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SATCO|NUVO empowers sales & marketing with inriver PIM

This PIM implementation lays the groundwork for better product marketing and a streamlined B2B ecommerce experience.

About the client

SATCO|NUVO is a leading player in the $30 billion lighting industry, renowned for producing quality bulbs, decorative lighting, functional and task lighting products, and components.

Their diverse customer base includes electrical distributors, hardware retailers, ecommerce resellers, and OEMs. Additionally, SATCO is required to provide specifiers, architects, and contractors easily accessible product information and support for their lighting project needs.

To drive ecommerce growth, SATCO planned to launch a B2B portal but the company needed to upgrade outdated systems and into an expandable, technical architecture with an enterprise PIM foundation.

The challenge

SATCO had been using an internally built, custom PIM. But it didn’t evolve with their expanding business needs. In an increasingly digital world, the custom PIM couldn’t syndicate data or support enrichment for marketing and sales.

“Our team has always done a great job with the tools they’ve had,” said Jeff Beyer, CTO of SATCO|NUVO. “But we clearly needed an upgrade as the business continued to grow.”

SATCO recognized the need for an enterprise PIM and began the analysis phase, ultimately identifying inriver as the ideal platform. Dealing with both legacy systems and processes the business had outgrown—combined with an initial systems integrator (SI) that wasn’t a match—led to some frustrations at the outset. Recognizing they needed to pivot, SATCO partnered with Ntara to solidify the course they originally envisioned. They wanted an integration that would work seamlessly with the overall business and architecture goals, rather than disrupting them.

Our team, which includes three inriver Champions, used an agile approach to quickly identify pain points and deliver value from the start.

Following a product data audit, Ntara provided tangible files to show the potential ROI of using inriver. By reviewing early results, SATCO’s team could finally visualize their options, provide feedback, and collaborate with Ntara on the right data model for their business.

The PIM MVP solution

Ntara mapped SATCO’s product data lifecycle, illustrating the complexity of their systems and requirements. Multiple departments, including sales and marketing, needed a central source to manage product data. And their product data spanned 40,000 SKUs—some with 500 spec parameters and 100+ products launched every month.

But there was a caveat. While the eventual goal is to sunset the older PIM, turning it off immediately wasn’t a viable option. Too many processes and systems rely on that connection.

“For us, it wasn’t just about quick wins,” Jeff said. “It was about finding a creative solution to meet our objectives, without putting unnecessary strain on the business. Ntara helped us define and deliver a unique MVP involving a phased approach.”

The MVP implementation included ingesting product data from core systems (e.g., ERP) as well as the current data from legacy systems into inriver. From there, the data routes out to the legacy PIM, which then feeds the other systems.

Because SATCO wanted to improve its data quality, we also created a unique model that modifies the data as it enters the custom PIM, then reverts the data as it feeds to other systems.

Illustrated hierarchy pyramid titled "minimum viable product." The bottom quarter is red, labeled functionality. The next section is yellow, labeled reliability. The next section is blue, labeled usability. And the top section is gray, labeled design.

Outcomes

Supporting sustainability

With inriver, SATCO can streamline how they create, store, enrich, and distribute sustainability updates, which is critical to their industry.

“In lighting, products get certified and de-certified over time—a process we managed manually before inriver,” said Jeff. “Now, our employees have quick and easy access to sustainability information, along with the product data and digital assets we need for packaging.”

Well-managed sustainability data is also crucial for SATCO’s ecommerce success, as it enables customers to search, filter, and compare products based on preferences such as the ENERGY STAR® certification.

Empowering marketing and sales

As part of our PIM consulting services, we provided PIM education and inriver training to empower SATCO users to embrace PIM. They soon discovered that evolving your data practice can lead to positive organizational change.

For example, previously, their marketing function was decentralized. According to Jeff, “We had people doing great work. But because our product data was siloed, so were their efforts.”

Now, a single source of truth allows them to speak with one voice. Marketing and sales can tell product stories in a unified way through packaging, product sheets, web content, and more.

Prepared for digital transformation

SATCO chose inriver for its flexible data model, ease of integration, and multi-tenant design—all of which help them prepare and scale for digital transformation.

“Multi-tenant SaaS was a critical feature,” said Jeff. “We’re not interested in returning to a technology system that can’t evolve. As we work toward digital transformation, we want to always have access to the latest updates, with no downtime.”

Another benefit? Hosting inriver in Azure cloud helps SATCO save time with file shares. Ntara established a workflow to ingest and update digital asset files every 15 minutes.

Results

Taking a phased approach to PIM implementation, SATCO realized its goal of implementing a single source of truth with minimal disruption to the business. They’ve gone from a world of manual processes to enjoying the rewards of efficiency and automation.

SATCO also has peace of mind knowing that their data model is flexible enough to scale. As they expand their go-to-market strategy and workflows, inriver PIM will continue to serve a vital role.