Business application development company Cellacore has released Product Desk, a simplified product information management (PIM) product targeted at the automotive aftermarket.
Cellacore co-founder and CEO Tony Minock discussed the solution with Aftermarket Business World.
What challenge was Product Desk created to address?
Product Desk centralizes all of your product information in a single location, and allows you to automatically publish that information with ease. We found in our research that there was a lot of technology available for PIM, but much of it hadn't kept up with the times. Some of the tools available are also outside of the price point of smaller and mid-sized companies.
The big opportunity we see is being able to help small, medium and large companies in the industry to centralize this product information and get it into a format that they can sell to big retailers. Many of the smaller guys don't even know where to start, so we wanted to give them a tool that was economical and easy to use.
What are the primary challenges those smaller companies face when trying to initiate a PIM project?
They are often challenged with gathering the information they need to complete their customer requirements. Often they gather the information, they think they have it right, and they submit the file formats and get rejected. We can work with them to help them understand that it got rejected because they were at 82 characters and it can only be 80 characters, and it does get down to that granular of a level. It's just investigating all of these different columns they need and data sets that they need, and what are the true specifications.
Once a solution is in place, what are the primary data management challenges they face?
Basically just setting up the receiver channels. If they are a wholesale distributor and they are selling to a retailer that has an e-commerce store, they have to educate that retailer that they can send information directly to the e-commerce site and have it automatically published when they update the information. It's the same with manufacturers. Once they get this information, they have to educate their distributors that they can get this information to them automatically.
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