Why SAP customers choose Inriver to power omnichannel commerce

Omnichannel complexity is forcing SAP customers to rethink product content

Modern commerce challenges brands to do more than offer basic product content.

Today’s consumers do exactly that: consume. And they’re doing so with higher expectations towards that content than ever before, with 79% expecting a consistent, connected, high-quality customer journey.

B2B is no exception, with 54% of customers saying they are likely to switch suppliers in the case of poor-quality digital experiences.

In other words, product data is no longer just an internal asset. Now, it’s a critical driver of customer trust. 

For brands, manufacturers, and retailers to meet these growing expectations, they need:  

• Synced sales channels – Whether a shopper finds your product on Amazon, your website, or a distributor portal, the experience should be seamless and consistent across the board.

• Automated data workflows – When customers demand more and faster, every second counts. Automation is crucial to keep up with new product launches and updates without risking inaccuracies or inconsistencies.

• Engaging content at scale – Besides accurate content (the baseline requirement), customers crave enriched content—pictures, videos, data sheets, and more. That’s easy on the back end, but harder to push out to the right customer pipelines.

In short, SAP excels when it comes to structured data and internal workflows.

But here’s the reality: SAP was built to manage back-end operations, not forward-facing customer experiences. At least, not by itself.

Why SAP alone falls short for modern commerce execution

To be clear, SAP isn’t the problem. As noted, it offers an essential foundation, unifying and consolidating core business data from ERP to supply chain and finance. 

But to keep up with the demands of modern commerce, that’s only half the equation. And the other half is where SAP struggles. Specifically, it lacks built-in capabilities for: 

• Dynamic content creation – While SAP Commerce Cloud offers basic CMS, it’s not built for highly customized, market-specific experiences.

• Content enrichment – SAP often struggles with imagery, videos, SEO copy, customer reviews, and similar marketing attributes.  

• Localization – Though providing a basic framework, region or channel-specific localizations typically require manual review and tweaking.

• Scalable syndication – Native tools help reduce routine tasks, but lack the capability for automated, adaptive content delivery across dozens of channels.

Rather than supporting audience-facing workflows, SAP systems often require workarounds or bolt-on solutions, often causing teams to fall back to siloed spreadsheets (and all the inefficiencies that come with them).

But what if there was a better way? An agile, scalable way to close the content gap—without a complete SAP overhaul? 

What SAP customers look for—and find—in Inriver

To shore up SAP’s weak points, many brands, manufacturers, and retailers trust Inriver. While standard PIMs often simply consolidate data (something SAP already does well), Inriver is built to enrich, activate, and scale product content.

Consider just a few benefits of leveraging Inriver as part of your SAP stack: 

• Content flexibility and scalability – From category-specific attributes to visual assets and narrative content, Inriver manages complex product information (of every kind) in a scalable, repeatable way.

• Faster time-to-market – Inriver’s user-friendly workflows and automated syndication systems eliminate the usual content choke points. Product data flows seamlessly from enrichment to approval to activation, dramatically reducing SKU onboarding times and enabling agile product launches.

• Airtight governance – Traceability matters in the digital age—whether for compliance or simple version history control. Role-based access, data validation, and changelogs preserve governance without introducing unnecessary friction. 

• Effortless channel activation – Automated syndication equips you to easily distribute product data to new websites, marketplaces, distributor portals, and more—all formatted to meet endpoint requirements. Every new channel becomes a force multiplier, rather than another bottleneck. 

Where many PIMs duplicate what SAP already offers, Inriver complements and extends it. Plug-and-play integration, intelligent data mappings, and tools purpose-built for omnichannel execution bridge the gap between SAP’s operational backbone and the enriched content that customers expect.

Proven results: How SAP customers are winning with Inriver

Brands, manufacturers, and retailers across industries already see tangible rewards when integrating Inriver into their SAP ecosystem. 

Here’s how two standout enterprises transformed their product operations.

ADB Safegate: Post-acquisition data demands made easy

After a major acquisition, ADB Safegate—a global B2B provider of airport systems—faced a data tsunami. While SAP backboned the bulk of their staggering 90,000+ SKUs, something was still missing.

Before their Inriver integration, ADB Safegate noted challenges such as: 

• Long delays between product creation in SAP and publication on digital channels
• Manual file transfers breeding confusion, version issues, and inefficiencies
• Lack of centralized governance, making collaboration difficult across global teams

After integrating with Inriver, they noticed a profound change:

• Near-instantaneous syndication greatly improved their time to market, allowing information from a critical product launch to go live across all channels just 5 minutes after the official unveiling.

• SAP-synchronized subsystems tapped into Inriver’s flexible data model to unlock easier content enrichment and omnichannel updates from a single, closed-loop platform.

• Enterprise-wide data governance enabled their team of 1,200 employees across 38 global offices to access, update, and collaborate on a single source of data truth.

Drastically reducing their time-to-market enabled ADB Safegate to shift focus away from manual data management tasks. With Inriver, they now have the operational freedom to prioritize consistent, high-quality customer experiences across all channels.

“The flexibility and ease of use of the Inriver PIM have been game-changers for us. It has allowed us to harmonize our product information and improve efficiency across all departments.”

– Adriana Petrescu

Business Technology Manager at ADB SAFEGATE

Read the full case study

Carhartt: Building better workflows with Inriver

For iconic apparel brand Carhartt, the challenges were twofold: Maintaining compliance across increasingly stringent regulations and ensuring efficient data processes. 

With seasonal product cycles and stringent retail requirements, legacy spreadsheet-based workflows were leading to data discrepancies, compliance risks, and costly chargebacks. 

Before Inriver, Carhartt’s key obstacles included: 

• Outdated, inconsistent product data that contributed to errors and returns
• Regulatory changes that were difficult to apply uniformly across channels
• Time-intensive back-and-forth between teams to verify content accuracy

However, an Inriver + SAP partnership empowered Carhartt to streamline.

With a unified data set, they could minimize errors and discrepancies in product listings that resulted in returns—a costly expense given the associated fees and logistic demand. 

This newfound agility enabled Carhartt to drive tangible results such as:

• Fewer chargebacks – Improved data accuracy helped reduce penalties from partners and retailers, saving on both fees and logistical demand.

• Seasonal agility – Faster product updates kept Carhartt ahead of changing wholesale and retail demands.

• Regulatory control – Updates could now be pushed in real time across all touchpoints, from consumer-facing to wholesale.

Now? Thanks to Inriver, Carhartt skips the drudgery of data entry and dives straight into enrichment for better customer experiences.

“The most important aspect of PIM implementation is the change management and understanding its implications on people, processes, and governance. Let the people and process design the technology; don’t let the technology dictate your approach.”

– Melissa Dyke

Product Data Information Data Steward at Carhartt

Read the full case study

How Inriver supports global scale, localization, and rapid expansion

While SAP streamlines internal data scalability, Inriver takes that same data and packages it for external consumption. In practice, that equates to streamlined expansion into new markets and faster product launches across existing ones. 

For SAP customers focused on long-term growth, Inriver’s benefits deliver value by:

• Accelerating market expansion – Leveraging reusable localization templates and built-in translation workflows, Inriver streamlines new market launches and shrinks lead times in existing ones. Launching in another region becomes a matter of days—not months.

• Upscaling content teams – With Inriver, content creation, approval, and syndication all happen in parallel, enabling teams to focus less on administration and more on what matters: building compelling product stories.

• Ensuring quality amidst growth – Managing 12 markets in 8 languages? Streamlined content creation workflows cut localization time while preserving data integrity, ensuring consistency and compliance even as content velocity increases.

Such agility, built upon a SAP + PIM ecosystem, can transform the complexity of omnichannel content from a hindrance to a competitive advantage.

Why customers stay: The long-term value of Inriver in SAP ecosystems

SAP users understand the value of clean data. But clean data isn’t enough if it stays stuck behind the scenes. 

As digital expectations rise, brands need more than ERP and commerce platforms. They need the tools to enrich, adapt, and distribute content at scale.

And that’s exactly what Inriver provides. 

That’s why forward-thinking brands, manufacturers, and retailers choose Inriver. Not to replace SAP, but to partner with it. Together, they create a complete product data infrastructure, powering back-end stability and front-end agility in equal measure.

Looking for a platform to mobilize your product data where it needs to go? It might be time to future-proof your product content strategy with Inriver.