Solving Product Content Syndication – The Pillar of Omnichannel Experience

With Product content syndication, Omnichannel is becoming the new norm for eCommerce, an increasing number of businesses are dealing with the big question — how do I ensure my product content is customer-ready? And this is where product content syndication (a.k.a. product data syndication) is absolutely critical for brands and distributors to drive an engaging and profitable digital presence.

The Evolving Customer Drives the Need for Product Content Syndication

Present day online customers look at shopping experiences from the lens of information completeness, accuracy and consistency across all sales channels, and the market has no choice but to adapt to this expectation. Whether they’re shopping on a brand, retailer, or marketplace website, they want all their questions answered comprehensively, and instantly. And every interaction that a customer has with a product is potentially a make-or-break situation.

The Challenge of Product Content Syndication

Manufacturers, retailers and distributors face a very different set of challenges depending on what they want to do with product data. Either way, these challenges have a direct impact on customer experience making syndication an instantly prudent solution for a whole range of issues.

Here are some of the top challenges businesses face when onboarding and distributing product data:

For brands and distributors selling on their own platform, the very first challenge is product data onboarding. Product data flows in from multiple sources including ERPs, data pools, spreadsheets etc. with no consistent data structure. Product feeds don’t suit the selling platform model and there is no way to validate the completeness and relevance of data.

On the other hand, businesses that sell their products on retailer websites or marketplaces such as Amazon or Grainger face a different beast — that of streamlining product data distribution. Every sales channel has unique standards and requirements, and failure to adhere to any of these standards results in delisting of products.

In either scenario, the biggest challenge is manual data processing, which, in turn, opens the door to all subsequent business challenges. Teams are left dealing with countless complex spreadsheets and pages of code that take way too long to process. Even in the best case, this manual handling of data takes too long and there is no way to keep track of data accuracy and completeness.

Lack of governance rules and validation mechanisms means that there is no way to go back and check product data. All businesses can do is to wait for things to blow up, or even worse, never find out.

On top of all these challenges, constant changes and updates in data standards, whether on the business’ own selling channel or on a retailer or marketplace channel, requires the wheel to be reinvented, even before it has caught momentum.

The impact of these challenges is widespread, ranging from thousands of hours lost in manual data processing, data inconsistency and data inaccuracy to delayed time-to-market, products getting delisted from marketplaces such, lag in adapting product content to changing standards, and so on. All these factors, put together, hamper the metric that matters the most — customer experience and trust.

How Businesses can Benefit from Product Content Syndication

Product content syndication (or product data syndication) is a middleware-driven solution that enables businesses to solve the syndication problem once and for all. Here are some of the key areas that data syndication can help streamline and optimize:

Syndication software automates the process of data onboarding, whether the information is incoming from a direct supplier or content provider. It lets you set a template for structuring this data with ease. Once this is done, the process of data ingestion is automated with no manual effort required.

Distribution efforts are similarly automated with multiple templates available for multiple sales channels. Syndication solutions go beyond basic mapping capabilities, allowing businesses to set up complex templates for different channel requirements. Once these standards are set, businesses can publish products automatically, accelerate their time-to-market and reach their target audience in no time.

Working with new partners is easy, as adapting to change is a one-time effort. Whether it’s new sources of incoming data, or new sales channels for distribution; onboarding a new party, or adapting to new standards is quick and easy. Just set up and define the template for automation and you’re good to go.

Governance rules are easy to set up so businesses don’t need to worry about compliance to data standards. A syndication software allows businesses to set up governance rules and policies for data usage, integrity, usability, availability and structure. This ensures that product data is always in line with the required standards.

As an additional layer, syndication tools also provide businesses the ability to leverage validation mechanisms to check product data. This helps identify holes in the data and fix them before they go to the sales channel. Not only does this prevent delisting from marketplaces and other sales channels, it also lays the foundation for better product experience.

Again, pick the right syndication tool, and you get the power of integration with some of the leading marketplaces and sales channels. This saves businesses the time required to set up templates for product data standards, and essentially hit the ground running from the get-go.

With these capabilities in place, businesses can ensure that their products are always discoverable with accurate and up-to-date information. Internal teams save the hassle of dealing with countless spreadsheets for eternity, and can redirect their time to adding value to the business.

Then again, with the right syndication tool, businesses don’t need to worry about coding the solution; just leverage an intuitive, easy-to-use tool to set up processes in no time and crack operational efficiency. The result — faster time-to-market and an enhanced digital presence.

Amaze PXM’s Bridge — A Complete Syndication Solution

Amaze PXM gives businesses the power of a next-gen PIM with digital asset management (DAM) and the added advantage of an advanced syndication solution: Bridge. As an automated end-to-end syndication solution, bridge lets you master the entire product content lifecycle — from ingestion to distribution.

Users can set up automated syndication rules and update existing templates in no time to accelerate the syndication process. With the capability to set up robust governance rules, data integrity is always top notch. And validation capabilities ensure that highest data standards are always adhered to.

Amaze PXM also enables easy integration with 100+ marketplaces and distribution channels including Amazon, Grainger, Fastenal, eBay, Walmart, Shopify and more! Tried and tested by Grainger, Amaze PXM’s integration capabilities ensure that syndication is a breeze.

If you’re looking to evolve your business, rather than getting caught up in the manual task of product data syndication, try Amaze!