To understand Why Does a Company Need Catalog Management Software, we take the case of a fictional online grocery story – Zimblybuy. Zimblybuy is considering whether it should invest in a catalog management system. They speak to a consultant who asks them to point out the issues they face in their business.
Situation #1
Just as in normal organizations, in e-Commerce organization too there are many departments and divisions; each of these tend to work within their own silos. Such independence leads to data being owned by different entities and stored in different ways. Such dispersion of data in the organization leads to misleading and, sometimes, conflicting information being presented to the customer.
At Zimblybuy, the Marketing division rolls out a Buy One Get One (BOGO) offer on a certain set of products. For this event, the division creates a new set of product images with the BOGO identifier on the image. On the day the campaign ends, these images are to be removed and replaced with images that do not contain the BOGO identifier. The Marketing team sends out an email to the Website team informing them that the campaign has ended; however, the Website team does not realize that this means the images have to be changed over. This leads to disgruntled customers who feel they did not get the discount they had expected. Such situations can be avoided by implementing a catalog management software, such as CatalogStudio. A catalog management software allows you to store product information centrally while giving different departments access to parts of the repository with which they work.
Situation #2
Zimblybuy wants to implement a rewards program that offers regular customers lower prices on purchases. The idea is to offer different programs to the customers who can choose to enroll in the program that best suits their needs. However, Zimblybuy also wants to show non-members the prices that premium members receive in an attempt to entice them to sign-up for the member programs. Catalog management, such as CatalogStudio, allows you to create buyer groups and implement prices specific to each group.
Situation #3
During the festive season, Zimblybuy stocks up on festival-specific items. The Marketing division decides to use printed catalogs as inserts in the local newspapers to promote the special items. A complete catalog management system, such as CatalogStudio, allows you to create print catalogs using their publishing tool PDFxPress. With a wide variety of templates to choose from, PDFxPress can reduce up to 90% effort towards creating a print catalog. Furthermore, the print catalog accesses the data and images from the same central repository as the website, so the customer gets a uniform experience.
A good catalog management system is a great enabler. Features such as maintaining category hierarchy, maintaining attributes for products, creating complex product-accessory relationships gives you the power to control your inventory better. With a proper system in place, an e-Commerce organization will be much more flexible and agile, allowing it to react to the market while ensuring that the customer experience is not compromised in any manner.
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