The Salsify Product Experience Management (PXM) platform streamlines product information management (PIM) and helps brands maximize the value of their product data.
The ticket to realizing all the benefits the platform offers? Effectively onboarding your data and teams within the first month to set the foundation for long-term success.
From laying out your sales channels to syndicating content for the first time, here are seven critical things you should do within the first 30 days to crush your Salsify onboarding and start generating wins.
2. Organize and Prepare Your Product Content
Assembling all your relevant product data is a crucial first step in onboarding because it sets the foundation for creating a single source of truth in the Salsify PXM platform.
Take Riboli Family Wines as an example. The brand faced challenges with product data centralization and management before implementing the Salsify PXM platform.
“We were using spreadsheets to track retail partner requirements, manually checking off where we did or didn’t have the right data for each product,” says Jenna Steele, vice president of ecommerce and digital. “It was inefficient and unsustainable.”
By collecting and consolidating the right product data, Riboli Family Wines established a centralized source of truth for all product content, enabling them to efficiently syndicate to dozens of channels.
Consider the types of data you want to store in your PXM platform, including:
- Product descriptions
- Pricing
- Images
- Size options
- Color options
Next, determine how you want to organize and scope the data.
Keep in mind that Salsify’s platform is flexible, unlike other PIM solutions that make it difficult to adapt over time after you’ve defined your data model. The Salsify PXM platform evolves as your content, products, and sales channels change, so you don’t have to get it exactly right from the start.
No matter where you begin with your data, Salsify’s PXM platform enables you to adapt quickly.
“Moving fast is the only way to not fall behind on the digital shelf, so it's important to find and implement efficient solutions like Salsify that can bridge gaps between content sources and teams, making everyone’s jobs easier,” says Kübra Bülbül, master data manager at VitrA.
2. List Your Sales Channels
Your brand likely sells across multiple channels and serves different audiences, including retailers, wholesalers, distributors, direct-to-consumer (D2C) channels, or even internal teams.
And if your brand is like most others, your sales channels probably have unique — and often conflicting — content requirements, so it’s vital to know your product content’s reach and where it needs to be distributed.
Develop more effective channel-specific content strategies by gaining a solid grasp on:
- Your primary sales channels;
- Each channel’s content requirements;
- The current location of product content within your system; and
- The individuals responsible for content governance and deployment.
Listing your sales channels is different than mapping them. Features like universal properties can automatically map diverse data models to common standards, enabling seamless syndication across different retailer sites and sales channels.
3. Configure Your Salsify Platform
The Salsify PXM platform’s flexibility allows businesses to configure the platform to meet their operational needs.
To begin configuration, you’ll need to establish your data model foundation, which includes:
- Inheritance hierarchy
- Taxonomy
- Validation rules
- Reference properties
- User permissions
Based on your external sales destinations, you can also easily establish your selling endpoint by configuring each channel to meet its specific requirements.
The PXM platform will then assess your product content for readiness before syndicating it to those destinations, ensuring the highest level of quality and brand consistency in the ecommerce space.
4. Assign Roles and Responsibilities
Getting your product assets ready is only one part of the equation. It’s also crucial to get your team organized.
Start by identifying the right people and processes for decision-making and platform management. Then, develop or adapt your workflows, approvals, and collaboration processes specifically for the Salsify PXM platform.
This effort should include assigning roles and responsibilities at each stage of the content production process, as well as determining who will gather data and approve content before it goes live on each channel.
5. Scale Operations
After you’ve assigned roles and responsibilities, the next step is training and enablement.
Salsify has a wealth of available resources that will help you train your team and empower them to maximize the value of the Salsify PXM platform in their everyday work:
- Salsify Customer Hub: A central destination for Salsify success that delivers expert-backed tools, opportunities for peer connection, and insights that will transform your ecommerce strategy.
- Salsify Academy: Expert-led courses for learning the essentials and earning certifications that will elevate your ecommerce strategy.
- Salsify Certification training: An invaluable resource for companies like JELD-WEN, Inc. “Those resources have helped our team become even more self-sufficient, resulting in a level of agility and flexibility required to succeed on today's digital shelf,” says Colleen Creese, senior ecommerce sales manager.
- Salsify Knowledge Base: Everything you need to succeed with Salsify, including step-by-step Salsify guides, troubleshooting tips, and best practices to optimize your product experience management.
- Customer success team: A team of experts who are always available to answer any specific questions that arise as you learn more about the platform.
6. Publish Your Content
After your product data and teams are fully onboarded onto the platform, you can syndicate content for the first time to each of your respective sales channels.
This is also a good time to assess how content appears on different retailer platforms, identify any bottlenecks in your workflow, and gather feedback from your team about potential process improvements you can make.
That’s exactly what organic food pioneer Amy’s Kitchen did. The brand successfully used Salsify to “develop a more proactive syndication workflow within Salsify,” says Becky Morgan, senior creative operations manager at Amy’s Kitchen.
7. Test, Learn, and Adapt
Onboarding isn’t a one-and-done process. Brands should test, learn, and adapt on an ongoing basis to get the most out of the platform.
One of the Salsify PXM platform’s biggest benefits is the comprehensive business intelligence it delivers. You can use Salsify Insights to access digital shelf performance analytics, including metrics on how items perform based on price, availability, and various content features such as 360-degree videos or interactive comparison charts.
Your team can review insights in real time or get historical reports to improve product performance and continually refine your content strategy for each channel.
Celebrate Your First Wins on the Salsify PXM Platform
Checking off all these boxes will pave the way for your first wins on the Salsify PXM platform.
With its combination of powerful, AI-driven automation, comprehensive analytics, and advanced features that ensure data and content accuracy, the Salsify PXM platform enables your brand to transform product data into an indispensable asset for unlocking growth, profitability, and strategic advantage.
By following this road map, you’ll not only land your first win on the platform, but you’ll also lay the groundwork for long-term success in today’s ever-evolving ecommerce landscape.
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