PD Command
Turn-key Product Information Boosts E-Commerce

As the e-commerce industry prospers, it’s critical for vendors to look for new ways to accelerate online sales and increase revenue. This requires improving the exchange of mission-critical data relevant to the products being sold.

A major challenge for vendors is gathering information about their products and then centralizing it. Since data typically resides in various formats like spreadsheets, databases, word documents and PDF files, it’s complicated and time consuming to extract important information manually. PD Command’s Product Information System—Product Data Commander (PDC), automates the process of gathering data from various sources through an intelligent UI and effectively presenting it for selling online, reducing the online reseller’s time and cost. Scott Reuter, Principal at PD Command says, “We empower clients to brilliantly present their products, which translate into an increase in online sales—that is the key to successfully selling their products online.”

PDC licenses its software to distributors and retailers who face the challenge of accruing product information from numerous vendors. They can set the rules for the exchange of product information between their trading partners and work with the vendor community to educate and empower them to deliver the type of information that’s needed. For manufac ture r s, PDC is a subscription-based model that houses all product data in its central repository, providing users a single source for all their product information. Most distributors, program or buying groups and retailers prefer to get complete data about products directly from the manufacturer, rather than building it themselves, to use in their e-commerce system. “PDC helps them get the exact data they require for their online sales,” says Reuter. Users can either import product data or create product information directly through PDC’s user interface. PDC helps synchronize information internally with existing enterprise systems and externally with business and trading partners. PDC also provides the service of structuring a client’s product information. They only need to provide the raw product data, and PDC’s expert staff will do the rest.

An online sale doesn’t have the luxury of a savvy salesperson to sell products. The data must do it

The application links images, PDFs and other non-structured data with products to give a comprehensive view. According to Reuter, “Typical distributor and retailer e-commerce solutions are very good at processing transactions. However they rely on their vendor partners to provide comprehensive product information about their products to effectively sell them. Manufacturers equipped with our PDC solution can display and explain to customers what makes their products unique and the advantages in buying them. An online sale doesn’t have the luxury of a savvy salesperson to sell products. The data must do it.”

PDC allows users to create custom or industry standard hierarchies. Categorizing and standardizing product information enables buyers to better search for and differentiate between products within the same category. This maximizes the effectiveness of any e-commerce system. With PDC, clients can expect bottom-line advantages such as increased revenue and decreased costs, with sales growth results that can easily be tracked. “Vendors using PDC better position their products for online presentation to the end buyer. We empower any e-commerce system,” says Reuter.

In keeping with the essence of empowering clients to deliver sales-ready content, PD Command plans to bring enhancements to the software to further simplify the product data on-boarding process and data management to provide complete, comprehensive and accurate product data. “Just like a top performing salesperson, PDC software and services will enhance how a product is positioned and presented to the end customer in any e-commerce system, maximizing the revenue generated from online sales,” affirms Reuter.