5 Ways to Leverage Product Information to Grow Sales
4. Streamline the onboarding process. There are two common obstacles retailers face when delivering products to market: one, ensuring that the product information they're acquiring from suppliers is correct and, two, supplying this information across multiple channels to support the selling of the product itself.
This onboarding process is often cumbersome, error prone and time consuming, frequently resulting in a costly, manual approach to correcting the information.
AMR Research recently concluded that companies could potentially reduce their supplier management costs by nearly 85 percent just by improving information visibility with suppliers. For someone in retail or even manufacturing who is charged with managing hundreds of vendors and tens of thousands of products, the efficiency costs alone are staggering.
In fact, after implementing a strategic information management solution, a major global retailer was able to reduce its average onboarding costs from more than $200 per item to less than $3 per item. Considering the tens of thousands of SKUs this retailer introduces each year, this cost savings alone can have a significant impact on business performance and competitive advantage.
5. Improve upsell and cross-sell conversions. By taking a holistic, full-cycle approach to managing product information, sales and marketing, retailers have the opportunity to improve cross-sell and upsell conversions. After all, when a business has greater operational control over product information, then sales and customer service representatives have access to more timely and relevant information at the point of sale. Online channels can also provide more relevant product links, recommend complementary or similar products, and improve product categorization for easier browsing and increased conversions.
Additionally, this level of information flow and control helps support an improved cross-channel experience. Consumers today want to use their smartphones to check local inventory. They want to research and compare products online, receive detailed and accurate answers about an item they saw in the company's latest catalog or website before making a trip to one of its stores.
If product information isn't strategically managed as it flows through a business, then it becomes virtually impossible for that business to manage its growing customer expectations.
Operational Knowledge as a Performance Improvement Tool
Over the last two decades, retailers have worked feverishly to optimize their physical supply chains. Virtually every discussion about improving the supply chain has been centered on the flow of products from raw materials to consumption.
However, a growing number of companies are now taking a similar interest in optimizing the flow and management of the information related to these products. In a highly competitive global economy where information is now a core enabler, using business operational knowledge as a performance success tool is paramount.
Retailers understand this and are integrating their critical data into one management platform in order to completely change the playing field in their industry. Not only are they improving their overall profitability, they're also breathing new life into businesses that are all too often caught in a downward spiral of reduced discretionary spending, higher customer expectations and tougher market competition.
Mikael Lyngsø is the CEO of Stibo Systems, a worldwide provider of strategic information management technology and solutions. Mikael can be reached at StiboSystemsCEO@Stibo.com.