If there’s one thing that retailers always need more time of, it’s time. The world of retail is an extremely busy one, both in head office and on the shop floor. There seems to be a never-ending to do list, reflecting the fact that the industry is always evolving to keep up with new customer demands and behaviours.
The role of a merchandiser is no exception. Often, they rely on manual processes and countless time-consuming spreadsheets to keep their product data up to date. Obviously, this is not the most efficient way of managing product data. Not only does it take up valuable time, but it leaves room for error and inconsistency. According to our clients, the distribution of product data to new and existing channels was a key pain point before the implementation of Origin, our PIM platform.
A great PIM platform supplies a single location where product information is collected, managed and enriched, giving retailers the ability to distribute it to internal and external channels. Origin makes it faster and easier to create and deliver powerful product experiences, while also simplifying processes, increasing productivity as well as providing support and flexibility.
LK Bennett, in particular, has found Origin to be an extremely useful tool when sending product data out to all of their ecommerce partners.
“Every partner we work with wants things done differently: on a different schedule, in a different order, in a different format, with slightly different data. [Before Origin] this was taking up a lot of time. It was a full-time job, late into the night every week, week in, week out. We were also doing it quite badly, making a lot of mistakes and our products weren’t going live on time.
“We asked around our friends in the industry, and we were very pleased to be introduced to Martin and the team at Retail247. They talked about what they’d done for their other clients, and they seemed like the answer to our prayers.”
Zoe Donovan, Digital and Marketing Director at LK Bennett
Across all 11 of their partners, LK Bennett save up to 20 admin hours per week compared to how they had to operate before the deployment of Origin. This is on top of the time saving and efficiency that Origin brings to other tasks, such as Product Data Enrichment and Price Change Management.
Other Origin use cases
Having all product information at their fingertips ensures our clients save their employees countless hours scrolling through and updating seemingly endless spreadsheets. Origin allows retailers to pull together all product information within one easy to use search screen, enabling them to see pricing and supplier information alongside product attribution, making data gathering and exploration simple to accomplish.
With products fully defined within Origin, numerous tasks such as repetitive manual data entry can become a thing of the past as product files can be fully automated to all channels resulting in increased speed to market, another factor which influenced LK Bennett’s selection of Origin as their PIM platform.
To learn more about PIM, download the info-booklet on our Origin website, or book a call.