Akeneo, the product experience company, announced at the PX World Conference, Unlock 2023, new capabilities and features for Akeneo Product Cloud, the complete solution for executing on a product experience (PX) strategy. In a world of economic uncertainty, cautious budgeting processes, and a consumer or business buyer that is both sensitive and unpredictable, the only way to future-proof your business is by investing in technology to support a deliberate PX strategy.
The new offerings in Akeneo Product Cloud help companies future-proof their go-to-market strategies by bringing compelling product experiences to life quickly across the entire customer journey.
Akeneo Activation for Retail
Akeneo is bringing its best-of-breed product experiences to product listing pages on retailers like Amazon, Macy’s, Zappos, Nordstrom’s and more, with the launch of Akeneo Activation for Retail, which connects rich product information from Akeneo’s Product Information Management (PIM) solution to product pages on these retail channels. Brands and manufacturers will now have the ability to deliver consistent product experiences on these channels while easily customising product information to align with shopper expectations and channel requirements. In uncertain economic times, the ability to optimise all routes to market or move quickly into new ones will rapidly become a competitive advantage and Akeneo Activation for Retail is designed to facilitate that capability.
“At Havaianas, when it comes to retailers like Amazon, we’re laser-focused on conversion. We know that some shoppers may come to Amazon to browse, but we also know that they mainly want to purchase quickly, pay a fair price, and get the product delivered fast,” said Francois Silvain, Digital CTO at Havaianas International. “We need to ensure our products are findable and once found, the listing must be perfect with all the information that a consumer needs in order to convert. We need to have up-to-date, high-quality product information automatically feeding our Amazon listings. Having a product experience strategy that is mapped to this end goal is a fundamental must-have step and we have Akeneo Activation for Retail to power that for Amazon as well as our other key retailers.”
New Time-to-Market Insights
Getting your enriched products listed faster in any destination is a competitive advantage and that is why Akeneo is introducing new operational analytics for Akeneo Product Cloud that identify opportunities to streamline the product data enrichment process in Akeneo PIM and bring products to market faster. This new analytics function provides additional actionable insights into the product enrichment process as well as industry benchmarking to pinpoint where and how your business can improve. Faster times to market result in getting on the shelf before the competition and, ultimately, increased sales opportunities.
New AI Capabilities for Akeneo PIM
The cornerstone of Akeneo Product Cloud, Akeneo PIM launched AI-driven data cleansing to support faster time-to-market by leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to automate the cleansing, deduplication and categorisation of product data as it is imported into Akeneo PIM.
New Apps in the Akeneo App Store
Akeneo is expanding the breadth of apps available in the Akeneo App Store to help customers more easily access and use product data, including the addition of multiple apps that leverage AI capabilities like ChatGPT and a new bespoke app capability to address unique customer use cases.
Akeneo is pushing the boundaries of a traditional SaaS offering and following the example set by best-in-class SaaS providers like Microsoft and Salesforce by introducing Custom Apps that are designed to meet the specific need of an individual Akeneo customer. These SaaS native apps allow developers and integrators to alleviate the expense and time necessary to build and maintain custom integrations by leveraging tools provided through the Akeneo App Store. Custom Apps provide a flexible solution to easily create an app to address almost any unique customer need. For example, a Custom App could leverage Google Vision AI to detect errors in product information and make suggestions to improve data quality. Custom Apps can also be used to create business process workflows that save hours of manual effort; for example, leveraging an in-store scanner to scan clothing and accessory SKUs to create a “look” while automatically generating associations in Akeneo PIM to bundle these products together.
“Akeneo is proud to enable DIY innovation for our customers and developer partners with the launch of Custom Apps,” said Nico Dupont, Chief Product Officer and co-founder of Akeneo. “To extend the value of Akeneo’s SaaS platform, Custom Apps provide the flexibility to package and release apps to address any specific customer use case in a secure, scalable, way.”
In addition to the new innovative apps in the App Store, Akeneo has launched a new self-service application development programme that delivers a guided experience, including sample apps with code examples in multiple languages to help Akeneo partners develop new apps easier and faster. In short, the App Store of the Akeneo Product Cloud offering allows customers to innovate with a click of a button, which is essential in future-proofing businesses in uncertain times.
“Every new piece of functionality that we design is done so with an eye toward empowering product experience decision-makers and practitioners to showcase their products wherever their customers are in their buying journey,” said Fred de Gombert, CEO and co-founder of Akeneo. “Consumers and business buyers need more and better information about products in order to purchase and to be satisfied with the purchase. Putting a product experience (PX) practice in place, led at the c-suite level, and providing the PX team with a product cloud to execute on that strategy is the only way to truly future-proof your business.”
Akeneo announced these updates at Akeneo Unlock 2023, the annual global summit for product experience leaders and practitioners, on 08 & 09 March in Paris. To learn more, please visit: https://unlock.akeneo.com/2023-Paris
