49. The Power of Internal Processes Backed by the Next-Gen PIM with Lacey Griffith, VP of IT

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The Power of Internal Processes Backed by the Next-Gen PIM

Lacey Griffith is the VP of IT at Sherrill Furniture Brands. Known for its eight brands and more than 4,500 SKUs, Sherrill Furniture had focused so much on its production capabilities that internal processes weren’t always front-of-mind. The result was a back-to-front process for managing product data that required months of digging through spreadsheets and AutoCAD to gather product information before launch.

When Lacey came to Sherrill Furniture, the company was already engaged in a conversation with Amber Engine. Lacey was familiar with PIM software and immediately joined the discussion. The resulting relationship—a “partnership” more than a “provider” dependence, as Lacey says—helped him build a new product information management process. The process has continued to evolve as Lacey and his team discover new efficiencies and capture more attributes. To date, the team has found and added 200% more product attributes for a more structured and competitive catalog than ever.

Be sure to listen for:

• The number of channels Sherrill Furniture is working with hasn’t changed since implementing the next-gen PIM, however, multiple internal processes have. Lacey details how the product information management process worked before, and how it’s changed in his time at the company.
• Lacey shares the new process’s biggest success: “We've baked in the process so that data comes more from the go-to-market strategy as opposed to waiting until the end and then going back… so we have 90% of the data we need through our process now… and it's all centralized [in the PIM], so it's easier to find.”
• Preparing the product information for just 30 products took a couple of months the last time it was done with the old process; now, with the PIM, when Lacey and his team prepare 50 products for launch it takes “a couple of hours,” he says—including the work required by Lacey’s team and the distributor—amounting to “about 15 minutes of work.”
• Lacey came to Sherrill Furniture with previous PIM experience. When he started at Sherrill, the team decided to compare Salsify and Amber Engine. Lacey says, “we compared the two, and the things that leaned us toward Amber Engine, one was the value. The value you got for the price was way better than Salsify. Then, two, the flexibility, because we were still learning what we needed and Amber Engine was very responsive to listen to our needs. They worked towards delivering solutions in their core product that met what we were looking for. So, it felt like we had more of a voice, and that we could be a part of that creation of the version-two, next-gen PIM.”
• Lacey and the team review their product information management process regularly, because Lacey knows there’s always an opportunity to improve. “It’s been constant forward motion,” he confirms. Listen to learn how the process has changed since the PIM was first implemented, and what other internal processes the PIM is used for.
• Listen to the interview to hear what Lacey says about implementing the Amber Engine PIM. Onboarding and buy-in were fairly organic on his team, he says, but the buy-in that’s grown since seeing results has been even greater.