Old Catalogs Get Digital Makeover That Allows Easy Updates in Real Time

The catalog — that staple of direct-to-consumer (D2C) and business-to-business (B2B) commerce — could use a digital makeover.

We’re roughly a century removed from Sears and Roebuck; we’re decades into the age of the internet.

And yet, as Elastic Path CEO Jamus Driscoll told Karen Webster, the experience is clunky and inefficient in its current digital incarnation. Brands are dealing with D2C initiatives, with wholesale, with a slew of different channels.

“There are so many different ways in which you can, and should want to, merchandise and let customers experience the uniqueness of your products,” said Driscoll.

However, on eCommerce platforms, the catalogs have been creating complexities, which in turn gives rise to friction.

On the web, brands and enterprises have only a few minutes, seconds really, to fully engage the end user, whether it be a consumer or B2B transaction. Within that short window, they have to offer the right product, within context, at an appealing price.

As he put it, the digital channel is no longer a destination — it’s the heartbeat of the business.

Working With the Workarounds

The catalog experience has been largely unchanged since the rise of the internet in the mid-1990s, tied to a rigid, fused database structure, which in turn meant that development teams have had to craft “workarounds” to get their products digitally presentable. The “generation one” commerce engine has a hierarchy, which is how contents are related to one another. When variations are thrown into the mix, say with a subset of catalogs, that’s when technological complexities arise.

“You may have to run another instance of the platform just to get the level of control that’s desired,” said Driscoll.

The conversation took place against a backdrop in which Elastic Path has launched EP Product Experience Manager (PXM).

In terms of the mechanics, EP PXM centralizes commerce product merchandising and catalog creation into one place. Merchandisers determine how and when they engage users online with their wares in a bid to optimize price discovery and conversions across all manner of touchpoints. Enterprises can organize products into unlimited hierarchies and assign multiple price books to products as they design and launch promotions.

At a high level, commerce teams can design and launch differentiated product experiences across channels in-house, without having to rely on the heavy technical lift provided by the IT department.

That streamlined reimagining of the catalog database itself — using existing infrastructure — allows brands to have more configurable means through which to present products to different customers.

“The database itself does not change, but what gives brands the ability to use that database and tailor it is what changes,” he said.

Using the company’s catalog composer too, complete with a merchant driven rules engine, a merchant can build catalogs on the fly and improve customer engagement.

“The brands want simplified, consolidated and flexible architectures that allow them to manage the needs of the modern app,” he said.

The new Elastic Path offering allows links directly from what’s configured in the database to the visual image and pricing data that allows a consumer to move quickly from browsing to buying, he said. The catalog thus becomes a differentiator for brands that gives rise to shoppable moments that increase conversions and minimize returns (which can be expensive to the merchants).

As Driscoll told Webster: “Empowering merchants with the tools they need to quickly move merchandise exactly the way they want is the engine of growth.”