In 2021, the Icecat Group is going to further improve its services and add new functionalities for its users. Below, a concise summary of the planned developments in the Icecat Service Roadmap 2021.
A critical project is to publish more analytics on our front office in the Brand Rank Page and to include more of our reporting in this graphical interface behind a brand login.
– Expand the brand rank page further with insights. | Q1-Q4 |
– Statistics API out as a microservice. | Q1-Q3 |
– Documenting the Reporting API. | Q1 |
– To include all LIVE events in the standardized report. This includes for example video and 3D usage, content interactions, and scrolling. | Q2 |
– Track more interactions with product assets. | Q1-Q4 |
– Rework logical/tech user filtering. | Q2 |
– Limit report on Brand locales. | Q2 |
– Possibility to exclude users with an empty value for “Business type”. | Q2 |
The Icecat portal attracts around 8 billion visits annually. Improving usability, functionality, and SEO are therefore critical points.
– Monitor and improve search | Q1-Q4 |
– Use LIVE for various product assets | Q1-Q4 |
– Download generic data of distributor feeds | Q2 |
– Social media login/registration | Q1 |
– Allow users to upload SLA product lists | Q3-Q4 |
– AMP roll-out in all templates, and more standard SEO improvements | Q1 |
– Add logistical data to “missing products” | Q2 |
– Creation of PDF from the Icecat live | Q1 |
– Unique email addresses during user registration | Q2 |
– Allow for self-management of standard Icecat subscriptions | Q4 |
Hundreds of brand editors use Icecat Vendor Central, our global multi-lingual PIM cloud, to enrich the product data-sheets for their channel partners. Improving usability, efficiency, quality management and workflow is therefore the main focus this year.
– Brand quality product data-sheets with a >50% completeness score automatically upgraded to “Icecat quality”. | Q1 |
– Finalize fully multilingual support for all 50+ languages. | Q1-Q4 |
– Creation of a scraping tool that can be used by any editor. | Q1-Q3 |
– Additional service options for brands. | Q1-Q4 |
– Further upgrades of the Editor Assignment Tracking Tool to increase workflow efficiency. | Q1 |
– Brand editors with local access should have the possibility to add International images and other media assets. | Q1 |
– ETL speed upgrade and include for brand editors. | Q2 |
– Access for third party users to PIM: New “user” quality product data-sheets. | Q3-Q4 |
– Include common Product Story elements in the Reasons-To-Buy section. | Q3 |
– Possibility of creating new image types without developer help. | Q3 |
– Asset hub: Possibility to assign different assets to a group of products based on family, features, and other elements. | Q3-Q4 |
– Editor journal V2 refactoring to improve tracking of changes made by editors. | Q4 |
10 billion product data-sheet requests were supported during 2020 by our pull-APIs. Furthermore, the data is used in more and more industries or Verticals. Therefore, adaptations are needed to improve the efficiency, timeliness, and stability of our APIs.
– Vertical Indexes. | Q1 |
– Tag taxonomy elements with timestamps so that users can filter based on date or user base. | Q1-Q4 |
– Personalized, user-specific nRT XML. | Q2 |
– nRT diary of product updates + taxonomy changes per period. | Q3 |
Cedemo plays a prominent role in both the Toys & Gaming market and in the French ecommerce channel. Most processes between Icecat and Cedemo are now well-aligned. During 2021, we expect to finalize the bridges between Icecat and Cedemo, to seamlessly integrate the platforms in one global PIM ecosystem.
– AFS (depending on Amazon news). | Q1-Q4 |
– Bridge Cedemo to Icecat. | Q1 |
– Performance Improvements. | Q1 |
– Bridge Icecat to Cedemo. | Q1-Q2 |
– Move Cedemo Platform to Icecat infrastructure. | Q2-Q3 |
– Cedemo database to Icecat Master Database. | Q3-Q4 |
– phased out old video games platform. | Q1-Q4 |
Testseek offers Expert Reviews, User Revies and now also shoppable reviews. A further ambition is to add tooling for creation of user generated reviews.
– New Shoppable reviews product (powered by Testseek and Hatch jointly). | Q1 |
– Align APIs with Icecat APIs. | Q1-Q4 |
– Centralized review portal. | Q1-Q3 |
– Refactoring Expert reviews functionality. | Q3 |
– Mobile/AMP version and other SEO improvements. | Q3 |
– Tool to support User Generate Review creation. | Q4 |
The Syndy PIM cloud is used in FMCG and beyond. For local and global accounts functionality improvements are created:
– APRIMO DAM Integration | Q1 |
– AKZO API Integration | Q1 |
– Global Assortment Feature MVP | Q1 |
– Product Hierarchy/Private Label | Q1-Q2 |
– Bulk Import for Customers | Q1-Q2 |
– Product Data Model | Q1-Q4 |
– Admin improvement | Q1-Q4 |
– Reporting improvements | Q1-Q4 |
– DAM: Asset Metadata | Q2 |
– DAM: Organisation-wide view | Q2 |
– Syndy Products API IN | Q2-Q3 |
– Source Connectors Mapping tool | Q2-Q3 |
– Single product export | Q2-Q3 |
The rework of existing services, around Icepim, has a priority. Key points are connectivity to Amazon Seller Central, and rework of the Iceshop Vendor Network.
Release of rewritten Magento Modules (Iceimport and Icecatconnector) | Q1- Q2 |
Document and planning of a new IceImport service | Q2 |
IceImport service re-development (Iceshop Vendor Network) | Q3 |
Improvements and new releases of the Icepim | Q1-Q4 |
Export for Amazon Seller Central | Q2 |
Image service with CDN support | Q3 |
Complete new informative dashboard | Q1 |
Price groups feature (multiple prices per product) | Q1 |
Completeness score per product (based on the Icecat content) | Q3 |
For security, performance, and functionality reasons, tech stack innovations are continuously applied during 2021.
– Editorial and Taxonomy journal upgrades | Q1-Q4 |
– Icecat Live service refactoring (performance and memory) | Q1-Q4 |
– Adding new functionalities to the Icecat PIM for Cedemo integration | Q1-Q4 |
– Ceph upgrade to SSD storages that will lead to faster storages | Q1 |
– Eliminate legacy storages to improve the platform stability | Q1 |
– A new tool is needed to replace Redis | Q1 |
– Elastic from 1.6 to 7.1 | Q1 |
– Cassandra from 1.6 to 3.1 | Q1 |
– Moving rest of architecture to Kubernetes for the efficiency gain | Q1 |
– Improving statistics both PD and LIVE | Q1-Q4 |
– Private index files & personal product references | Q1-Q4 |
– Replacement of the exchange server from RabbitMQ to kafka | Q1-Q4 |
– Backup coverage increase using excess SAN storages | Q2 |
– Cluster setup for Cedemo – move to hybrid hosting for Cedemo | Q2 |
– Planning for remote backups | Q3-Q4 |
Specificly, related to security, 2FA roll-out, logging, and monitoring are focus points during 2021.
– Apply 2FA for every user in the Icecat PIM | Q1 |
– Enforcing 2FA for all account types via the PIM | Q1 |
– Track and log activities of the PIM users | Q1-Q2 |
– Continuous monitoring of all group sites including pen testing, and vulnerability scans and fixing | Q1-Q4 |
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