“We take a personalized approach for each customer.”

“I love thinking of new ways for us to raise the bar on our customer-first approach.”

Every business is different, and so is the way they use software. To help ensure our customers get the most out of the inriver PIM platform, a personalized approach is key.

But with such a varied customer base relying on the inriver platform, what support can businesses expect from their inriver investment?

We sat down with Mariana Andrade, Director of Customer Success at inriver, to learn more about her passion for customer success and what that means for inriver customers.

Hi Mariana. What made you choose to build a career in the customer success space – and at inriver? 

As a former scientist, I know how important reliable data is. But I also know how challenging running a product-focused business can be. Before moving to Sweden, I ran my own retail business for six years, which taught me a lot about customer experience and success. There were many challenges, including making sure we delivered a consistent customer experience across both our brick-and-mortar and online stores. 

I came out of the experience with a real passion for working with people, so I was drawn into the world of customer success. Even so, I never forgot how challenging it was to keep data organized and accurate and to share information across many different channels. That’s why I was interested in inriver, as I could directly understand customers’ pain points and wanted to use my experience to make a difference.  

What does a day in the life of a customer success leader at inriver look like? 

Every day is a bit different, but I’m always focused on what my team can do to proactively help our customers. We make sure we always understand what our customers are trying to achieve, both with PIM and more broadly as a business, so we can prioritize strategic action points.  

It’s important that we take a personalized approach to supporting each customer, which often involves other teams at inriver and external solution-implementation partners. I spend a lot of time coordinating and aligning everyone so we can deliver whatever the customer needs.  

What are the best bits and biggest challenges of your role? 

I love thinking of new ways for us to raise the bar on our customer-first approach. Really, our work is never done. Markets change, businesses evolve, and it’s essential that we’re thinking about new solutions that can take our customers to the next level, such as the latest AI innovations we’ve introduced to the inriver platform. This mindset makes work fun and interesting because there’s always something to focus on.  

In terms of challenges, I need to make sure we’re always aligned and working in harmony with any internal or external partners. There can be lots of moving parts in any customer relationship, with many individuals involved to ensure our customers get the most out of their inriver investment. However, we’ve developed strong processes that help us clearly and transparently work together and with our customers.  

We imagine businesses of different sizes need different support to succeed, right? 

Absolutely, and that’s part of what I do. Customers with smaller or younger businesses typically need support primarily with adoption. We’ll ensure their teams complete the right training and get a strong understanding of what PIM can do so it quickly starts delivering value.  

For larger organizations, change management is just as important as technical training. It’s essential we show key people across the business the benefits of PIM and how it can improve their unique workstreams. This deeper layer of onboarding work is personalized and rooted in each organization’s challenges and context. It demands more of our time, but it helps our bigger clients start to see the value of PIM faster. 

Zooming out for a minute, what do you think are some of the biggest trends or issues impacting the PIM market? 

The biggest pain point and most pressing issue for our customers is managing their product data governance responsibilities. Regulators, customers, and internal stakeholders are all expecting businesses to be more transparent about how products go from source to shelf. With new regulations like the Digital Product Passport (DPP), accurate product data will become ever more essential.  

Protecting that single source of truth isn’t easy when dealing with complex, often siloed data held across different systems. It’s even harder when our customers have a large range of products or want to automate certain processes to drive efficiencies.  

An ongoing trend is creating a consistent omnichannel experience, where brand identity and story are clear across every channel. If our customers can’t control the data, they can’t expect it to support the stories they’re trying to tell their customers.  

What does customer success ultimately look like to you, and how do you evaluate it? 

First, we look at customer “health”. This means they’re comfortable and satisfied with the inriver PIM and we regularly have positive conversations with them. Secondly, we create customer success plans that help our managers drive customers toward their short- and long-term goals.  

Even if our products are just one part of the journey, we still coordinate with suppliers and understand the context PIM is being used to remove as many points of frustration as possible. This could mean recommending additional solutions, such as DAM (digital asset management) or DSA (digital shelf analytics), or offering more training to improve adoption. 

We also host events like PIMpoint, where we share vital information about our products and highlight the most exciting customer stories. This helps customers talk to one another and share what they’ve learned throughout their PIM journey so they can learn organically from their peers as well as us.  

That sounds great. So why do you think it’s an exciting time to be at inriver? 

I think the inriver PIM is really helping product-focused businesses overcome some of today’s biggest challenges, like sustainability and compliance. You see those words thrown around a lot as a consumer, but you don’t realize how complex things like circularity and transparency around provenance are behind the scenes. It’s fascinating to peek behind the curtain and make all this essential data work easier for our customers.  

To help our customers get more out of PIM, we’re focused on delivering value and helping organizations adopt our solutions quickly. That means understanding how our success desk or partners can support with troubleshooting or training, and where bottlenecks and efficiency gaps exist that PIM can rectify. It’s not just about PIM either. We can support broader digital transformations by helping businesses build a strong digital foundation and smooth over the difficult aspects of change management, often the hardest part.  

Thanks, Mariana!