Extended PIM approach
Required:
Flexible solution that enables the marketing team to create virtual product sets (‘Sets’, ‘Bundles’ or ‘Lookbooks’), not only on SKU or Style-Level, but also based on variations (e.g. blue shoes might not fit a red dress with white stripes so well, while they might be perfect for the same Style in another color combination). Not a fashion-retailer or selling consumer electronics? Doesn’t matter! This is as relevant for any other segment and could even become a core business topic in areas you wouldn’t obviously expect. The example of one of the world’s most innovative manufacturers for process automation technology shows this impressively.
Reason:
Many shop systems support the creation of bundles internally, but in centralising this action in the PIM-System you will benefit from using the already existing reference-mechanisms between items to find parts and components and additionally have information about margins, pricing levels etc. at hand. An example from the consumer electronics sector: nobody buys a high-end HiFi-Receiver and a low-budget-NF-cable afterwards. So combining cross- and upsell in one step is more useful than referencing the low-budget-cable as a cross-sell and from there doing an upsell to the high-end or medium-range cable instead.
Benefits process-optimization:
Centralising the bundle-creation and cross-/upsell-control in a PIM-System enables you to benefit from the available workflows in your PIM, e.g. adding the bundle to the picturing process and have your photographers shoot images that show a whole outfit instead of creating single-product shoots and showing them as a slide-show on the Product Detail Page. Also it enables you to create bundle-specific descriptions, texts or attributes. Thinking of technical parts and goods again, the combination of two individual products might boost or reduce the values for attributes like payload, energy efficiency etc. – knowing this beforehand will definitely make buying decisions easier for customers and make them feel safer with their choice.
Benefits for controlling your business:
Having Set- and bundle information available in PIM also allows you to take an easy two-side-approach in
a) measuring success of your cross- and upselling-efforts and
b) data-mining new combinations and relations between products or sets and bundles.
Providing the bundle-information and cross- and upselling-references to your BI-System enables to check shopping baskets both from offline POS and online order-management-Systems to determine the success of your efforts.
Benefits for Omnichannel-Commerce:
Having a central point of creating bundles and sets helps you aligning the presentation of these along all channels. If the bundles are created in the webshop, they are a channel-specific piece of information, and building a way from there to the other distribution channels is challenging and cost-intensive.
Creating the bundles in a central place which is already spreading information into all channels enables you to e.g. create an Outfit that is
- communicated through your Fashion Blog,
- presented in your ‘real’ shop window,
- available for print campaigns and catalogs,
- Newsletters and
- of course one-click-orderable in your webshop.
Outlook: Customer-Generated-Bundles:
Seen visionary, having the product managers create outfits is only a small part of the possible bene-fit. Why not use the creative power and senses of all of your customers and have them participate in the process of combining individual styles to a brand new outfit? In a first step, customers could combine styles virtually in a style pattern. All you need is a shopping basket that guides them to select a top, bottom, shoes and accessories. The result of the basket is then transferred back into your PIM-system, checked against a suggestion history and creates a new bundle-suggestion for a product manager to review. Thinking further, combining the outfit within the webshop could become an essential part of the customers’ online-shopping-experience with a virtual dress room.
