Akeneo, the Product Experience (PX) Company and provider of product information management (PIM) solutions, is acquiring Unifai, an artificial intelligence (AI) platform for data collection, cleansing, categorization, and enrichment pioneered by leading experts in AI and machine learning (ML).
The strategic acquisition is poised to revolutionize Akeneo's Product Cloud offering, infusing intelligence and cutting-edge technology to further elevate product experiences for brands, manufacturers, retailers, and distributors globally, according to Akeneo.
According to the company, Akeneo has taken a pragmatic approach to working with customers on how best to leverage AI for PX by providing direct access to more than 20 AI apps available on its App Store. These apps focus on three steps in the process of activating product experiences:
- Product data collection and cleansing - companies still struggle with collecting, categorizing, cleansing., and completing core product data; these AI apps apply deep learning to automate this process;
- Product information enrichment - companies that are leveraging a PIM to centralize complete, accurate, and properly categorized product data, are in a good position to leverage GenAI apps to help them generate romance copy and formatted product descriptions;
- Product content translation - once companies have enriched product descriptions in their PIM, they are now able to leverage apps in this AI category to translate and localize their content for additional market reach.
Unifai stands out as a differentiated and effective solution for the first and most critical phase of activating product experiences. Unifai solves three core challenges in the product data collection and cleansing step:
- Supplier data onboarding - cleansing, normalizing, and enriching supplier files into PIM systems (like Akeneo) in order to increase productivity, speed time to market, and increase product searchability;
- Supplier pricing integration - turning supplier pricing files into PX ready data-feeds through a uniform and centralized workflow feeding simultaneously ERP and PIM softwares, thus increasing productivity and reducing errors;
- Marketplace seller onboarding - cleansing and enriching supplier data into marketplace back-office systems, which helps marketplaces with their seller data onboarding, reduces manual errors, and accelerates time to market.
"We've all seen the flashy demonstrations from some CX or commerce companies related to generative AI for product content and we became immediately worried for the teams that are responsible for that part of the business," said Fred de Gombert, CEO and founder of Akeneo. "Magically generating product descriptions in an ecommerce site or marketplace without centralized, complete and accurate product attributes will only lead to failed product experiences, poor customer touch points, and ultimately a damaged brand image."
To further help businesses protect their brands from careless AI mistakes, Akeneo will also be leveraging this acquisition to create the first ever AI for PX Center of Excellence. This initiative will openly share with PX professionals the best practices for applying AI to PX, the pitfalls and the latest innovations.
Unifai's success is attributed to the exceptional team of AI experts and acute focus on the retail and ecommerce space, according to the companies.
"We are excited to join forces with Akeneo and apply our expertise in AI/ML to elevate the Akeneo Product Cloud offering and to educate PX practitioners," said Jesse Créange, co-founder and CEO at Unifai. "Together, we will continue to push the boundaries of what's possible in product experience management."
For more information about this news, visit www.akeneo.com.