SAP, the world’s leading enterprise software company has entered into a partnership with inriver, developer of the leading SAAS Product Information Management platform. Why is this collaboration so special? What does Ctac has to do with it? And above all, what is in it for you? Rik Linck, Senior New Business Manager at Ctac, sums it up for you.
Over the past 50 years, SAP has grown to become the world’s leading supplier of ERP and customer experience solutions. With SAP’s solutions, you can support and automate just about any business process. In special niche areas, however, increasingly specialist parties are focusing on a single part of the process. Product Information Management is a good example of this.
What is Product Information Management?
You use a PIM system to record every aspect of a product. This ranges from materials, sizes and colours to sales product descriptions, translations, reviews, videos, pack shots and much more. The PIM system then delivers this data to your own web shop, your configurator and your business systems and processes. However, the PIM also plays an important role in the efficient transfer of product information to external online shops and marketplaces. With a PIM system, you can ensure a consistent product image across all channels where your customers encounter your products. In the past, many people saw PIM as a sideline – something you could do perfectly well in Excel. Those times are now long gone. Given the increasing importance of e-commerce, and the value companies and customers attach to a streamlined omnichannel experience, we can see that reliable and consistent product information is becoming increasingly important.
SAP and inriver are a perfect match
SAP Commerce Cloud is a very powerful customer experience platform that allows companies to offer their customers a rich and cross-channel experience. As part of its Commerce Cloud, SAP also offers PIM functionality. which is connected seamlessly to SAP Commerce Cloud. This has benefits, but also some drawbacks. One of the drawbacks is that product managers and product marketers want a user-friendly and flexible solution to manage their product content, no matter the commerce platform or online channels with which they need to exchange this product content.
Founded in 2007, the Swedish company inriver masters PIM to perfection. With inriver’s powerful SaaS solution, you can effortlessly manage, enhance, streamline and share all product data from a single platform. That’s why we’ve been working with inriver for many years, and we are a Platinum partner. Since 2015, we’ve helped many leading organisations to manage their product information using inriver.
Whereas SAP focuses on ERP and customer experience, inriver focuses on product content management. In our opinion, that’s a perfect match – when it can work together seamlessly. SAP and inriver announced their partnership in October 2021. We felt that was good news. It’s safe to say that the best ERP system in the world works with the very best PIM system. The partnership between the two companies is being shaped by the introduction of all sorts of smart connectors that seamlessly link inriver’s PIM solution with the relevant components from the SAP portfolio, and much more.
First connector available
The link between inriver and SAP Commerce Cloud is now available and new links (such as with ERP) are being worked on at pace. It is important to note that Ctac and Digitalum (a Ctac partner) have implemented this link in close collaboration with inriver. Our in-depth knowledge of SAP perfectly complements our experience and expertise with PIM in general, and inriver in particular.
What does this collaboration mean for you?
That depends. If you use SAP ERP or S/4 HANA and are looking for a PIM solution, inriver is the logical solution now more than ever. If you work with SAP Commerce Cloud and want to take Product Information Management to the next level, inriver is the obvious choice here, too. These are fairly common implementations with a fast turnaround time, and can be completed within a few months depending on your wishes. Our customer Boretti even started working with an inriver platform after just twelve weeks.
