The retail landscape is changing at a rapid pace with the volume of online sales set to overtake that of brick and mortar. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, many brick and mortar retailers are beginning to aggressively support online sales. However, brick and mortar retailers are packaging a lot of innovative experiences for the customer. In light of these changes, Shyam Potta, Product Manager, Riversand Technologies, says, “At the core of the entire retail product supply-chain, from manufacturer through end consumer, is product data. How should data management adapt to changing trends in retail to meet high customer expectations for a seamless shopping experience?”

Current Master Data Management (MDM) solutions focus on improving data quality and governance. These solutions are evolving to deal with problems associated with throughput and on issues around data relevance and insights. Riversand is bringing next-generation solutions to the market that will enable their customers to manage, govern, and analyze master data. “This will result in increased throughputs, help clients answer questions around data relevance, and offer future insights,” says Potta.

Riversand’s MDMCenter is an integrated, end-to-end, multi-domain single source of truth platform that acts as a hub for the management, analysis, and governance of all product, vendor, customer, and location data. This platform can be fully integrated with numerous other systems, such as ERP, PLM, MRM, WCM, eCommerce, Marketplaces, Datapools, and DAM systems, CRM and more. “A change in upstream systems or within Product Information Management (PIM)/MDM, once approved is syndicated across all the systems. In an Omni-channel setting, endpoints and customer touch points show updated information immediately,” adds Potta. With a single repository and a single web-based user interface, this highly scalable solution allows retailers to access, analyze, and report on higher-quality data. The results are higher customer loyalty, fewer returns, and increased process efficiency.

In an implementation highlight, the largest beauty retailer in the U.S. chose Riversand’s MDMCenter as their PIM solution. The client’s vendors were providing product data in the form of Excel spreadsheets, which then had to be manually reviewed and mapped by an employee.