Tuesday, May 05, 2009

NCMA 2009 (Newport Beach)

Just back from a great few days on the sunny west coast at this year's National Catalog Managers Association Knowledge Exchange. I really enjoyed the talks by Tom Aliotti, Activant Solutions and Mark Finestone, AutoZone.

In both talks, the theme that stuck out most was catalog "rich content." Mark illustrated his point by showing the difference between a particular premium Bosch wiper blade shown in the AutoZone catalog (ZNET) in comparison to the the same product shown on the Bosch web site. The differences were huge. The ZNET page showed a boring black and white photo with utilitarian features. Nothing really that made you understand why you might select it over a competitor's product.

The Bosch web site was obviously made by the marketing department. It used a sexy full-color image and stated clearly and effectively exactly why the product was better. The sad fact is that Bosch has great product information available, they just aren't delivering it to the people who sell their products.

The PIES standard makes it easy to deliver "rich content", but we still need procedures, processes and tools to manage that data and make sure it is published quickly with effective change management. And we need universal acceptance of PIES from all data receivers.

The good news is that we are starting to see tools to help suppliers deliver rich content, and more and more, we are seeing receivers starting to accept PIES data.

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