Strategic Market Alliance Co-op Standardizes Online Product Information

A janitorial, sanitation and food service distributor cooperative aims to streamline access to product information among members and their suppliers.

Comprised of North America’s leading janitorial, sanitation, health care, and foodservice distributors, SMA’s mission is to create value-based business solutions that result in mutually beneficial and sustainable partnerships among suppliers, member distributor owners and their mutual customers.

SMA serves as a catalyst for optimizing efficiency and effectiveness within the supply channel by creating application-specific, functional solutions that improve operations while enhancing customer satisfaction. With independent member web sites and over 227 distribution locations, challenges in accessing accurate, current product content were increasing so the SMA felt a PIM was necessary.

Strategic Market Alliance (SMA) had a long-running product information problem to solve: how to standardize content among more than 100 manufacturers who sell products to its 59 member distributors.

The janitorial, sanitation and food service distributor cooperative provides information and reporting services on-behalf of its members to national account customers that they individually serve. It aspires to provide rich content services to the members, and in this case found an application that would give its members as much or as little access as they choose. The EnterWorks PIM platform aligns well with the SMA mission of enabling member and trading community collaboration.

The EnterWorks solution will enable SMA to create and facilitate rich, compliant content that will enhance the effectiveness of service to strategic account customers and member distributors. A successful launch and adoption of an advanced content platform will enhance alliance operations and increase member profits. In addition, the software solution would help SMA Members

Achieve a single view of trusted product information: PIM solutions provide a central repository to gather, cleanse, and synchronize data. This trusted, consumer-ready information is quickly accessible to internal users and external partners.

Read more about how Strategic Market Alliance overcame issues such as data stored and managed in silos, handling information errors and vendors not effectively updating products.