AI shows promise for enhancing productivity in product data management and in personalizing content for generating revenue, inriver CEO Rohit Goyal says.

Rohit Goyal, CEO, inriver

Goyal, who took over as PIM vendor inriver’s chief executive last week, said in an interview that he sees significant potential in AI for enhancing both productivity and revenue.

One area where AI is already having a significant impact on digital content, he said, is through enhanced productivity, such as in multilingual digital content managers’ ability to generate copies of product content in multiple languages from a master copy “by clicking a button.”

“The fact that you can generate local copies and start to edit, that’s huge,” he said.

Goyal added that, beyond productivity, AI holds out promise for helping to generate more revenue through more personalized content targeted at segments of buyers.

Asking AI to help boost conversions

“Can you generate different types of content? The answer is yes,” he said. “But I think the entire industry is figuring out how to systematize that beyond a lab experiment or an innovation team experiment at a brand or retailer.

“There’s a ton of experimenting going on to say, ‘What if we ask AI to generate content that is targeted to a certain segment of buyers and push it down the channel?’ Will that help increase conversion or engagement?”

He added that the industry is heading in that direction. “There are green shoots … I think AI can help,” he said. “But it’s not clear that it’s ready to scale yet.”

Inriver, however, is already deploying and upgrading AI applications in other ways to enhance its technology platform. For example, inriver Inspire, which integrates the ability of ChatGPT with the inriver PIM, now offers AI-driven batch editing to streamline content management, plus a custom prompt editor to maximize relevance for diverse audiences.

In addition, Goyal said inriver’s technology platform is based on an “extensible and flexible” framework that lets companies extend their customized product information to all B2B and B2C channels and customer touchpoints.

He noted that users can build technology connectors and adapters and do customization work independently of inriver’s own ongoing platform upgrades. “So, the SaaS platform keeps innovating without disrupting the extensions and connectors around it,” he said.

Goyal added that inriver’s new Augmenta development framework frees up companies to use their preferred programming language instead of relying on a specific framework that inriver had previously required. “Now, you can use your favorite programming language to build customizations and extensions,” he said.

Inriver’s recently announced platform upgrades include:

• A suite of application programming interfaces (APIs) for standardizing inbound integrations for onboarding data to inriver’s PIM.
• Product data governance tools for maintaining compliance with new regulations by tracking product generations and using unique QR codes for product labeling and ecommerce.
• Enhanced content distribution via APIs through inriver Syndicate Plus to retailers and marketplaces.
• An automated configurable workflow system for product lifecycle management from onboarding product data and PIM management to merchandising operations.

Paul Demery is a Digital Commerce 360 contributing editor covering B2B digital commerce technology and strategy. [email protected].

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