Are your customers getting the information they need about your products? Relevant, meaningful, and impactful product content can go a long to fostering loyalty, encouraging word of mouth recommendations, and cementing the relationship between that consumer and a favored brand. Connecting your product data to the content that your customers consume is key to delivering on that experience.
If a brand struggles to bring new product innovations to market quickly or to respond in a timely way to new trends, they risk losing valued customers to rivals. Yet, too often, this is the reality for suppliers: the inability to quickly and efficiently generate and distribute relevant product information, and enticing visual experiences which help to contextualize or personalize content for target customers, means they are not ready for consumers as their latest desires and demands are forming.
Brands need to do all they can to maximize the value they get from product content, and a big part of this is managing it in the most effective way. We think that Digital Asset Management (DAM) has long been an important technology in terms of marketing, but in recent years has become invaluable when looking at the larger product lifecycle and has evolved into Product Asset Management (PAM) approach. PAM is a strategy to leverage enterprise digital asset management technology across the product lifecycle.
This is a trend recently recognized by Gartner in the May 2020 report “Evolve From Product Information Management to Product Experience Management With a 360-Degree Analytics Strategy“ (Gartner subscription required) (ID G00719037), during which they point out:
Organizations need to evolve from product information management to product experience management. In doing so, data and analytics leaders will unlock greater business value through their programs by connecting product information to product analytics to optimize product experiences for customers.
This can be done by providing a common platform for critical product information (both assets and data) at key points in the product design lifecycle, packaging development process, campaign creatives development, etc.).
Gartner recommends to “create a 360-degree view of your products by connecting rich product content and digital assets to product master data, in support of customer-centric experiences.” Further, “a 360-degree view brings together all trusted data about a product to enable fulfillment of specific business and channel requirements. The resulting product information can then be “viewed” holistically through many business contexts, whether they be strategic, operational, or analytical. From these holistic views, better business outcomes can be achieved.”
The result is that the role that digital assets and data play in helping retailers and brands bring new products to the market more quickly has grown and will continue to do so as consumers demand this. As Gartner states,
Without an expanded focus to connect product datasets to behavioral data — in order to realize a 360-degree view of the product — new business opportunities will be missed.
By providing a common platform for critical product information (both assets and data) at key points in the product lifecycle (design, packaging, creatives campaign development, etc.), the result is that the role that digital assets and data play in helping retailers and brands bring new products to market more quickly has grown and will continue to do so as consumers demand this.
Gartner provides, “A 360-degree view of products connects all trusted product data assets in order to fulfill specific channel requirements. The resultant product catalog is then available to all consumers from a single, trusted version of the truth.”
With consumer demands growing around digital experience, PAM becomes an even more important strategy moving forward. It takes content beyond the marketing department, connecting it to data and other assets across the entire organization. This connection means that PAM informs the digital experience across different business functions and at multiple touchpoints, making it easier to be more consistent in message and tone, and better meeting consumer requirements keeping in mind the importance of customer experience in retail.
Gartner, “Evolve From Product Information Management to Product Experience Management With a 360-Degree Analytics Strategy”, Simon Walker, 5 May 2020.