Whereas most Retailers have already made the leap to a digital paradigm, Grocery has lagged behind. And now, as major digital players jump into the fray (Amazon, Whole Foods,) it’s now officially ‘game on’ for the industry at large. 

In this lively roundtable discussion, experts from Earley Information Science, Lidl UK, and Tyson Foods discuss the ever-changing digital landscape in Grocery, and identify key areas where differentiation can mean prosper or perish. You will learn:

• The confluence of trends, new players and events fueling this revolution
• How customer journey “shopping modes” are critically different in grocery
• How to provide customized digital experiences based on customer shopping mode (Commodity, Quick Eats, Meal Planning) 
• Creative digital and in-store product merchandising through in-depth understanding of your assortment, partners, region, and customers
• How to shift from stocking-centric to customer-centric in category management, “ways to shop” and new concierge “ways to serve”

Let’s face it - no one likes the ‘G’ word. It’s too often a sour antidote to excitement and nimbleness: Triple checks, security barriers, privacy forms, council reviews. It’s as awful as pulling teeth and paying taxes, right? 

Thankfully it doesn’t have to be, and many organizations have found an effective rhythm for long-term, sustainable data stewardship. 

In this session our panelists explore how you can implement this necessary rhythm, even if you’re surrounded by governance resistors.

You will learn:

• Good governance is empowering, not (only) a “necessarily evil”
• The Effective As: Automation, Assignment, Attitude
• Analytics for achieving fast failure (and recovery)

The B2B technical buyer is a unique persona with specialized needs. In order to get and keep this valuable customer on your site you must speak directly to their needs. So, how are the needs of technical buyers defined and translated into an engaging experience? The B2B and B2C ecommerce experiences have many similarities. Some lessons learned from B2C can be valuable to B2B. However, the two markets also have important differences, and the customer journey needs to reflect them.

In this session our panel of B2B commerce experts discusses:

• The archetypes of B2B buyer
• Motivators and demotivators for making purchases
• How to identify, structure and present content and assets that move the sale forward
• The critical role of personalization
• How merchandizing, cross-sell and up-sell leverage organizational knowledge about customer challenges

In the early days of ecommerce, manufacturers and distributors were executing on the basics – building navigation and classification hierarchies was a major effort. Though always a work in progress and never a trivial effort, building effective hierarchies is guided by straightforward principles. But, taxonomies are more than navigation hierarchies and can be leveraged to drive advanced capabilities. In our next executive roundtable, the panel discussion will address the challenges in building more powerful capabilities based on a foundation of a well-constructed taxonomy.

In this session our panel of experts discuss:

• How are manufacturers and distributors using taxonomies to improve site search?
• How are taxonomies used in merchandising – assessing product mix and grouping products for specific targets or solutions?
• How do taxonomies help with personalization?
• How are part relationships managed and presented?
• How are multi-tiered product entity models like base-variant being leveraged to improve data management, reporting and navigation?

Business agility rests upon a well-architected environment of business processes, workflows, and communications. 

So how does taxonomy fit in? It’s everywhere - taxonomy is the foundational building block that improves efficiencies, collaboration, and cost reductions across the enterprise. And the more agile you are, the better opportunity you have to compete and win. 

In this session our panel of experts discuss:

• Industry-agnostic best practices to boost your bottom line and beat your competition through taxonomy design and semantic integration
• How taxonomy design enables customer acquisition, search relevancy, structured data, faster time to market, asset reuse, and more.

Ecommerce websites, replacement part reference guides, online marketplaces and IoT monitoring platforms all have one thing in common.  They all depend on detailed, accurate and comprehensive product information databases.  Product data is a critical driver for core offerings today, and will be even more critical as organizations innovate across their value chains in the future.

In this session our panel of experts discuss:

• What is enriched product data
• Enhancing your brand position and value to customers
• How enriched product data enables innovation
• Preparedness for interoperability

It’s hard enough to design and implement a ‘garden variety’ product information management (PIM) program. Even at its most base level, figuring out product names, attributes, and building consensus among stakeholders is a monumental challenge.

And as your business and data complexity grows, so too may your need for an enhanced PIM system that that accounts for numerous operating units, separate companies, global operations, and more.

But first, how to judge whether you are ready to jump from your homegrown solution? And if you’re ready to make the jump, what is the best path to ensure that you transition from one system to another successfully?

In this session our expert panel discusses:

• The milestones that signal your readiness to take on a commercial PIM
• Best practices when making the transition to a commercial PIM
• How to align your PIM strategy to a logical data model