Shop.org 2017 Tech talk provide right content and better customer experience with a modern pim riversand_lavelle
1. Provide Right Content & Better Customer
Experience with a Modern PIM
DOUG LAVELLE
IT Management Consultant
2. Nation’s leading resource for educational products.
Largest school supply and school furniture distributor in
the country.
110,000 products from more than 2,000
manufacturers.
Each of SSI’s companies is one of the top providers in
their niche educational market in the United States.
School Specialty brands address the full spectrum of educational
needs, from basic school supplies to furniture and playground
equipment, to standards-based curriculum solutions.
Overview
In the K-12 Marketplace
3. 20 years of IT/IS Management and Technical experience
MDMCenter Implementation for School Specialty
Lead implementation of a full ERP (Infor M3) solution for
OtterBox
Over 9 years with Staples/Corporate Express as the
Director IS Contract Systems, responsible for leading the
development and architecture groups of e-Commerce,
PDM, ERP, SFA, Process Architecture and Technical
Architecture DOUG LAVELLE
IT Management Consultant
Overview
4. Managing product data with an ERP is not feasible
for a customer obsessed enterprise
Highly customized ERP implementation
- unnecessary applications and no longer supported
- 61% of ERP implementations take longer than expected.
- 74.1% of ERP projects exceed budget.
Tight Ecommerce integration
- Limited product representation
- not enough to cater to different requirements
Outdated platform
- Difficult to maintain and costly to change
- Multiple legacy systems used in Federal government which
are more than 50 years old.
Business has to perform manual process &
procedures
Not enough checks or process control
ERPEnterprise Resource
Planning
CRM & Sales
Customer Web Portal
Distribution
Time & Projects
Dashboards
Finance
Purchasing
Manufacturing
1. http://blog.datixinc.com/blog/erp-implementation-stats
2. http://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2016/05/10-oldest-it-systems-
federal-government/128599/
Customer experience for internal and external
resources is negatively impacted
6. School Specialty Decision
De-couple many key capabilities from the ERP
Ecommerce
Product Information
Customer Information
Salesforce automation
Provide much needed advancements while decreasing the
footprint and complexity of an aging ERP
7. PIM Fit in the SSI Enterprise
Supply Publish
ERP
Images
PIM
Critical Path
Management
Develop
Video
Ext.
Source
e-store
Print
Mobile
Web
Enrich
Translate
Classify
8. PIM
Enriched Content with PIM
Change data means change
code and QA – Costly
Single representation –
Hinder ability to modify
customer facing attributes
Flexibility to enrich items
with more attributes
with configurations
Agile
Author data for
ecommerce engine
ERP
9. PIM
Multiple Hierarchies with PIM
Complex to manage
different representations &
categorizations
Different requirements for
Finance, Sales, Ecommerce
Internal teams competing for
their view
Create different hierarchies
as per requirements and
manage products within
PIM
Ecommerce hierarchy
Print hierarchy
Finance hierarchy
ERP
10. PIM
Data Quality & Workflow with PIM
Little visibility of incomplete
data
No workflow
Complex Batch jobs
Not tuned for new
ecommerce requirements
No ability to assign roles by
item attribute
Visibility into data accuracy
Validation at data entry
Visibility of the incomplete
data to the right people
Simplified & automated jobs
Queue for merchants for
items they have to work on
ERP
11. Know your business requirements from
each department
Capabilities & functionality centric
approach
Objectify your business goals
This is NOT solely a technology decision, it MUST be made in
partnership with the organizations that will utilize the
system!
How do you choose your PIM
12. How do you make the
implementation a success
Multiple mini UAT’s
Agile course correction
Train business users
Phased Implementation - Better ROI
Partnering with the business users throughout the UAT’s is
key to their buy-in and the implementations success!
13. Lower TCO & quick time to market
Single unified web based interface
Smart sheet capability
Look at product data from quality metric perspective
Multi Domain functionality – extend similar ecosystem to
products and customers
Riversand aligned with SSI on the philosophy of flexible multiple UAT’s which
helped in making the project successful and achieve our business objectives.
SSI Riversand PIM Solution