Akeneo summit 2020
Akeneo Summit is a yearly event in Paris where Akeneo-experts meet up to talk about what they love most; PIM (Product Information Management).
4th to 6th February, 500 guests along with Øystein Efterdal and Merete Aarøy, both Akeneo-supernerds from Visma Digital Commerce, attended the Akeneo summit 2020. It was a celebration of PIM, a lot of inspiration, new contacts, and great new Akeneo stuff. Read on to get our takeaways.
If you need a quick intro to what exactly AkeneoPim is, have a look at this great little animation first.
Akeneo V.4
First of all, Akeneo version 4 was announced, with a lot of new features. They have a totally new asset manager for handling pictures, movies, files and more, which makes the need for an external DAM less important for most of the customers. They have updated the rule engine to easier make rules, and a data quality tool for checking spelling, format, etc. (not Norwegian at this time).
Of course, they also improve speed and do some backend fixes, including solutions for easier connections and integrations.
PXMProduct experience management
Akeneo delivers software, but are expanding this to a full service. The product itself is only an empty container that can be connected to other systems. The value is what you have in it. This is extremely important since PIM is the source of all commercial data. Every service you connect to your store is getting its information from this base, and there is a huge amount of it. Product information is used in e-commerce, marketplaces, feeds like Google and Kelkoo, social media, physical stores, and showrooms, catalogs, suppliers and more. You need one source of truth, and this must fit all other platforms and services.
Contributions
Akeneo has a lot of satisfied customers and suppliers that contributed to their solutions and experiences. Because of the open-source platforms, there are a lot of third parties that have made apps and connections to ease the integrations and expand the services. Akeneo partners like Magento, Bynder, BigCommerce, and translator.com have fully compatible modules for enriching the PIM with more services.
Customers. There is a wide range of customers! A big pharmaceutical company in the US had over 2 million products delivered to multiple platforms. Their quality of information went from poor to very good in just 4 months by doing a really good job, hired students and started working on improving data. Their cost went down to 1$ pr products and uniform information all across platforms. A company that is selling product tests (testing children's seats, vacuums, etc) could increase its content by 50% and reduce time to market by ½.
What does this mean for us?
VISMA, with its 10 000 employees is a big and important partner to Akeneo. A big part of our job here was to convince Akeneo just how important we are so we can adapt and move together in the right direction.
Akeneo will come back to Norway, visit all our offices and help with the training of everyone that needs insight, info and more. Like an Akeneo Visma-tour!
Akeneo company
Akeneo’s core values are Humility, Innovation, Benevolence, Openness, and Beer! These values are transparent through their company. All actions, how they are talking to us as partners, customers, how they develop products and taking care of the value chain is amazing. And the beer part? Not just alcohol, but the point of brewery, history, love for a product, bring people together, makes room for nerdiness, and there is room for thousands of brands, all with their own specialty. These are values of a chain that makes beer so special and produces beer (and Akeneo) lovers all across the world!
All over, we are looking into a bright future with a great company with an attitude that is matching ours all over!
An introduction to the possibilities with PIM from our Meetup
Akeneo actually visited our Meetup last year and you can the lecture here with Øystein from Visma Digital Commerce giving you a brief intro to the practical possibilities with Akeneo PIM.
