Mens Et Opera - Reloaded

In the previous post , I offered a view to look at the PIM marketplace. From retailers and manufactories perspective, PIM has become a necessity to meet fast paced customer demands. The vendor marketplace, on the other hand, is getting crowded to meet the increasing demand. In that post, I also provided a few criteria to make sense of different vendor offers. In this installment and the next, I intend to articulate a further criterion, or a standpoint to look at the PIM market. Let me first summarize what we have so far: Some PIM vendors are traditional, some emerging, some disruptive (less than a handful) Vendors tend to primarily focus on one target company size, i.e. enterprise, medium, and small companies Finally, a practical way to group vendors is by the kind of use cases they are primarily designed for, e.g. emphasis on buying or selling side processes, marketing content, merchandising support, channels, etc. From (1) one deduces that the market has bee...

Jorij Abraham is the founder of the E-commerce Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping organizations and industries improve their e-commerce activities. He advises companies on e-commerce strategy, Omnichannel development and product information management. He also works as Director Research & Advise for Ecommerce Europe. He's written a fine book about PIM but don't expect a technical book at all! This is what marketing teams, merchandisers, product category teams, digital strategist, should be reading. Like him or not, when he talks you’d better listen! Michele: Let's start with a view on the PIM market. Where are we globally? Jorij: We are just starting. Most retailers still do not realize how important product information is to sell digital. In some countries the expectation is that in 2020 30 - 50% of all consumer goods are bought online. PIM no longer is an option. It is essential to be successful in 2020. M.: What was the main...

It must be my philosophical bend but I love (almost) everything that is meta , in particular I love metaphysics. This allows me to define metadata in a slightly different fashion. In fact, the prefix meta denotes something that is beyond or transcends the physical contingency of an object. Now what is data? David Loshin authoritatively defines data as “…a collection of raw value elements or facts used for calculating, reasoning, or measuring." [1]   In other words, a piece of data represents an actual, physical, and existing entity. For example, I am 1.75m tall. This is a fact expressed via numerical representation (and obviously can also be digitally coded). The adjective ‘tall’ provides important contextual information without it, the piece of data (1.75) would be meaningless. This is metadata. To further the example, if I add that I am second to my brother, I will start depicting a picture of a family of at least 4 people where my brother is the tallest and I am taller th...