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Marine Product Index features.......
For retailers the Marine Product Index is split
into several distinct parts.
1. Creation of your product portfolio.
How would you like to be able to add thousands
of products to your portfolio in hours rather than months. This
will become a very easy task but you will initially need to request
access to each of your suppliers product portfolios. You can do
this through the service and they can grant you access more or
less immediately. Once granted you will simply be able to select
all or individual products either by brand or category from your
suppliers portfolio. These are then copied to your portfolio where
you can add or change any information before you use it for other
purposes. If you have products of your own then you can add these
too as if you were a manufacturer or distributor.
2. Updates to your product protfolio.
If your supplier changes their prices or details
or images they can do so easily themselves within the Marine Product
Index but in addition all their 'upstream' customers (like yourself)
will be notified and you can accept their amendements so that
your portfolio data is automatically updated without you having
to rekey all the data saving valuable time.
3. Download of product data
You will be able to select either all or a selection
of products from your portfolio and then choose which information
about those you wish to download. This information is then put
into a Excel formatted spreadsheet where you can easily manipulate
the data for your use in your E-Commerce systems or for price
lists and brochures. At a later stage there will be an option
to directly supply this data to your E-Commerce system via XML
Web Services.
4. Accessing Product Information
The Marine Product Index will become your central
source of product reference information. No more trawling through
brochures trying to find the product your customer is looking
for. Everything will be in one place. Even your most inexperienced
staff will be able to answer simple customer queries (which have
long answers) and find out what is suitable and where you can
get it from.
At a later stage the product index will be opened
up to the general public for them to access product information.
Because of it's product-centric nature and design it will appear
high in the search engines. Consumers will then be able to narrow
down their preferences for products until they find exactly what
they are looking for. There will then be a list of retailers presented
to them which have these products in their portfolio. Therefore
to ensure you get the referals you need to increase your business
it will pay to have as many products in your portfolio as possible.
Due to the initial technical limitations of the
software and hardware and the expected demand for this service
we are having to limit the service to the first 20 UK retailers
to register. Once these are succesfully up and running then the
hardware will be upgraded for the next batch of retailers. Therefore
to get a head start you need to register as soon as you can and
to make your life easier you need to encourage your suppliers
to join too as after all it is their information which will help
you sell their products. It really is a case of many hands working
together to make light work of some very complex data issues.
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