Importance of Digital Platform for Light Manufacturing

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By: Sagar Sharma

Importance of Digital Platform for Light Manufacturing

In this competitive era, every organization creates multiple digital platforms to address their varied business challenges and requirements. Adoption of digital platforms transcends the traditional value chain and creates new business value by transforming processes to platforms.

Light manufactures are also facing different challenges related to managing data of products, customers, suppliers, vendors, commerce, content, and more. With the right digital platform, you cannot only address your challenges but also leverage various business benefits.

Let’s have an overview of the concerns of the light manufacturing business.

Challenges of the Light Manufacturing Companies

Challenges of the Light Manufacturing Companies

Top Management

The C-level executives of an organization face difficulties in achieving faster time-to-market, creating best customer experiences, a single source of truth for all the business data, centralized data management, faster turnaround time, and more.

IT Department

When the business data is scattered in diverse systems, the IT team is responsible to integrate different systems and manage the data in a centralized location. They face the issues of data duplication, data cleaning, data aggregation, data update, data enrichment, data merging, and more.

With the dispersed data, it becomes difficult for them to generate MIS reports on time.

Operation Department

The operational team of a light manufacturing organization needs to deal with data collection and data aggregation, sharing pricing updates, generating the quotation on-time for distributors and dealers, constant updates in the product catalog, effective management of thousands of attributes of hundreds of products, and more.

Sales and Marketing Department

Sales and marketing teams need quick access to the updated information of the products, services, and the organization.

Apart from that, they face challenges related to generating the custom quotations, defining pricing, providing discounts, managing promotions, updating the product quantity, managing and sharing in-stock qualities of products, share updated technical details of products, and more.

Are you facing any or few or all of these challenges in your existing business processes?

If your answer is yes, then this post helps you to find the right solution that addresses all the issues discussed above.

Make a smart move by selecting and implementing the right digital platform for light manufacturing business that deals with all these issues. Not only that, it helps you to get meaningful business insights by managing all your data effectively in a centralized platform. Also, It helps your team to boost productivity with streamlined processes.

What is a Digital Platform?

Light manufacturing organizations can develop and implement a digital platform to manage all the data in the digital platform as well as optimize the business processes significantly. It allows companies to manage all the business information in a centralized location for easy and quick access to essential data.

You can manage information related to products, media assets, customers, eCommerce, content, product attributes, marketing, data management, and many other business entities such as vendors, dealers, suppliers, accounting, employees, etc. by developing a digital platform for light manufacturing businesses.

To get better insights on the digital platform, you can visit What is a Digital Platform? Everything You Need to Know about Digital Platform

Digital Platform for Light Manufacturing Business: Types of Solutions

Product Information Management (PIM)

Are you managing your product data in excel sheets, PDFs, ERP, or other systems manually?

Well, if you are doing so, then I am sure you find it difficult to manage and analyze product data effectively.

Light manufacturers, who deal with lighting products or light designing, need to implement a product information management solution for the effective management of product data.

Product Information Management is one of the most popular and in-demand digital platforms for light manufacturing companies.

PIM collects, stores, manages, aggregates enriches, and distributes the product data across the different sales and marketing channels for you.

Moreover, when the data is available at the cartelized places, it becomes easy for your teams to access it, update it, and share it across the organization.

Capabilities of Product Information Management Solution

PIM solution helps lighting industries improve their product data management practices and processes by allowing them to

  • Manage product data effectively in a centralized repository
  • Manage product information in a well-structured and logical way
  • Integrate different third party systems and database seamlessly
  • Update product quantity on the go
  • Manage and share the available quality of products
  • Eliminate data duplication
  • Perform data merging, data cleaning, and data enrichment
  • Provide an aggregated and consolidated view of all product data
  • Allow different teams to access updated product information on the go

Essential Features of Product Information Management (PIM) Solution

To get access to all the above-listed capabilities, you need to implement a Product Information Management solution that contains the features of

  • Data Modeling
  • Data Management
  • Data Integration and Delivery
  • Data Quality/Semantics
  • Workflow Management

Digital Asset Management

Usually, small-scale and mid-sized light manufacturers prefer to manage the media assets such (images, videos, documents, PDFs, manuals, graphics, etc.) in local folders. Thus, the digital assets are available in varied folders, in a scattered way.

When you need to share your products on different sales channels, it becomes a time-consuming process for you to aggregate the digital assets.

By implementing the Digital Asset Management solution, you can manage all your digital assets regardless of products and company (logos, marketing, and sales collateral, etc.) centrally.

DAM solution allows you to manage, integrate, and consolidate any type of and any amount of digital assets. There are many other exceptional abilities of digital asset management solutions. Let’s delve into it.

Capabilities of Digital Asset Management Solution

The core objective of the DAM solution is to manage all the media assets of your organization in a single location, in a well-structured and logical way.

Other amazing capabilities of Digital Asset Management solutions that you can leverage are:

  • DAM supports 220+ different image file formats such as vector, PDFs, Office documents, bitmap, and several different video codecs
  • Resize images in the correct format for all different output channels
  • Manage image editing, 360-degree images, versioning, scheduling, face recognition, and more
  • Manage all types of metadata in the DAM that involves
    • Descriptive metadata (keywords, file type, title, etc.)
    • Technical metadata (database, glossary, etc.)
    • Process metadata (status, project, approver, etc.)
    • Administrative metadata (date created, geographic parameters, expiration dates, licensing details, etc.),
  • Easy and consistent metadata management of digital assets
  • Manage metadata in a structured way
  • Multilingual support to create and manage metadata

Essential Features of Digital Asset Management Solution

To utilize all the above capabilities, you can integrate the below features

  • Digital Asset Consolidation
  • Metadata Management
  • Asset Portal Extension
  • Workflow Management
  • Digital Asset Delivery

Master Data Management

Master Data Management solution allows you to manage all your business data in a single platform in a structured way by defining categories and all different attributes.

You can manage data related to products, customers, media assets, eCommerce, content, employees, accounting, suppliers, vendors, distributors, dealers, etc. from a single platform.

Basically, MDM is a single source of truth for all your business data.

When you can manage all organizational data in a single solution, then why to pass through the pain of managing the data into different systems and merging them to get meaningful insights.

Capabilities of Master Data Management solution

MDM is a master record of all your data that allows you to manage massive information accurately by ensuring the security of your data. The main capabilities of the Master Data Management involve

  • Integration with different third party internal and external systems
  • Aggregate and update all the data in a single system
  • Collect and aggregate different data from the external systems
  • Create custom quotations for suppliers, dealers, and distributors quickly
  • Generate MIS reports on time
  • Attain faster time-to-market

Apart from all these abilities, MDM allows for data structure, hierarchy, validation, versioning, and enrichment of all information along with descriptions, documentation, attributes, translation, and other related data.

Thus, Master Data Management is a highly recommended digitla platform for light manufacturing company that deals with multiple business elements apart from product data management.

Essential Features of Master Data Management (MDM) Solution

  • Data Quality/Semantics
  • Hierarchy Management
  • Rich Content Integration
  • Audit Trail
  • Superior Connectivity
  • Workflow Management

Digital Commerce Platform

Running an offline business is not enough to sustain in today’s cut-throat competition. You have to utilize the potential of an online platform to sell and market your wide variety of products and services.

To pave the path of success, you have to go the extra mile with your eCommerce store.

Personalization is one of the most effective ways that ensure tremendous customer engagement and conversion. Considering the right digital platform for light manufacturing businesses, you can achieve all your sales and revenue targets.

With the advanced capabilities of digital commerce platforms, you can develop B2C, B2B, and B2B2C commerce solutions. It’s a cost-effective way to stay connected with your all stakeholders from a single digital solution.

An advanced eCommerce solution enables you with the benefits of improved sales, reduced time to market, and increased revenue.

Capabilities of Digital Commerce Platform

B2C Capabilities

Create extremely personalized customer experiences in a real-time omnichannel environment.

B2B Capabilities

  • Manage complex product and pricing structure
  • Secured checkout process
  • Create and manage multiple catalogs
  • Manage all the product reviews and price-lists
  • Manage multiple languages and currencies
  • Manage multiple front-end apps
  • Manage flexible promotions and more…

Other Capabilities (applicable to B2C, B2B & B2B2C solutions)

  • Component driven development to build outstanding and highly flexible B2B and B2C solutions
  • Customer-specific checkout process integration for buyers
  • Access to advanced functionality such as shopping cart management, price calculation, product filtering, checkout processes, etc.
  • Develop a digital commerce solution to run promotions and sell the products
  • The order management module allows to manage end-to-end order management process seamlessly
  • Leverage content commerce to create personalized experiences for the buyers by sending them personal messages
  • Keep updating the product catalog to reduce product churn rate
  • Provide discounts to specific customers
  • Update product pricing and share the new pricing across the organization
  • Define pricing based on customer segments
  • Create custom quotations quickly with the least manual intervention, and more…

Essential Features of Digital Commerce Platform

  • B2B & B2C eCommerce Framework
  • Customer Experience Management
  • PIM for eCommerce

Digital Experience Platform (DXP)

Do you want to create and deliver personalized digital experiences across all the customer touchpoints?

Then, you should opt for a reliable Digital Experience Platform.

DXP contains the capabilities of analytics and customer data management that allow light manufacturers to manage, deliver, and optimize contextual digital experiences.

It is the most preferred digital platform for light manufacturing organizations when it comes to create, manage, and deliver personalized customer experiences to drive immense business engagement and conversion.

Manage your customer-facing interface with the updated information to meet the changing business needs. Moreover, it supports multiple languages that allow you to go for regional targeting.

Capabilities of Digital Experience Platform

  • Manage content, community, and commerce in a single roof
  • Deliver relevant and personalized content to the customers
  • Manage any number of products, pages, and media assets from a single solution that is edited by hundreds of editors and visited by tons of users in a month
  • Integrate the Digital Experience Platform with your external third party software and existing enterprise systems
  • Publish the high-quality data on the different sales and marketing channels, and more…

Essential Features of Digital Commerce Platform

  • Digitalizing Marketing Technology
  • Manage Personalized Experiences
  • Content & Commerce & Contextualization
  • Single-source Multi-channel Publishing

Customer Data Platform

Manage all your customer information effortlessly in a centralized repository using the Customer Data Platform.

It is the most essential digital platform for light manufacturing companies that aggregates your customer activities across the varied touchpoints and enables you with a consistent and unified view of all related data.

By implementing a Customer Data Platform, light manufacturing businesses can address varied customer related issues and marketing related challenges seamlessly.

Capabilities of Customer Data Platform

  • Store, manage and aggregate the individual level customer information from offline platforms or online solutions (third-party systems n or first-party apps) in real-time
  • Manage all the customer information in a structured way with required classification and attribute management using the customer data modeling of CDP
  • Customer management framework automates any actions linked to the customers based on the predefined rules
  • Create and deliver personalized customer experiences by offering real-time explicit and implicit with the help of on-site behavioral targeting and customer segmentation
  • CDP allows to connect multiple devices to help you to identify the unique customers and remove the duplicate customer information

Essential Features of Customer Data Platform (CDP)

  • Profile Unification
  • Marketing Automation
  • Customer Data Integration
  • Customer Data Modeling
  • Real-time Personalization

Hope now you have enough information about different types of digital solutions that you can implement for your lighting business.

Now, I would like to address the biggest query of yours.

Do I Need to Consider All The Solutions Together?

Of course, not.

You have full flexibility to make your choice whether you want to go with one or two or three or four or five or all solutions from the above list.

You only need to develop and implement the solution(s) you require.

For example; if you want to manage your product data seamlessly, then you can implement a Product Information Management solution only. You do not need to consider other solutions.

In case, you want a combination of Product Information Management, Digital Experience Platform, and Digital Commerce Platform, then you can develop a solution that contains the capabilities of all these three solutions.

If you want to build a solution that contains the capabilities of all six solutions, then even our certified developers help you develop and implement the right solution for your organizational needs.

Thus, you don’t need to use all the six solutions together.

Benefits of Considering Digital Platform for Light Manufacturing Business

Improved Customer Experience

In transforming the customer experiences, Digital Experience Platform plays a vital role. It allows you to update the content as per the changing market needs and customer expectations.

Enabling you with business intelligence and web analytics, DXP allows you to perform user profiling, data collection, behavioral targeting, and more. Analytics helps you track the user journey and get clarity on your customers’ requirements.

When you know about your customers, it becomes quite easy for you to create and deliver personalized experiences and suggest the products they are interested in or looking for. This fastens the buyer’s decision-making.

Create compelling shopping experiences and engaging customer journeys by leveraging the right mixture of content, context, and commerce through the implementation of the right digital platform.

Single Source of Truth

As we have already discussed in the Master Data Management solution, you can manage all the organizational data including product, media assets, eCommerce, content, suppliers, dealers, distributors, employees, accounting, and other data in a single location.

It enables you with an aggregated and complete view of all business data and provides you meaningful insights about your different business aspects. On top of all, you have quick access to accurate business data.

So, it’s a master record or single source of truth for all your critical business information.

Faster Time-to-Market

Product Information Management allows the companies to collect, store, manage, aggregate, consolidate, and distribute the product data across the different sales channels and devices through a single platform.

By automating the entire process, PIM improves the time-to-market of your products.

PIM helps you create unique information about each of your lighting products using the MDM. It meets the different requirements of the multiple sales and marketing channels to deliver a consistent customer experience. Additionally, it improves or extends product assortment too.

This makes new product onboarding automated, easier, and quicker like never before.

Make Insightful Decisions

All the business data is accessible to you on a single platform. Moreover, you won’t have to deal with raw data. You can get an aggregated, consolidated and insightful data that enables you with a complete overview of your different business aspects.

When you have clarity on varied business entities, you can make better business decisions faster.

Improve Team Collaboration

The digital platform not only allows you to manage the data in a centralized repository but also allows you to share this data across the organization to enable your different teams to access the complete and updated business formation.

It reduces the communication gap amongst the different teams and improves collaboration between them. Correct coordination amongst your production, sales, marketing, accounting, and other departments impacts on overall customer experience as well.

Verdict

Are you still in a dilemma about which solution you should consider to meet your business needs?

Let Credencys experts help you in making the right decision. Ask for a 30 minutes free consultation to discuss

  • Your business requirements and/or challenges
  • How a digital platform helps you?
  • Which solution(s) are the right match for your business requirements and/or challenges?

We have successfully developed and deployed a robust digital platform for light manufacturing startups to Fortune 500 companies to help them achieve their organizational objectives.

We have proven experience in implementing a single solution and the right mixture of multiple solutions for your business that ensure you attain a better return on investment by streamlining varied business operations and delivering great customer experiences.

Say goodbye to data chaos and embrace the power of PIM/MDM to supercharge your business growth!