Have you been wondering what we've been up to since we first launched v15 of our PIM with enhanced capabilities for connecting your enterprise with upstream product and parts data?
We’ve released new features that support all functional areas of the business, from engineering to sourcing/supply chain, aftermarket, eCommerce, data governance, and more. Read on to get a taste of how you can accelerate your product data beyond the competition.
We are excited to announce a series of powerful software enhancements designed to improve user experience, streamline data management, and enhance overall functionality. These updates reflect our commitment to providing cutting-edge solutions that meet the evolving needs of our customers.
Base/Variant Management
If you have a multi-tiered data model with base products and variant SKUs, you know it can be a headache to manage attribute values and have them properly cascade across a base model’s variant items. In SmartClass, you can articulate where attributes should be shared (or not), placing total control of the attribution at your fingertips. Plus, in SmartFind, you’ll be able to navigate easily between the base model record and its corresponding SKUs. This capability is critical for companies with a configure to order (CTO) product architecture business model.
Bulk Reclassification and Category Merging, Simplified
Does your data governance operation require you to process major data model changes that need categories to be merged, or large amounts of items to be reclassified from one category to another? Our own data services teams do that work every day, so we gave our users the ability to merge categories while defining which attributes get retained, as well as the ability to readily shift products from one category to another at scale.
Bulk Item Reclassification
Category Merging
Rich Text Editing
String attributes can be formatted using standard rich text features! With the rich text editing toolbar, make products more marketable with bolding, underlining, bulleting, and more. This saves teams time in manually adjusting content downstream of PIM and improves the ability to syndicate data in the desired format.
Rich text editor for string attributes
Digital Asset Management Enhancements
Images substantially improve the likelihood that customers will purchase your products by giving them a visual confidence boost that they are going to buy the item that is right for their needs. To support more dynamic image management capabilities, we've added the ability to more easily sort and order images on item edit pages, manage image and digital asset metadata, and hide/show thumbnail images at will.
View Multi-Valued Attributes in SmartFind/SmartTrack Results
You asked; we listened. Users browsing SmartFind and SmartTrack no longer need to view multi-valued attributes on individual item records only – you can see them in the search results and exported data as well. This accelerates time for users to review data in bulk.
Contextual Attribute Management
Do you need an attribute value to look different or even contain totally different information in different contexts? When syndicating attribute data to different sales channels, or changing descriptions to meet different branding needs, you can define new attribute values without having to create new attributes for each context. This keeps your data model concise, giving greater control and reducing overall efforts in syndication and other activities.
Enhanced External Data Model Management
We began v15 just focusing on inbound data from external data models and feeds, such as acquisition data, engineering platform data, supplier data, and third-party data feeds. We expanded the concept to allow for managing multiple taxonomies and data models so users can syndicate data downstream more easily, regardless of the target: customer-facing marketing and eCommerce websites, knowledge platforms, sales and distribution channels – the options are limitless, and the features make it easy in our External Data Model Manager module:
- Mappings are fully user-configurable
- Hot swap between managing import and export mappings
- Mirror mappings of an import/export to make mapping faster
- View external data models in a tree format
- Rapidly change external data models: edit/delete/cut/paste categories at will
- Tie new attributes to external categories when creating new attributes in SmartClass
- In SmartFind and SmartTrack, view and edit external data model assignments for all items
Managing External Data Model Mappings
API Enhancements
Getting data out of Convergence PIM is easier than ever with our REST API. In addition to all the standard data users have been extracting for years, we made the following enhancements so users can retrieve:
- Allowed value list values by list name
- External Data Model root and top-level categories by external model name
- Categories by internal ID and optionally including child category information
- Querying items mapped to an external category
- SearchItems/GetItem/GetItems calls now return external category information
Rebranding as Convergence PIM
The name Design for Retrieval (DFR) served our business well as our flagship software product for over 20 years. Our customers work with us because they can do more than the average PIM. But we’ve learned that more than half the time, users refer to our suite of product information management tools as just “PIM” or “Convergence.” While Design for Retrieval reflected the need to make product information more findable, usable, and valuable, our company is called Convergence because we focus on the convergence of enterprise product data, its users and consumers, intersecting platforms, processes, and data governance. We’re pleased to rebrand our software as Convergence PIM and continue to serve our customers for the next 20 years and beyond.
These enhancements are designed to empower our users with more control, flexibility, and efficiency in managing their data. Convergence remains dedicated to delivering innovative solutions that drive success for our customers.