With the millennials taking over the distribution industry worldwide, their purchasing behaviour has been extremely different in comparison to their former generation.Research is the first step of every process they do.

With so much online content about everything, research has now become extremely easy to do too..

In the end they also expect an Amazon like online shopping experience for a B2B or a B2C product.Since having an online presence has now become a mandate, you need to ask yourself how soon you can get onto the online wagon.Usually, distributors do their research, hire an external source to get their company online.

After months, he wonders, was the investment worth it.

The traffic decreases bounce rate decreases, and lead flow decreases.How do you fix this?Bring your product at the top of the Google page!When a buyer decides to buy a product, what does he do first?Ans.

Google it.The right focus keywordWhen a buyer researches a product, and he uses the right keyword, based on his knowledge, the options displayed will be related to the search term.You need to make sure you understand your consumer jargon, to use the right key focus key word to relate to the query and continue the conversation.Impact of contentQuality of content determines the ranking of the page on Google.

Real WorldWhen an inRiver PIM connector is developed for an external system, it is based on a number of assumptions.

It starts from the definition of the product in PIM, an organization of data in PIM, inRiver system environment, target systems environment, connectivity and so on.All these assumptions have a reasonable probability to change in the short term itself.

While it may be impossible to make it future proof for the long term, there can be a lot of initiatives that can be taken to minimize the changes and prevent connector redevelopment in the short term.ChallengeFollowing are some of the sample scenarios that can be encountered in any PIM implementation or PIM integration in short term.Change in the number of attributes required to define a product in the target.Mapping of inRiver product attribute to target system’s attribute.Transformations if any for inRiver product attribute to target system’s attribute.Runtime controls of the connector like source data location, target server connectivity, etc.,Alert/notification mechanismsApproachWhile there are many possible approaches to overcome these challenges, some of the proven ones are:Making use of inRiver connector’s settingsMaking use of resource files in the same way configuration files are used in any typical software developmentMaking use of inRiver’s Specification entity to store some of these frequently changing valuesFinal word…Each of the options above has its own advantages & limitations.

And the right option for the situation can be selected considering the requirements for flexibility, the frequency of expected change, technical expertise of the end users, etc… 

Once upon a time, when Lord Buddha lived, a man named Kishore went to him and asked “What is the worth of human life?” Lord Buddha smiled and instead gave him a shining stone and said “First go and find the worth of this stone.” Kishore got puzzled with Buddha’s reply.

But without saying anything he took the stone and was about to go when Buddha reminded him not to sell the stone in any case.

Orange seller replied “I will give a dozen of oranges and you give this stone to me.” Kishore moved on and then went to a vegetable vendor and asked him the same question.

The vendor exclaimed “Take a sack of potatoes and leave this shiny stone.” Kishore still not satisfied with all these answers kept going on.

Next he went to a goldsmith and showed him the stone.

Goldsmith readily agreed to pay him $500,000.

He had many bright students, he taught them meditation and other practices.

They held him in high respect.

But there was this one thing in the monastery that they couldn’t tolerate.There was a young disciple who would often steal from his brother monks, he would steal their money, and he would steal small things in the monastery.Monks complained about him to their teacher “Master!

I’ll talk to him”, a wise one called the young disciple after everyone had left “These things are puny, only right practice will give you what you crave for, work hard on your practice, stop stealing things.The young monk prostrated before the wise one in respect and left, he was ashamed of his habit, he was determined to try and stop his habit.

He was an intelligent and good person; like most people who come on the path, but it was too difficult for him to change his mental pattern (isn’t it often difficult for everyone).Few days passed without any trouble, but he could not resist the temptation for long, he fell and unfortunately for him he was caught again, monks paraded again to the wise one taking the culprit along, the wise one dismissed them saying “Give him some time he will learn”.They caught him a few more times and brought him in front of the wise one for justice, he would simply dismiss them saying “Don’t mind him, do your practices.

Monks were all growing impatient with their teacher for his strange behavior.

Without a doubt, it’s extremely important to rank better on GOOGLE than the rest with Digital Marketing.

Hence, SEO must always be attentive.Keyword research – when you target on the wrong keywords, you can damage your campaign which leads to less traffic.Identify your problemsAfter research work, it’s time to audit your site for problems that need to be fixed.

Main things to focus areSite errors that includeRedirecting any 404 pages to actual contentChanging 302 redirects to 301 redirectsUpdating duplicate content pages, Meta titles, and Meta descriptions.Website SpeedSpeed matters as customers cannot wait for the page to load.

Make sure you don’t lose your valuable customers because your site is slow.On-page OptimizationPage optimization plays a very important role to attract more customers to your site.

When your web page is relevant to the topic, you will gain more visitors than usual.

You can add links – Google pays more attention when you engage the site with relevant pages.Optimise your imagesUser experience is great when you add images on your website.

A number of disciples went to the Buddha and said, “Sir, there are living here in Savatthi many wandering hermits and scholars who indulge in constant dispute, some saying that the world is infinite and eternal and others that it is finite and not eternal, some saying that the soul dies with the body and others that it lives on forever, and so forth.

What, Sir, would you say concerning them?”The Buddha answered, “Once upon a time there was a certain raja who called to his servant and said, ‘Come, good fellow, go and gather together in one place all the men of Savatthi who were born blind… and show them an elephant.’ ‘Very good, sire,’ replied the servant, and he did as he was told.

He said to the blind men assembled there, ‘Here is an elephant,’ and to one man he presented the head of the elephant, to another its ears, to another a tusk, to another the trunk, the foot, back, tail, and tuft of the tail, saying to each one that what they touched was the elephant.“When the blind men had felt the elephant, the raja went to each of them and said to each, ‘Well, blind man, have you seen the elephant?

Tell me, what sort of thing is an elephant?’“Thereupon the men who were presented with the head answered, ‘Sire, an elephant is like a pot.’ And the men who had observed the ear replied, ‘An elephant is like a winnowing basket.’ Those who had been presented with a tusk said it was a plowshare.

Those who knew only the trunk said it was a plow; others said the body was a granary; the foot, a pillar; the back, a mortar; the tail, a pestle, the tuft of the tail, a brush.“Then they began to quarrel, shouting, ‘Yes it is!’ ‘No, it is not!’ ‘An elephant is not that!’ ‘Yes, it’s like that!’ and so on, till they came to blows over the matter.“Brethren, the raja was delighted with the scene.“Just so are these preachers and scholars holding various views blind and unseeing….

In their ignorance, they are by nature quarrelsome, wrangling, and disputatious, each maintaining reality is thus and thus.”Then the Exalted One rendered this meaning by uttering this verse of uplift,O how they cling and wrangle, some who claimFor preacher and monk the honored name!For, quarreling, each to his view they cling.Such folk see only one side of a thing.Is there a point of view that’s superior to all others?Are all descriptions of reality deficient in some way?The Buddha wisely chose not to explore these topics as he considered them a distraction from his teachings on the relief of suffering.

But I am not capable of endless meditation and austerities.

If I tried that, I would revert to my bad ways and old life, despite knowing how painful it is.

“Send Gyosei here; ask him to fetch a chess board when he comes.”“Sir, Gyosei cannot play chess.”“That’s fine.

Play a game of chess with our visitor; if you lose, I shall chop your head off with this sword.

If you win, I shall chop off our visitors head.”The look in the Master’s eyes revealed that he would do exactly what he had said.The game began.

Soon, when his opponent made a weak move, he launched a powerful attack.

Life is never going to be the same.

World is going to be divided into the pre Covid-19 and Post Covid-19 era.E-Commerce plays a major role in this time than ever, connecting people and communities and helping them stay in touch with loved ones, customers, work, entertainment, news and many more.Businesses are navigating themselves to reach for the consumers through the digital medium.

People discovered that they can do a lot of things using the   internet which otherwise was ignored.Even after we eliminate Covid-19, this new found ability to manoeuvre the way we go about our daily lives is going to stay with us.Let’s look at how eCommerce plays a major role in various domains.

RetailersOnline services are the only option for retailers in these COVID-19 times.

eCommerce has never seen a surge like this before with retailers struggling to meet the consumer demands.Lack of availability of goods at local brick and mortar stores has many consumers using the internet to make their purchases, with retailers using this opportunity to get into the eCommerce zone.Banking38% of consumers see Contactless as a basic need or future, Digitals wallets and contactless payment are in demand.

Global ecommerce transactions were up 23% in March with countries encouraging the use of contactless payment to prevent the spread of virus from exchanging cash notes.Digital payments are growing even though consumer spending takes a hit due to Covid-19.Surge in  Mobile AppsWith people confined in homes and spending more time with Apps, there is a surge in mobile app downloads.

The reasons are product damage, wrong pricing, wrong order to name a few.From an e-commerce company owner or a product owner perspective, the reasons for damage and the price may not be relevant, but you can take steps in ensuring that your customers don’t order the wrong products.Wrong orders happen because the visitors do not see adequate information about the product that they search.

Since some customers may have a time pressure to purchase, they end up making some assumptions about the product and buys it in-spite of this lack of product information.However, the customers figure out the lack of fitment, when the product reaches the warehouse.

The customers return the products to the store.

The store owner incurs the cost of shipment, inventory and a loss of faith with these customers.How can you ensure adequate product information?You have to locate the product information from multiple sources and provide the information in a structured manner.

You should also give adequate technical specifications about the product for the customers to compare and to confirm the fitness of the product to the industrial use case requirement.

You should cross map the products in multiple application areas which are the place where the bulk of oversight happensHow would you benefit?Saving significant cost in handling returnsImproved customer loyalty and satisfactionBetter inventory managementRetaining existing customersLowering support costs 

One day the Buddha was sitting in the wood with thirty or forty monks.

They had an excellent lunch and they were enjoying the company of each other.

There was a farmer passing by and the farmer was very unhappy.

The Buddha said they had not seen any cows passing by.The farmer said, “Monks, I’m so unhappy.

I have also a few acres of a sesame seed plantation and the insects have eaten up everything.

I suffer so much I think I am going to kill myself.”The Buddha said, “My friend, we have not seen any cows passing by here.

There was a man who had 4 wives, he loved the fourth one very dearly, and he would get her the nicest dress.

He would get her the nicest jewelry; he would dress her very nicely and entertain with her all the time.

The third wife was also dear to him, he would give her everything, and she was the one who controlled everything in his life.He also loved the second wife, he was also confident in her, she was the one to whom he would tell all his personal matters, he would always talk to his second wife about life.His first wife was there, he wasn’t too attached to her, she was always there, and she was modest, always trying her best to show herself.One day the man fell ill and he was on his deathbed, all of his wives were gathered around him, he said: “Now look, my beautiful wives, I don’t want to die alone, who of you will come to me?”He called his fourth wife and said “You are the dearest to my heart, I have always loved you, and will you come with me?

The wife said “No” and turned back and went away.

His heart was broken into pieces.Sadly he called his third wife to the front and said: “I am going to die, will you come with me?” to that she said, “No way, the moment you die, I am going with somebody else” she turned her back and went away.He called his 2nd wife and asked her the same question, she said “I am sorry that you are dying, but I can only come up to your cemetery, I will be with you until there” and turned back to stand in her place.From behind he heard a voice “I will come with you”, he looked at his first wife and felt sad, he said “My dear I have always neglected you, you look so skinny, now my life has come to an end, I wish I knew you loved me more than anybody when I was healthy.

I feel very sad I neglected you all this time” and died.In the story, the 4th wife represents the body and its craving, which we lose when we die.

Several hundred years ago, a group of monks in Thailand (then Siam) had a big golden Buddha.

Rather than have their enemies get their mitts on their beloved (and highly valuable) statue, the monks decided to disguise its worth by covering it with clay.Their plan worked: the Burmese arrived and figured the statue wasn't worth looting.

They also killed off all of the monks, who took the secret of the statue's true identity to their graves.Fast forward to the 1950s and the monastery was being relocated to make room for a Bangkok highway.

As part of the relocation, the monks went to move the statue and found that it was strangely heavy—so heavy that they would likely damage it unless they upgraded their statue-moving equipment.

It had also started to rain, so the monks covered it up until they could figure out what to do in the morning.

Later that night, the head monk went to check on the statue.As he shone his torch over the statue, he noticed a crack.

SituationWhen starting a new connector development project, a lot of thought goes into –Understanding the PIM data model requirementsUnderstanding the input data formats requirements / output data formats requirementsAnticipating the future requirements and incorporating the required flexibilityUnderstanding the requirements of the external system and so onChallengeHowever, in most scenarios, the performance expectations for the connector are not considered till the final production / go live time.

This can result in unexpected delays and schedule slippages if the connector is not able to meet the performance requirements.

Given that even a very small PIM implementation may deal with thousands of products it is guaranteed to have performance challenges if the performance requirements are not planned from the beginning and also tested during User Acceptance Testing (UAT).RecommendationsFollowing are some of the recommendations that any connector development team should consider:A good understanding of the volume of records to be processed (number of SKUs, etc.,) before starting the projectA good test plan to verify that the connector can meet the performance requirementsSeparate DEV and QA environments to simulate large volume of data and test the performance without affecting the other teams and overall scheduleIn addition following the tips below is also useful:If the output is required in XML format, using in built XML class libraries to generate and validate the XML can improve performanceReplacing for loops with LinQ queries can also improve performanceIf files are output to FTP server, assessing the performance of the FTP server and making sure it is not a bottleneck is also a necessityLast but not the least, it may also be necessary to deploy the connector from the same geography as where the PIM instance is setupFinal word…Planning for the performance of the connector from the beginning will make sure there are no surprises during the UAT / Go Live phase and guarantee that there are no cost overruns in the PIM implementation.

Sparks leaped on the wind and soon the forest was ablaze.

Fire!” cried the little parrot.

A wall of flames shot up on one side, and then the other.

But still, the little parrot flew on.At this time, some of the devas — gods of a happy realm — were floating overhead in their cloud palaces of ivory and gold.

They pointed at him with perfect hands.

How absurd!” And they laughed.But one of those gods, strangely moved, changed himself into a golden eagle and flew down, down towards the little parrot’s fiery path.The little parrot was just nearing the flames again when the great eagle with eyes like molten gold appeared at his side.

Product Information Management helps in managing the collation of enterprise data from multiple systems and giving a customer a unified view of the product.

Altius has an implementation experience in inRiver, Akeneo, Salsify, Stibo to name a few PIM products.PIMThe perfect Product Data and the Product Content might be finally collected in the eCommerce store.

However, the data that are collected in multiple systems in multiple formats have to be re-purposed in multiple channels as the sales may happen in any channel.

Collating the product information in one system with a unified format is the best way to collect and to re-purpose the information for an effective omnichannel strategy.Why PIM Implementation is Important?There are multiple attributes about a product that includes size, shape, color, texture, material, currency, units to name a few.

Customers need to be shown the product based on their search phrase which may be on multiple attributes.

The customer loses interest if the search does not yield the product they are looking for.

According to a Buddhist legend, there once was a woman who sought out the Buddha after losing her baby to illness.

Crazy with grief, she asked him for medicine to bring her son back from the dead.

He replied that he would give her this medicine if she brought him back a white mustard seed from the house of a family that had never experienced death.

The woman went door to door, searching for a family untouched by the loss of a loved one.

Of course, she could never find such a family.

She realized that death touches everyone.