Product Information Management Pain Points (Part 2)
Retailers are increasingly using a broad number of channels to reach customers, ranging from eCommerce stores to online marketplaces. As such, product information management has become a top priority, because failure to create a centralized hub using product management software can affect the consumer’s shopping experience.
In part one of this series, we talked about three major obstacles merchants encountered with their product information management efforts – complex catalog parsing, duplicating content and reaching new channels quickly. In part two, we’ll address three additional product information management pain points: up-sell/cross-sell, minimum order quantity and establishing consistent pricing.
1. Identifying Up-sell and Cross-Sell Opportunities
Retailers are always looking for ways to up-sell and cross-sell items to their customers. This often results in higher transaction value, which generates additional revenue at the end of the day.To easily identify and capitalize on up-sell and cross-sell opportunities, retailers must consolidate product information management and order management into one system.
By examining order data, merchandisers gain the visibility to see which products are commonly bought together. Without access to order data, merchandisers will not be able to identify new trends in customer buying behavior that can help them capitalize on cross-sell opportunities. This is a more re-active strategy.
A pro-active strategy would entail examining product data. Merchandisers gain visibility with one set of product data that allows them to see all up-sell opportunities across their suppliers. If each supplier’s product data is viewed separately, it will be difficult to sort and identify products by type for an up-sell opportunity.
With consolidated product management software, a retailer is able to view, identify, and implement new cross-sell and up-sell buying options.
2. Managing Products with a Required Minimum Order Quantity
Some retailers dealing with bulk purchases or high-quantity items sometimes have to monitor orders to ensure the minimum order quantity for a product is met. If minimums aren’t being observed, merchants risk jeopardizing their profit margins – it may not be worth making a sale in the first place if these minimums aren’t met.
Monitoring orders to ensure they meet specific thresholds can be a very time-consuming process if done manually. The more orders received, the more complex this challenges becomes. Failure to identify orders that don’t make minimums also means retailers may have to cancel the order on the customer, which is never a good course of action.
Fortunately, product management software, that works with an order management system, can help retailers set order quantity thresholds for each product so that logic can be used to automatically identify a threshold and prevent an order from being placed.
3. Establishing Consistent Pricing across Channels
One of the most complex components of product management is pricing. Pricing can constantly fluctuate. It can change based on a promotion, a bundle, demand, by store, or based on competitors.
Whether retailers are simply setting baselines or are trying to execute cross-channel promotions, prices need to be consistent or else they risk confusing the customer.
Product management software can go a long way to facilitate this effort by consolidating product information in one central location. When prices are established there, they can easily be pushed to all the different channels through which the retailer is selling. This helps merchants set prices across products, categories, or entire catalogs for every store.
Products are the bread and butter of a retailer’s business. Implementing an effective product management software is crucial to the success of merchants.