What is the Marine Product Index (MPI)?
In a nutshell MPI is a central directory of all
the key information relating to products that may be needed by
a marine business to help them sell those products efficiently
and effectively. MPI acts as a data broker collating accurate
information about a myriad of products and providing easy access
to that information to all parties who may require that information
to help get products sold to the end consumer.
Generally speaking the marine industry is very
poor in relation to other industries in the way it provides key
information to all parties in the supply chain. Given the many
thousands of products available it becomes impossible for accurate
information to find its way to the top of the supply chain. MPI
is here to facilitate the transfer of accurate information from
what should be the main authority, the manufacturer, to those
that need it most, the retailer, and for them to use that information
to sell the products effectively to the customer.
MPI will also help to prevent duplication of information
collection throughout the marine business which in itself provides
more opportunity for errors to creep in and for products to be
mis-sold. From a consumer perspective buying marine products is
often a very unsatisfactory experience which is generally as a
result of someone in the supply chain providing inaccurate information.
This negative feeling then ends up costing various parties either
time or money and the effects reverberate back down the supply
chain. The overall cost of these mistakes to virtually all marine
businesses is huge and should not be dismissed.
We aim to significantly improve this process so
that members of MPI enjoy lower costs of data acquisition, improved
and increased communication of the relevant product information
which itself will result in increased product exposure and reduce
lengthy consumer facing presales question and answer sessions.
We are here to help the sales process for those of you who know
how important data quality and accurate product information are
in the sales process both in print and on the Internet. We aim
to drive sales to those businesses who support this ethos, while
those who underestimate this importance will realise that a lack
of completeness and questionable accuracy will severely reduce
their sales and level of service they are able to provide.
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