Who uses Akeneo? A closer look at companies that depend on Akeneo every day

Many companies used to wrestle with spreadsheets and spend hours on product updates until Akeneo showed them a more efficient path and transformed their workflow. By using this PIM system, you can focus more on growing your business and less on the headaches of managing product information.

In this article, you'll learn about:

• the different kinds of users who depend on Akeneo and the difficulties they face,
• how Akeneo helps solve those challenges.

5 types of businesses using Akeneo: Who are they?

Businesses today work in a busy and complex environment, making it important to handle product information well. Here, we'll identify the types of businesses for which this task is particularly important.

Retailers

The specific challenges they face: Have you ever wondered how major retailers manage product listings without error? These companies have vast product catalogs that require constant updates.

Imagine a clothing retailer with thousands of products, each with multiple variations like color, size, and style. Every time a new season's collection is launched, this retailer needs to update the product information across their in-store displays, catalogs, marketing materials, or website. Without a centralized system, this can be chaotic, and customers might receive outdated or incorrect information, resulting in dissatisfaction or returns.

How Akeneo makes a difference for them: Akeneo helps manage all the product information in one place. When the marketing team needs to update a product description, they do it once in Akeneo, and the update is automatically reflected across all channels. Customers always have access to the latest and most reliable information.

eCommerce companies

The specific challenges they face: Unlike traditional brick-and-mortar retailers, eCommerce companies rely entirely on digital platforms to showcase and sell their products or products of various sellers. So, the difference lies in how they interact with their customers.

This means that every piece of product information must be not only up-to-date but also engaging and appealing. It plays a crucial role in attracting online shoppers, reducing uncertainty and influencing purchasing decisions as they typically cannot physically interact with products.

What types of product information can be managed? There are several. For fashion brands, we refer to sizes, colors, and styles across collections. Food and beverage companies focus on ingredients, nutritional information, and regulatory compliance. Electronics companies, on the other hand, keep track of technical specifications and feature lists.

How Akeneo makes a difference for them: Akeneo enables e-commerce businesses to manage product data efficiently, create customized attributes, and standardize product listings from various sellers, ensuring that all product information is complete and consistent for a better customer experience.

In an ecommerce context, PIM technology is used to enrich product data – e.g. adding detailed descriptions, high-quality images, videos, specifications – which not only helps in making individual products more appealing but also enhances the overall brand perception.

For more information on how Akeneo PIM can benefit your business, reach out to us today. Our team is your perfect ride partner.

Manufacturers

The specific challenges they face: Manufacturers are at the heart of product creation. They design, produce, and distribute a wide range of items, from electronics to machinery, each with a vast array of details that need to be meticulously tracked. These details can include technical specifications, compliance documents, assembly instructions, and material compositions – far more complex than the product information retailers usually handle.

To sum up, while retailers focus on making sure their products are well-represented to customers with appealing product descriptions and eye-catching images, manufacturing companies need to manage a deeper layer of information.

Let's take, for example, a company that manufactures industrial machinery, such as a high-tech drill press. This product might have numerous parts, each with its own specifications – like the type of metal used, the motor's power output, and safety certifications. Not only do these details need to be correct and consistent across all company documents, but they also need to be easily accessible to engineers, sales teams, and customers.

How Akeneo makes a difference for them: Akeneo PIM not only helps manufacturers keep this information organized and consistent but also streamlines the entire production process by ensuring everyone is on the same page. This leads to fewer errors, faster product launches, and ultimately, a smoother operation from factory floor to marketplace.

B2B companies

The specific challenges they face: One of the biggest challenges for them is managing vast catalogs of products that may have multiple versions or customizations.

B2B businesses, which focus on bulk sales or specialized goods, must offer detailed and complex information, including technical specifications and compliance standards, to help customers decide on a purchase. Unlike e-commerce companies, which might focus on appealing product descriptions and eye-catching images, B2B companies need to emphasize functionality, reliability, and compliance.

Moreover, B2B transactions often involve longer sales cycles, multiple decision-makers, and complex pricing structures.

For example, a company selling industrial pumps might offer different models based on pressure ratings, materials, and sizes. Each of these variations requires precise and accurate information to ensure that the customer orders exactly what they need. Without a centralized system like Akeneo, this information can easily become disorganized, leading to errors, delays, and dissatisfied customers.

How Akeneo makes a difference for them: Akeneo helps B2B companies keep track of all the necessary details, ensuring that sales teams have access to up-to-date product information, which they can easily share with potential business clients. They maintain consistency and accuracy in all their communications, regardless of how complex their product offerings are.

Distributors

The specific challenges they face: The complexity of handling diverse product data from different suppliers is what sets distributors apart. 

Distributors play a unique role in the supply chain, acting as the middlemen between manufacturers and retailers or end customers. They are all about managing and moving products between these two ends.

They handle vast inventories of products from their network of retailers. This means they deal with an enormous amount of product information from different sources, each with its own format and level of detail. Each supplier might provide information in a different way – imagine a distributor who supplies electronic components to various electronics stores. They might receive product data from one supplier that has complex databases full of technical specifications, another that only provides a brief and basic description, and yet another that offers data in a foreign language.

Without a system like Akeneo, the distributor would have to manually sort through all this information, translate it if necessary, and then format it for their own catalogs or sales channels so that it can be easily understood by their customers, who might be retailers, other businesses, or even consumers. This process is not only time-consuming but also prone to errors.

How Akeneo makes a difference for them: PIM Akeneo simplifies and automates much of this work. It allows distributors to collect all the product information in one central location, regardless of the source or format. The system can automatically standardize the data, ensuring that every product is described in a consistent way. For instance, Akeneo can help a distributor ensure that every electronic component in their catalog has the same format for technical specifications, making it easier for customers to compare products.

Moreover, Akeneo allows distributors to enrich the product information. If a supplier provides a basic description, the distributor can easily add more details, such as images, user manuals, or compliance information. This enriched data not only helps the distributor offer better service to their customers but also makes it easier for retailers to sell the products, as they have all the necessary information at their fingertips. This unique need to aggregate, standardize, and enrich diverse data from multiple suppliers is why Akeneo PIM is particularly valuable for distributors.

Product information management – Final word

If any of these situations resonate with your business challenges, it’s time to consider PIM Akeneo. Overall, 62% of organizations think that a PIM solution helps them launch new products faster, and 84% of companies believe that PIM is essential to their business strategies (source: Worldmetrics.org).

Ecommerce businesses might use Akeneo to ensure their online store has accurate product descriptions and images, while manufacturers might use it to manage technical specifications and compliance data for the products they create. Distributors, on the other hand, use Akeneo to consolidate and standardize information from various sources, making it easier for their customers to find and purchase products. 

If you have problems with product data, we will have a pulse on that! At Tandemite, we implement PIM systems for various industries, making your product information management simpler and more efficient. Start your Akeneo project with us.