Introducing DFR v15: Connecting Your Enterprise with Upstream Data

With the newest version of our SaaS PIM rolling out this month, we are excited to announce that our new features make our PIM better than ever before. Over the past 20 years, we've adapted and grown to meet the needs of industrial manufacturers and distributors across various industries to become the best PIM system available. There are a multitude of pain points that these enterprises face that we can help to address. 

Distribution Data Challenges

We see a lot of companies buy from online distributors who have done a good job making it easy for them. Leading distributors have online catalogs with robust taxonomies and data to sell their products.  For many of our clients who don’t readily have this type of data internally, it is easier to reach out to these online distributors when they need a new part or item.

This process creates an issue because companies don’t always have an easy way to capture the information they need on purchased product data inbound from distributors, leading to duplicate purchases or having the same part with different part numbers. This problem compounds when companies grow via acquisitions and every business unit enters disparate data. This can drive unnecessary costs, overhead and inventory.💲

Other Common Source Data Challenges:

• Data Inaccuracy: Inconsistent and incomplete data can lead to errors in inventory management, demand forecasting, supply chain management, and product development
• Inefficient Processes: Manual data entry and correction are time-consuming and prone to human error, causing a slow-down in operations
• Poor Decision Making: Lack of reliable data hampers the ability to make informed decisions, affecting supply chain optimization, product development, revenue generation, and strategic planning
• Communication Breakdowns: Disparate data sources can cause miscommunication and misalignment between teams, leading to delays
• Compliance Issues: Inaccurate data can result in non-compliance with industry regulations and standards, potentially leading to legal and financial penalties
• Cost Overruns: Errors caused by poor data management can increase operational costs due to wasted resources and missed opportunities
• Delayed Product Development: Engineering teams may face delays in product development cycles due to the need for rework and additional verification efforts
• Slow Speed to Market: Lack of accurate and complete data can hamper efforts to bring products to market and therefore, result in missed opportunities to drive revenue

The Solution to Your Data Problems

Imagine providing the same buying experience you have with leading distributors with your own parts and sellable SKUs. If your data was organized like a leading distributor's online catalog, the buying experience of the end customers would be different. With proper classification and robust attribution in place, your team would be able to easily find and reuse parts versus creating costly duplicates.  In addition, your sourcing organization would know who they are buying from for each strategic category and could rationalize spend.

👉 The ability to onboard each acquisition into a global catalog will allow your team to begin sharing parts right away rather than struggling to rationalize data from various sources - a manual, inefficient, and arduous process. Our methodology and tools can help you quickly start identifying and rationalizing duplicate parts, suppliers and inventory across each business acquisition.

Supporting the Digital Thread

📈 Convergence Data's latest software release can make these situations a reality for your team and provides the full functionality needed to allow you to begin quickly integrating supplier and distribution data more efficiently. With our newest release, you can better integrate new acquisitions into your enterprise with minimal effort. It also offers the best user experience in the B2B space by providing a unique global data governance program that benefits your enterprise through a digital thread approach, with the goal of sharing data across key areas of the enterprise including: Engineering, Procurement, Sourcing, Aftermarket, Product Management and Marketing teams.

Driving Speed to Market and Revenue Generation

Our team of technical experts has managed complex data-cleansing projects for over two decades, helping our customers to prepare product data for deployment to our leading product information management software, Convergence PIM. Our SmartSwitch offering provides multiple options to reinforce and enrich product data through PIM staging and migration while minimizing risk and associated costs, ensuring an accelerated time to market. Whatever your PIM/PLM needs are, we can help.

📝 Contact us for a free discovery call to discuss your data needs today!