Putting Powerful Integration at the Heart of Ecommerce

Simple, yet powerful integrations across your martech stack are at the heart of market-beating ecommerce.

Individually, best-in-class software solutions can deliver good returns on your ecommerce content strategy. When integrated, however, they can prove unbeatable. Yet research would suggest many more ecommerce companies need to accelerate their centralization efforts. According to The State of Universal Content Management, barely more than a third of companies would agree that they had an integrated, centralized content management hub. A further 44% stated they were working towards one but the fact remains, a lot of work still needs to be done.

The continued lack of integration is understandable. The ecommerce environment is fast-moving and the last two years have seen unprecedented demands made of organizations operating online. Focusing on anything other than delivering the best possible experience today seems like a luxury. But, we would argue, it is a necessity.

For example, latest research from Forrester suggests that two thirds of retailers find inventory management somewhat or very challenging . This is a mission-critical element of today’s ecommerce business where conversions hinge on stock accuracy in terms of both information and availability. It is something that can change on a dime, and marketers recognize the vital importance of being able to react – 32% of respondents state that accelerating their response to business and market changes is a high priority.

Integrated content management (ICM) fundamentally improves the way enterprises work. From planning to time to market, via automation and machine learning, ICM is the engine that will drive organizations’ competitive advantage in the future.

Increasingly, there is less and less that ecommerce businesses can achieve without resorting to automation. Customers are active across multiple platforms and so demand omnichannel experiences. To be able to process that demand, with the requisite data, analytics and relevant content delivery, automation is a given. That simply isn’t possible without ICM, or without an adequate Digital Asset Management (DAM) and Product Information Management (PIM) integration at its core.

The evolution of former catalog apparel company Lands’ End, for example. While the catalog remains a critical part of the company’s success, it has evolved with a presence in ecommerce, digital advertising, bricks and mortar and, for a UK-born company, new global audiences.

Understandably, companies don’t approach changing a fundamental part of their operations lightly. Integrated content had the potential to transform Lands’ End, but in doing so would impact every part of its business. Its first step was to develop a proof-of-concept phase comparing two providers – of which one was censhare – to make sure the company could satisfy itself that five key criteria could be met.

Based on its appropriateness for cost, user experience, system integration, technical fit and, of course, customer references, the company chose censhare to work with one of its US-based implementation partners to integrate it into other tools and existing systems.

Not only did the system fit well into the company’s existing processes, it gave nearly a third more company employees access to its functionality, allowing Land’s End to get on with its ambitious growth plans. This already includes the creation of an online marketplace showcasing multiple third-party brands, as well as a partnership with a US-based retailer, opening the brand up to a customer base across every state, through more than 1,000 physical stores.

While much of the acceleration in ecommerce companies’ plans has been laid at the door of the pandemic, censhare and its partners have been innovating with centralized content for some considerable time, with the company recently celebrating its 20th anniversary.

It has helped multiple retailers around the globe achieve their goals and finally build integrated martech stacks on a strong, centralized asset, information and content platform. One large US department store has been running process automation and personalization that many still only dream of, nearly a decade later. Having implemented censhare’s DAM, it has allowed the company to cut production time by more than half, save $275,000 annually through culling duplicated assets alone and helped the company create 100s of effective, personalised variations of a single marketing email.

Simple, powerful integrations with customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), web content management systems (WCMS) and more has helped censhare clients boost output quantity and quality, minimized potentially costly errors and expanded customer reach. Bringing customer and product data together with content creates an Integrated Content Management system that delivers the much-vaunted joined-up customer experience most ecommerce sites crave. But, with a little time and effort, it is a customer experience that is achievable!

censhare's omnichannel content management platform not only offers great value to your end users throughout various vertical markets, but can also be a very attractive business partner to systems integrators focused on digital transformation services in product marketing and ecommerce. By putting unsiloed content into the heart of your customer’s digital transformation, the censhare platform acts as pivotal element in building great customer engagement; a single source of truth that is constantly available and up to date. At the same time its open nature allows you to develop and offer customer-specific solutions.

As a great addition to your portfolie, censhare allows you to offer software licensing, consultancy and managed services such as user management, support and hosting to your customers.

Interested in adding censhare to your portfolio? Get in touch today.