PIM software offers enhanced capabilities for retail manufacturers, distributors
Santa Clara, CA — May 28, 2004 — Cardonet Inc., a provider of product information management (PIM) solutions for medium to large enterprises, this week introduced Cardonet Synergy, a suite of product information management software that features the capabilities of Cardonet's existing Product Master software, plus support for data synchronization, product data hierarchies and other features aimed at the needs of manufacturers and distributors in both the retail and industrial sectors.
Cardonet said Synergy includes a data synchronization and publishing engine that has been UCC-certified for UCCnet Services, which allows retail manufacturers and other suppliers to meet the data synchronization mandates issued by Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Lowe's and other large retailers.
"UCCnet compliance is on everybody's radar screen these days, and most retail suppliers have some sort of pilot plan in place to meet a customer mandate," said Itay Meiri, CEO and Founder of Cardonet. "But being able to deliver item information via UCCnet Services is only the beginning."
Meiri said the real challenge lies in setting up an efficient, and easily repeatable internal process for originating new items or shippers; adding different case, pack or pallet configurations; and getting the item information to meet not only data synchronization requirements, but also the needs of Web sites, print publishing, and other information channels.
The provider firm said Synergy features a workflow environment where multiple team members can collaborate to capture and validate information about new items or packages, in a serial or parallel process, before submitting them for synchronization and publishing.
The software also has the ability to support "product family hierarchies" where attribute values from the higher levels of the hierarchy are automatically inherited by the individual items within the family, according to Cardonet.
Also new in the suite is support for multi-value attributes for better handling of products with multiple color and size variants, as well as enabling bullet lists of features to be incorporated into the central information repository.
The company said the software includes other options such as a self- service portal for the uploading of product information by external suppliers, a channel manager for automated syndication of product information files to large numbers of "non-UCCnet" data recipients, and a customizable Web catalog with browsing and shopping cart capabilities.
