Amazon achieved massive success thanks to superior product management and governance. Ultimately, SKU management and governance is all about content: its creation, availability, integrity, maintenance, and security.
Amazon achieved massive success thanks to superior product management and governance. Their rise to the height of eCommerce came in large part from their ability to procure, maintain, and distribute massive amounts of product data. They did this with SKU content governance and management, resulting in a top-notch customer experience.
The easy B2C Amazon user experience has in fact had a major influence on buyers in the B2B market in recent years. People have become used to intuitive online buying and account management. They like to guide their own purchase journey, and with more information available than ever, often get more than 70% of the way through the decision-making process before ever engaging a sales representative. In fact, a 2017 survey found that 94% of B2B executives said that B2B eCommerce is critical to business advantage and results.
While B2B companies looking to integrate digital into their marketing and sales operations may not think of themselves as the next Amazon.com, they need SKU management and governance every bit as much – if not more. Sales are more highly customized and pricing structures are larger and more complex than with B2C, which can lead to ‘SKU proliferation’ – an explosion of very slightly different ‘products,’ each with their own SKU.
SKU management and governance is all about content: the creation of content, the availability of content, the integrity of content, the maintenance of content, and the security of content.
At Object Edge, we’ve guided large B2B organizations through the process of:
