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3M Company Increases Speed-To-Market by 5X through Automating with the AD eContent Supplier Connector
“The AD eContent Supplier Connector has automated the syndication process and increased the speed to market for new product launches, getting our product to distributors and into the marketplace much faster.” – Connor Chittock, 3M Company
Company Background
Founded in 1902 in Northern Minnesota as the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, 3M has evolved from a humble mining operation into a global leader in innovation and technology. Today, 3M products are found in homes, businesses, schools, hospitals, and various industries worldwide. As an AD Industrial & Safety supplier, 3M leverages the AD eCommerce Solutions program to provide digital product content to hundreds of independent distributor webstores.
The Challenge
3M faced difficulties managing its extensive catalog of digital product content and syndicating it to distributor webstores. Their manual and labor-intensive processes had the potential to create inefficiencies, incomplete data, and lengthy turnaround times for necessary content updates. Once a file was received from 3M, identifying updates could take up to a week, which could slow their go-to-market efforts.
Automating these processes became essential to ensure faster updates, improved data accuracy, and seamless integration with AD member distributors. Capitalizing on growth in the digital channel was hinging on improving content syndication processes.
The Solution
3M partnered with AD eCommerce Solutions to automate the delivery of their digital product content, eliminating the inefficiencies of manual processes. Using AD’s syndication channel on Salsify, their source of data truth, 3M connected directly to the AD eContent Supplier Connector. The eContent Supplier Connector automatically identified new and existing SKUs, added new SKUs to a processing queue, and updated existing SKUs with any changes via AD’s SKU maintenance process.
As part of AD’s data governance process, all product data was then validated for completeness and accuracy. Any invalid or incomplete SKUs were flagged for correction and adjusted accordingly before moving forward in the syndication process. Enhanced 3M product content was then made available in the AD Member PIM for hundreds of distributors to add to their webstores.
Results
This strategic shift towards automation through the AD eContent Supplier Connector resulted in substantial gains in efficiency and speed-to-market for 3M. Over 75,000 SKUs with over 4,500 attributes across 1,100 categories were mapped to the AD eContent Supplier Connector via the Salsify channel and syndicated within 3 business days.
3M boosted their total SKU volume in the AD Member PIM by 40% within 6 months and increased speed-to-market by 5X, seeing significant improvements in the delivery of new SKUs specifically. 3M tracked these improvements on their Supplier Scorecard, allowing them to easily communicate the impact to leaders across the company. Today, 3M continues to partner with AD eCommerce Solutions to leverage automation for faster delivery of enhanced product content for a better customer experience.