A study by The McKinsey Global Institute found that only 18% of businesses in the United States are operating at their digital potential. No matter the industry you are is digital change is challenging but also critical to your success.
Scott Sommers, Director of Ecommerce Strategy at ShurTech, noticed inconsistencies in how his organization worked to deliver product information and the impact inefficiencies had on their ability to drive sales on online. Armed with a vision to streamline processes and develop a strong singular depository to manage, syndicate, and optimize product content, ShurTech's transformation saw time-to-market decrease by 75% and an increase of 15% in sales rank on Amazon in 4 months..
How did Scott and the ShurTech do it? Check out their three step approach to expanding PXM across the global organization.
Centralize Product Information for Accessibility & Consistency
The first step to driving adoption for ecommerce teams looking to expand market share and drive sales is to develop a singular point of truth for content. What does that mean? It means product information needs to live in one place, be standardized, and accessible for different team members to access. ShurTech used Salsify to centralize all product information -- no more spreadsheets or chasing team members for their institutional knowledge. Scott led educational efforts to standardize the definition of product content across the organization. As The effort allowed ShurTech to have one place to look for marketing and branding content for the digital shelf.
Create a Closed-loop Content Creation & Syndication Capability
For ShurTech, the Ecommerce team works closely with their Product Management department to ensure product information is accurate and optimized. Scott’s team utilized Readiness Reports and Insights to pinpoint which products needed optimizing (e.g.. additional content or stronger product titles) to perform better on key sales channels. Once the Ecommerce team has product information 100% ready for syndication, it can be delivered to those channels, like Amazon. Creating this closed-loop capability and process would make it easier for Scott to expand PXM across divisions: it was simple, data driven and easy to work across departments to see improvements on their digital shelf performance.
Share Proof of Concept Gains
Scott wanted their PXM solution to be one that could be used across divisions and on a global scale for ShurTech. The desire for a scalable solution drove their decision to work with Salsify and refine their approach to the digital shelf. Once the Ecommerce team saw that PXM helped reduce time to market and increase sales ranks on their digital shelf, Scott underscored the significance of it to the rest of the organization and helped bring the solution to their B2B division and European counterparts to help streamline their processes and to ensure the singular vocabulary was consistent across the organization.
As with most technology rollouts, PXM should be implemented in phases to ensure the initial roll out within one division works seamlessly and is impactful to develop and refine a new approach to working. For ShurTech, expansion has enabled the organization to develop unified sales material for syndication and simplified digital distribution to grow sale channels and focus on profit.