Standard Sales Slide Deck

Informatica Supplier Portal_Overview.pptx

Important: Supplier Portal assumes that supplier data is imported into PIM Server supplier catalogs, then merged and after that is enriched.

Problem Statement

• Overhead in the supplier communcation

  • Inform suppliers about the requirements on product information

  • No standardized data exchange medium and format

  • The data exchange and communcation process is not automated

• Overhead in data onboarding

  • Manual steps required in the import process (e.g. manually key in the data)

  • Manual quality checks required (e.g. are all the prices filled out?)

  • Streamlining of data required (e.g. „piano black“ => „black“, „HewlettPackard“ / „Hewlett-Packard“ => „hp“)+

  → Consequences

  • Process costs

  • Slower time to market

  • Product information not up to date

  • Growth limitations

Mission Statement

Supplier Portal is a major part of Informatica PIM and all the effort is always under consideration of a deep integration to one holistic solution

• Offering a standardized upload process for data suppliers (external companies & employees)

• Offering an easy to use UI to let data suppliers exactly do what they want

• Offering automated validation mechanisms to ensure best quality from the supplier’s data

• Offering a central communication platform regarding collaboration with data suppliers

Key Benefits

• Decreased time to market through efficient communication

• Higher conversion rates through faster updates of product information and better product information quality

• Cost savings through self service and process automation

• Higher margins and loyalty through increased supplier base and assortment (long tail)

User Roles

Supplier Portal supports 3 roles:

1. Portal administrators (usually a “heavy” PIM Server user)

   • Responsible for the administration of the suppliers and their uploads

1. Supplier administrators (“main user” of a supplier)

   • Upload data / review the validation results

   • Communicate through the timeline

   • Create further supplier users for their organization

   • Edit item data online

2. Supplier users

   • Same as supplier administrators but without the possibility to create new supplier users for their organization

Main Features

• Supplier onboarding

  • Self registration for suppliers with administrator approval

  • E-Mail invitation of suppliers

  • Supplier information portal

• Data onboarding

  • Standardized process for uploading of catalog data and images

  • Immediate feedback on data quality (validations)

  • Integration with PIM Server and Media Manager

  • Possibility to edit data online

• Data editing

  • Suppliers are able to access their product data online via a specialized view of WebAcces

• Automated data quality control

  • Flexible validation rules engine

  • E.g. required field checks, type and format checks, attribute lengths, lookup tables, etc.

  • Communication with suppliers bundled in one place

• Communication feed for every supplier (plain text, attachments)

  • System generated status updates (e.g. notification about a successful import)

  • User generated messages

Communication with PIM Server

Supplier Portal is using a REST interface to communicate with PIM Server. This web communication protocol is used to read data on demand from PIM Server to show it in the Supplier Portal UI and also to send product data from Supplier Portal to PIM Server / Media Manager.

Upload process

Validation Rules

• The validation rules are integrated into the import process

  • Repository checks (e.g. required fields and type checks defined in the „master“ data model)

  • Configurable and customizable rules

• Custom rules can be configured by the administrator

  • Standard set of validation functions provided which can be combined

  • Sophisticated specific checks can be customized using the PIM Server SDK

• Standard validations include

  • Required field checks

  • Field length checks

  • Look up list checks (e.g. color must be red, white or black)

  • String operations (contains, starts/ends with, etc.)

  • Format checks (date, number, regular expression)

• Different severity levels: Error, Warning, Info

  • Errors stop the import

  • Warning can optionally stop the import

  • Information is displayed to the supplier

We are working on more sophisticated business rule validations involving Informatica Data Quality in near time future!

Timeline

• Central point for communication between the Supplier Organization and the Portal Administrator

• Portal Administrators are able to send Export Files directly to the Suppliers Timeline

• Communication Threads are set up for every upload process

• Portal Administrators are able to pin important messages to the top of the Timeline

Email notifications

It is possible to set up email notification rules on user level to get messages depending on specific events in Supplier Portal