Salsify
Fortifying Supply Chain Initiatives

Jason Purcell, CEO of Salsify, finds some striking similarities between football and supply chain management— competition, teamwork, strategies, goals, and setbacks. “Success in business and sports relies on the ability to perform higher,” he asserts. In an urge to find new means and methods to ensure the delivery of performance curves, Purcell formed Salsify, a provider of cloud-based product information exchange software to help e-commerce companies manage, clean, and share their product data. “We help in creating, managing, and exchanging product information–especially rich marketing copy and extended attributes– easily and efficiently,” says Purcell.

With the growing demand and increasing regulations, the supply chain process is becoming longer and complex. Moreover, Purcell feels suppliers and retailer know that there is a huge opportunity to deliver a seamless omnichannel experience, but are still trying to find the best process to facilitate that experience with the lack of comprehensive solutions.“Large e-commerce companies generally receive dozens of different data sets from suppliers with different product information. Companies often find difficulties in reconciling this data into a single database,” explains Purcell.

Salsify’s software bridges these supply chain gaps for better results, which allows managers to collaborate and track changes to product information.“We make it very easy to project the product information in the most effectual way, fulfilling the retailer-specific requirements for their omnichannel initiatives,” states Purcell. “Our tool really makes it easy for suppliers to take the existing content and integrate with existing systems such as ERP, build workflows for content authoring of descriptive marketing copy, and automatically create the deliverables that retailers need,” adds Purcell. The company’s solutions also build niche capabilities around mapping and gap analysis to help e-commerce, marketing, and sales teams deal with the product information problems.

Salsify's SaaS product also enables enterprises to share a wide array of different content through a cloud-based network, allowing for product data, pictures, and written content to be exchanged more easily in the ever-changing e-commerce world.

For instance, Purcell cites an example of a large medical equipment manufacturer who was struggling to create retailer specific product information deliverables and accelerate items for sale. “The Salsify software allowed them to compile all their product information in a single place and get a comprehensive view of the content,and generate everything that they need to send to all their retailers. When the company decided to implement a large expansion with Wal-Mart, we were able to get items in days, saving time and increasing the revenue,” adds Purcell. To reflect Salsify’s expertise on the retailer side, a leading retailer with a wide e-commerce and retail presence approached Salsify with the challenge to efficiently collect product information from all their suppliers so they can get the products listed on their website as fast as possible. Within few days, Salsify solved the problems by using its supplier portal capability to collect data, which included everything from high resolution images, pricing, and marketing data, that would otherwise take months to complete. “With our solutions, they were able to finalize what should go on the website, which created a huge impact on the sales and marketing strategies,” asserts Purcell.

As for future, Salsify will continue to simplify and streamline the flow of the product information across the retail supply chain. “Our goal is to build a global network through which product information flows between companies instantly, seamlessly, and without hassle,” says Purcell. The company is also focused on developing incredible innovations through collaboration with existing technology providers. “Omnichannel has started to become the real thing that the companies are struggling with due to rising customers expectations, we are here to fill the gap in the most efficient way,” states Purcell.