor onboarding program can provide retailers with a streamlined process that results in the following benefits:
The benefits our Vendor Onboarding Program provides aren’t exclusive to retailers. Vendors see the following benefits:
Venzee takes care of vendors with one-on-one onboarding and white glove support, so retailers don't have to spend resources on gathering product content. Let us remove the friction from your content collection process.
The really short version is that:
So which system does your organization need? In this post, we provide details to help you understand the difference and answer questions like:
One key difference between a PIM and DAM lies in what data they manage and how it’s organized. PIMs store information and media content associated with a product, and organize this information on a product by product basis - or rather, by each specific Stock Keeping Unit (SKU). For a typical PIM, this range of information can include the following:
Generally, DAMs act as holistic solutions for managing an organization’s digital assets. Through metadata and tagging, DAMs index digital assets in a structured way, so service providers can find the information they need in mere seconds. A typical company using a DAM would likely use it to manage the following:
PIMs and DAMs both provide users with powerful tools and workflows to manage, optimize, and distribute product information and digital assets more effectively. Below are some processes commonly managed by each type of system.
You can see that there’s overlapping functionality, and, to make it a bit more difficult to draw a line of differentiation between PIMs and DAMs, many PIMs offer some basic DAM functionality-- but not to the same extent as a dedicated DAM system. For a visual overview, check out this article.
As with any software solution, each system is designed to meet the needs of a target user or a target range of users. PIMs make sense for clients with product catalogs and portfolios and these clients are typically manufacturers, vendors, and retailers. DAMs, on the other hand, make sense for businesses that regularly create and share digital assets, have digital assets to organize, and would benefit from automation in the content creation process.
Generally, a PIM might benefit your business if you meet the following criteria:
Alternatively, a DAM can be helpful for your business if you meeting the following criteria:
Also to keep in mind, you don’t necessarily need to choose one solution or the other. Several technology providers offer systems that feature aspects of both or provide PIM and DAM functionality as separate services within the same ecosystem. If you need to store product information and have a large library of non-product-specific digital assets, then you might want both a PIM and a DAM or, alternatively, an enterprise platform that offers the capabilities of both. And, if you’re looking for an even more complex solution, Content Management Systems (CMS) might come into the mix.
The available PIM and DAM systems present quite a range for businesses to choose from with different features, levels of sophistication, and prices.If you’re looking for a detailed list of what’s available and differences in offerings, check out this review of Top Product Information Management (PIM) Software 2018 and Gartner’s Top 19 Enterprise Digital Asset Management Solutions.
We work with a growing list of PIM and DAM providers like InRiver PIM, STIBO, Riversand, PIMworks (Mobius), Plytix, and Widen. Since Venzee is a pure-play technology solution for product content distribution, we’ve built an API that can integrate with whichever platform (e.g., PIM, DAM, EDI, ERP, or CMS) you choose to help you get consumer-ready product content to all of your retailers, thus augmenting your existing content management workflows and eliminating yet another manual process.
12% of all retail sales now happen online, and that share is only going to increase going forward. To capitalize on this trend, many vendors are adding new online sales channels, and whether that's an internet retailer or a marketplace, doing so oftentimes requires web-ready product content (and more big retailers are placing the burden of providing product content onto manufacturers, vendors, brands, and suppliers). Maintaining consistent product information or brand identity across all these different sales channels, while also effectively customizing content for each unique audience, is a massive challenge. Realistically, if you’re doing it all manually, it only takes a few products and marketing campaigns across a couple channels before it becomes impossible to ensure that you’re using consistent messaging for all of your product lines--you need a central repository for your product information. Thus it really isn’t a question of if you will end up needing a PIM (likely one with some built-in DAM functionality) to manage your product information, but when.
Unfortunately, the case for when companies should consider investing in a DAM isn’t as clear-cut. The value of a robust DAM system really comes from optimizing the processes around the creation and sharing of digital assets, as well as the improved security. A blog post by Widen contends that “DAM software includes tools that deliver peace of mind by restricting access, viewing and archiving — all of which reduces security concerns. This is called user governance, and it allows a DAM admin to have incredible control over ensuring the right digital assets are being viewed by the right people, at the right time.” User governance typically becomes a greater concern as organizations grow. Once your business reaches that threshold (and this is different for each organization), it’s essential to have control over where and how your brand assets are being used.
Of course, budget is a key concern, and some of the capabilities we’ve discussed in this article come at a premium. Luckily, there are more than a few PIM and DAM systems available, ranging from some surprisingly effective free tools to enterprise solutions. If you’re encountering any of the challenges we’ve discussed, rest assured that you can find a solution that can help you tame the chaos, no matter how large or small your business is.
]]>If you’re involved in the wholesale of home furnishing products and aren’t already familiar with these market events, you might want to consider setting up a permanent showroom or temporarily exhibiting at one or more of these events. Here’s an overview of the home furnishings market events in each of these cities for the 2019 season.
City: High Point, North Carolina
Event Location: Various locations across town
Time of year: April & October
Self-proclaimed as “fashion week for home furnishings,” the High Point Market is the largest trade show in the world for the furniture industry. This Market attracts such comprehensive participation that the show’s own organizers claim “if you can’t find it in High Point… it probably doesn’t exist.”
Each spring and fall over 75,000 retail buyers, interior designers, architects, and home furnishings sales professionals descend on 11.5 million square feet of show space spread over 180 buildings in High Point North Carolina that participate in the market. With over 2,000 exhibitors and tens of thousands of new product introductions, this is a “can’t miss” event for buyer teams from retailers of every shape and size, making the High Point Market perhaps the leading hub for the home furnishings industry globally.
Learn more about the High Point Market on the official website.
City: Las Vegas, Nevada
Event Location: World Market Center
Time of year: January & July
Backed by the same organization as the High Point Market (International Market Centers), the Las Vegas Market is the leading cross-category wholesale market for gifts, home decor, and furniture. The World Market Center hosts over 5.4 million square feet of show space with permanent showrooms for more than 4,000 brands and temporary exhibits for over 530 gift and home lines.
As the largest event on or near the West Coast, market organizers highlight the show’s role as a focal point for West Coast home fashion and even suggest that the show’s “collection defines the West” on the website. Las Vegas’s friendly West Coast vibe is also emphasized - indeed, attendees can look forward to Vegas’s world-renowned entertainment venues and extensive, high quality, and competitively priced amenities.
Learn more about the Las Vegas Market on the official website.
City: Dallas, Texas
Event Location: Dallas Market Center
Time of year: January & June
Dallas Market Center is known by many as the International Home of Lighting, and the biannual Lightovation show is the premier event for both the residential and commercial lighting industry worldwide. Each January and June buyers attend the market to discover novel products, innovative brands, browse the most comprehensive assortment of fixed, portable and trend lighting, and learn about industry trends from a full slate of business education and networking events. In addition, the Total Home & Gift Market is hosted concurrently to Lightovation, offering a full range of home decor, gifts, gourmet foods, housewares, and accessories.
The 5 million square foot Dallas Market Center campus attracts nearly 200,000 retail buyers per year from all 50 US states and 85 countries around the world.
Learn more about Lightovation on the Dallas Market Center website.
City: Atlanta, Georgia
Event Location: AmericasMart
Time of year: January & July
With 7 million square feet of show space in downtown Atlanta, AmericasMart hosts the largest collection of wholesale home furnishing, gift, area rug, and apparel products in the world. 9,000+ brands are exhibited across 1,400 permanent showrooms and 3,000 temporary exhibiting companies.
AmericasMart hosts 16 separate shows per year for specific product categories, with the International Gift & Home Furnishings Market and International Area Rug Markets taking place each January and July.
Learn more about the Atlanta International Gift & Home Furnishings Market on the AmericasMart website.
To help you plan your calendar, here are the events for the year in order of appearance.
Jan 8th to Jan 15th - Atlanta Market, Winter
Jan 16th to Jan 20th - Dallas Lightovation, Winter
Jan 27th to Jan 31st - Las Vegas Market, Winter
April 6th to April 10th - High Point Market, Spring
June 19th to June 22nd - Dallas Lightovation, Summer
July 9th to July 15th - Atlanta Market, Summer
July 28th to Aug 1st - Las Vegas Market, Summer
October 19th to 23rd - High Point Market, Fall
]]>To help you navigate industry terminology and jargon, we’ve built this glossary (which we’ll continue to update) with key terms related to the digital supply chain and associated technologies.
We’ve divided terms into the following subcategories:
While the first digital supply chain technologies were developed to help retailers and their largest suppliers keep track of inventory in real-time, technologies have evolved over the years to include the management of the basic product data that a retailer would store in their product catalog.
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) - is the point to point the electronic communication of business transactions between organizations or trading partners, with data conforming to one of several standards (the first of which was introduced in the early 1980s) depending on the country and industry in question. Purchase orders, confirmations, invoices, shipping updates and other data companies need for real time inventory management can be handled by EDI.
EDI Virtual Area Network (EDI VAN) - a network of EDI users managed by a provider. Since EDI is a point to point technology, a provider maintains one to one connections with the members and sits at the center of the resulting network.
Global Standards 1 (GS1) - is a non-profit organization that develops and maintains a range of standards for business communication, the best-known example being the Bar Code.
Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) - a family of GS1 data structures used to identify products, with the North American standard being the Universal Product Code (UPC).
Global Data Synchronization Network (GDSN) - is an internet-based integration system allowing trading partners (manufacturers, distributors, retailers, etc.) to share GS1 standard conforming data in real time. Participating trading partners can gain access to the GDSN through any of 41 different GDSN Data Pools operated by commercial enterprises, the largest being 1WorldSync.
Businesses today use a wide variety of tools and systems to create, store, and organize their product information, digital assets, and business data. Below are some of the most common types of systems, though any given system may have features that fall across multiple categories.
Content Management Systems (CMS) - are used to manage the creation and modification of digital content. While features vary widely, most CMS systems include web-based publishing, format management, version control, edit tracking, indexing, search and retrieval.
Digital Asset Management (DAM) - refers to the management of digital assets and includes annotation, cataloging, retrieval and distribution of pictures and other digital assets. DAM systems may be viewed as a subset of CMS systems.
Product Information Management (PIM) - a PIM is used to develop, manage and organize information about products, with a focus on the data required to market and sell the products through one or more distribution channels.
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) - refers both to the process and associated systems used to manage and integrate the important parts of a business. An ERP management information system integrates areas such as planning, purchasing, inventory management, sales, marketing, finance and human resources.
Master Data Management (MDM) - aims to prevent, contain and eliminate errors and inconsistencies across multiple datasets managed by the same company, often on different systems (such as those described above). This involves the integration of different datasets, defining sets of permissible values, the creation of a central master dataset that can provide a single point of reference for various business systems, as well as analytics of that data to provide information which can be used to support decision making.
For information that can’t be transmitted via EDI or the GDSN Network, organizations must send files to each other using more flexible internet-based solutions. After the simple, but limited, email attachment, the following are some of the most common methods.
File Transfer Protocol (FTP) - a network protocol used to transfer file between a client and a server over the internet or a local area network. From the users point of view, you are able to log onto a “drive” over the internet using an FTP client and upload or download files from that drive.
Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) - a network protocol that uses a Secure Shell (SSH) to encrypt and securely transmit files across an unsecured network, predominantly the internet.
Cloud drive - Cloud drive solutions including Google Drives, Dropbox, iCloud and Microsoft’s Onedrive make sharing files simple. Users can give each other access to different files/folders, or even send a link to a specific file through an email or messaging application like Slack
Application Programming Interface (API) - a set of protocols, routines, and tools provided by one piece of software, specifying how other systems/software can interact with it. APIs allow software developers to integrate separate systems, such that System A can retrieve or upload information/data from System B automatically (depending on what the API in question allows).
Vendor Portal - a web portal run by a major retailer to collect product information from their vendors/suppliers.
Retailer Portal - a web portal run by a manufacturer to allow their retailers to access and download product information and associated digital content.
Interested in improving the efficiency of your digital supply chain? Let's talk about how you're managing your product content.
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