Sarah Assous, Vice President of Product Advertising, Akeneo – Interview Sequence

Sarah Assous is the Vice President of Product Advertising at Akeneo, the place she drives strategic messaging, positioning, and go-to-market methods. A results-driven chief, she has performed a key function in accelerating firm development and leveraging advertising to assist income era. With experience in content material technique, buyer engagement, and aggressive positioning, she combines creativity and enterprise acumen to ship world-class product experiences.

Whereas conventional PIM programs are efficient for centralizing and managing product data, many options battle to assist complicated omnichannel methods, dynamic information, and integrations with different eCommerce or information platforms, that means that the PIM simply turns into one other information silo.

The product cloud, then again, is a composable suite of applied sciences that helps your entire product file for each dynamic and static information throughout your entire product lifecycle; our versatile, scalable PIM answer is an important side of the product cloud, nonetheless it’s just one half.

As a part of Akeneo Product Cloud, we additionally provide an AI-powered provider information onboarding answer, a syndication platform with the flexibility to activate product data throughout international marketplaces, a safe product portal that allows all stakeholders to entry digital product catalogs on demand, and an intensive community of 150+ integrations. All of those options work collectively to make sure that product information doesn’t stay in a siloed answer, however is optimized, enriched, and activated throughout each stage of the product lifecycle, which permits companies to create optimum omnichannel product experiences, drive  greater conversion charges, and enhance buyer loyalty.

How is AI reworking product data administration (PIM) past simply centralizing information?

Past information centralization, AI is a robust software on the subject of PIM because it brings superior know-how to an trade that has beforehand relied on outdated and inefficient instruments. Apart from centralized information, we’re seeing AI being utilized in a large capability inside PIM options, together with:

1. Cleansing and enriching product information, together with de-duplication and information extraction
2. Producing ready-to-edit content material utilizing the centralized information, making certain product web page alignment with model voice
3. Translating product content material shortly and effectively to ship sturdy product experiences at scale in a number of languages
4. Optimizing product discovery and search performance by enhancing pure language processing and understanding person intent

Are you able to stroll us by means of how Akeneo’s AI-powered Provider Information Supervisor streamlines information assortment and enrichment?

Akeneo’s Provider Information Supervisor (SDM) is designed to streamline the gathering, administration, and enrichment of supplier-provided product data and belongings by providing a user-friendly portal the place suppliers can add product information and media information, that are then robotically mapped to the retailer’s and/or distributors information construction. Our system makes use of synthetic intelligence to automate product classification, enrich attributes from descriptions and labels, and normalize information to make sure consistency and accuracy, all of which reduces handbook effort, accelerates time-to-market, and enhances collaboration between retailers and suppliers by offering a centralized platform for environment friendly communication and information alternate. Because of this, manufacturers and/or producers are arrange for omnichannel success by having constant provider insights throughout programs.

What function does AI play in making certain product information accuracy and consistency throughout a number of channels?

One of the crucial sensible use instances of AI in the present day is its capacity to automate information standardization, enrichment, and validation processes to make sure accuracy and consistency throughout a number of channels. AI-powered algorithms can detect and proper inconsistencies, fill in lacking attributes, and classify merchandise primarily based on predefined guidelines or discovered patterns, decreasing handbook errors and making certain uniformity throughout marketplaces, eCommerce platforms, print catalogs, and anyplace else you promote. Plus, pure language processing (NLP) and AI-driven search capabilities assist companies higher perceive person intent, enabling them to optimize product descriptions and attributes to match how prospects really search. By analyzing search queries, AI can recommend extra related key phrases, enhance product tagging, and dynamically refine search outcomes, making certain prospects discover essentially the most correct and compelling product data, finally resulting in greater engagement, conversions, and decreased returns.

What are the most important challenges in implementing AI in product expertise administration, and the way is Akeneo addressing them?

AI depends on high-quality, structured information to generate significant insights, however many companies battle with fragmented or incomplete product data. Scalability is one other problem, as AI fashions should repeatedly be taught and adapt to new product information, buyer behaviors, and market developments whereas sustaining accuracy and relevance. Akeneo’s Product Cloud answer has PIM, syndication, and provider information supervisor capabilities, which permits retailers to have all their product information in a single spot. We additionally leverage AI to enhance information high quality and consistency, making certain that the data fed into AI options is full, correct, and dependable, which may alleviate the issue of getting inconsistent information throughout a number of platforms and taking weight off the retailer underneath extra handbook processes.

With the rise of AI-generated content material, how does Akeneo guarantee model voice and authenticity stay intact?

Whereas AI-generated content material will be extremely helpful, particularly inside search performance and product descriptors, it’s essential to take care of a robust sense of name id when utilizing these instruments. Akeneo ensures that it doesn’t matter what sort of content material we use AI to assist develop, that there’s all the time a human on the opposite facet to take care of model authenticity. When utilizing AI-generated content material, we actually depend on it as a place to begin to leap off of. Having the ability to improve and weave in model messaging all through the content material permits the tone to stay constant throughout channels and provides the advertising staff time to give attention to strategic content material.

What AI-driven personalization methods can manufacturers implement to boost buyer experiences?

Whereas personalization is nothing new to manufacturers, AI and ML know-how permits manufacturers to enter new ranges of buyer personalization to satisfy the excessive shopper expectations. Understanding the quantity of information that AI instruments can course of, this energy opens the door to allow unprecedented ranges of personalization throughout buyer interactions by means of information evaluation. Leveraging buyer information on this manner permits AI algorithms to make broader connections throughout buyer order historical past, preferences, and so on., to create these tailor-made product suggestions. AI-powered search and pure language processing may also refine search outcomes by enhancing person intent interpretation, enhancing discoverability and decreasing friction within the shopping for journey. But it surely’s essential to do not forget that with out quite a lot of AI methods and and not using a sturdy basis of information to coach and assist the AI options, personalizing buyer experiences with this know-how is subsequent to inconceivable.

How does Akeneo optimize product discovery and search performance utilizing AI?

An excellent product search and discovery expertise depends on merchandise being precisely tagged, categorized, and syndicated to the suitable channels. That’s why we offer native AI capabilities constructed inside Akeneo PIM that allow enriched product information by analyzing present data to fill in lacking attributes, making certain complete and correct product listings. Akeneo SDM additionally provides AI capabilities to make sure that provider information is full, right, and formatted appropriately. And if that wasn’t sufficient, we additionally provide 20+ AI purposes inside our intensive App Retailer that cowl a variety of AI use instances, a few of that are customized constructed for Akeneo. These options assist to make sure that the suitable data is supplied to the suitable prospects on the proper time.

What are the commonest bottlenecks in managing product information at an enterprise stage, and the way does Akeneo clear up them?

Though technological developments in product information are huge, many organizations are nonetheless combating handbook product data administration. Some main challenges we see enterprises dealing with embody managing product data in a number of languages and markets, creating constant and fascinating product descriptions at scale, sustaining accuracy whereas decreasing time-to-market, and coordinating between technical, advertising and gross sales groups. These challenges make them unable to maintain up with the tempo of in the present day’s digital commerce expectations.

With Akeneo, these challenges are largely eradicated. With sturdy AI options, Akeneo is ready to robotically implement guidelines for language content material translation, in addition to utilizing clever content material era to permit technical specs to be reworked into considerate summaries, and fascinating advertising narratives. It’s key to notice that clever content material doesn’t eradicate advertising groups, however permits them to thrive with a place to begin to personalize AI-generated content material to suit their model in one of the simplest ways attainable.

The place do you see the function of AI in product expertise administration evolving over the subsequent 5 years, and the way is Akeneo positioning itself to remain forward of those adjustments?

It’s arduous to foretell 5 years from now realizing how the evolution of AI is shifting on a regular basis. Nonetheless, with the introduction of instruments like Google’s Perplexity, we are able to anticipate to see the emergence of AI purchasing brokers come to life, the place customers can analysis, browse, evaluate, and buy merchandise multi functional place. As AI and NLP evolve to raised perceive and interpret buyer intent, these personalised search experiences will begin to develop in recognition and stay alongside conventional search experiences.

Whereas it may be arduous to foretell the long run, we do know one factor: AI options will all the time fall brief in the event that they aren’t supported by a robust basis of up-to-date, dependable, and full product data. The outputs created are solely pretty much as good as the information supplied, so wherever the evolution of this know-how is headed, step one to success will all the time be creating that single supply of fact for product information, which is the place Akeneo might help.

Thanks for the nice interview, readers who want to be taught extra ought to vivit Akeneo.