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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