Icecat continues to improve its services by adding new functionalities in 2023. In this post, you can see a summary of the planned developments in the Icecat Service Roadmap 2023.
The Icecat portal attracts tens of billions of visits annually. Improving usability, functionality, SEO and the stats dashboard are, therefore, critical points.
| – SEO improvements | Q1-Q4 |
| – Monitor and improve search | Q1-Q4 |
| – Download generic data of distributor feeds | Q3-Q4 |
| – Migration to Pipedrive (DONE) | Q2 |
| – Allow users to upload SLA product lists | Q3-Q4 |
Hundreds of brand editors use Icecat Vendor Central, our global multilingual PIM cloud, to enrich the product data sheets for their channel partners. Therefore, improving usability, efficiency, quality management, and workflow is the main focus also for 2023.
| – Brand-authorized reseller logic update | Q1-Q4 |
| – New search UI for brand managers in the PIM | Q2-Q4 |
| – Fully multilingual PIM | Q2-Q4 |
| – New Copy product functionality | Q1-Q4 |
| – “Invite your reseller” button for brand managers (DONE) | Q1-Q2 |
| – Upgrades of the Editor Assignment Tracking Tool to increase workflow efficiency | Q4- |
| – ETL speed upgrade and include it in brand editor view | Q4 |
| – Possibility to assign more than one country to a user | Q4 |
| – Supporting new generation of variants | Q4- |
| – Supporting taxonomy-specific assets (DONE) | Q2-Q3 |
| – Sub-user support | Q4- |
| – Access for third-party users to PIM: New “user” quality product datasheets | Q4- |
| – Editor journal V2 refactoring to improve tracking of changes made by editors | Q4- |
Up to fifteen billion product datasheet requests were supported during 2022 by our pull APIs. Furthermore, the data is used in more and more industries or Verticals. Therefore, adaptations are needed to improve our APIs’ efficiency, timeliness, and stability.
| – User Media API upgrade (DONE) | Q1-Q2 |
| – Personalized index files | Q1-Q4 |
| – Soft limitations on Datasheet downloads | Q4 |
| – Open Icecat distribution limitation on subscribed verticals | Q4 |
| – Explanatory text should be available via categoryfeaturelist | Q4- |
| – nRT diary of product updates + taxonomy changes per period. | Q4- |
| – Pimcore Addon V4 – Upgrade to 10.5 and unlock full Icecat users (DONE) | Q1 |
| – Magento2 Extension V2- Unlock full Icecat users and enrich products for specific Brands (DONE) | Q2 |
| – Pimcore Addon POC – Analysis and feasibility check to enrich product content in the brand/retailer-specific taxonomy (DONE) | Q3 |
| – Explore possible Icecat partnerships with open-source PIMs and e-commerce platforms | Q3-Q4 |
| – Open-source software licensing of open-source Icecat addons/extensions | Q1-Q4 |
| – Research open-source AI frameworks and models for generating marketing text for Icecat’s Product Data Sheets. | Q3-Q4 |
Icecat offers Expert Reviews, User Reviews, and Shoppable Reviews. We list below the summary of the most important developments.
| – Icecat product import logic update (DONE) | Q1 |
| – Align APIs with Icecat APIs (LIVE) | Q1-Q4 |
| – Switch to internal crawling tools (DONE) | Q1-Q3 |
| – Transfer client-facing services (XML API, Live API) to a cloud-based IaaS provider | Q3-Q4 |
| – Testseek and Icecat.com integration | Q1 – Q4 |
| – Statistics and insights reporting | Q3 |
| – UGC functionality MVP | Q4 |
In 2023 it is a critical project to publish more analytics on our front office on the Brand Dashboard and to include more of our reporting in this graphical interface behind a brand login.
| – Documenting the Reporting API | Q4 |
| – Statistics API-out | Q4 |
| – Expand the Brand Dashboard further with insights | Q1-Q4 |
| – Track more interactions with product assets | Q1-Q4 |
| – To include all LIVE events in the standardized report. This includes, for example, video and 3D usage, content interactions, and scrolling | Q4- |
| – Rework logical/tech user filtering | Q4- |
| – Possibly exclude users with an empty value for “Business type” | Q4 |
The Syndy PIM cloud is used in FMCG and beyond as a corporate PIM and syndication platform. Following improvements are planned for 2023:
| – Digital Asset Management (DAM) improvements (DONE) | Q1 |
| – Template restrictions (DONE) | Q1 |
| – Development of dashboard and reporting upgrades | Q1-Q3 |
| – Retailer environment redesign (DONE) | Q1-Q2 |
| – GS1 integration (DONE) | Q2-Q3 |
| – Merge Hexagon and Syndy platforms | Q4- |
| – Admin improvement | Q4- |
| – Global Assortment Feature (DONE) | Q1-Q4 |
| – Icecat integration improvements | Q1-Q4 |
| – Infrastructure optimization | Q1-Q4 |
| – Set up DEV/PO communication platform | Q1-Q4 |
Executing our One PIM strategy by providing local B2C marketplace integrations and merging internal infrastructures into one seamless environment.
| – Phasing out old video games platform (DONE) | Q1 |
| – Purchasing Process Improvement | Q3 |
| – Automatic sourcing improvement | Q4 |
| – Infrastructure Improvement (DONE) | Q1-Q3 |
| – Bridge improvement | Q2-Q4 |
| – Icecat and Hexagon platforms Integration | Q4- |
| – Hexagon API V3 (DONE) | Q3 |
| – General platform improvements | Q3-Q4 |
| – Channel management improvements | Q4 |
| – Image-specific improvements | Q4 |
| – Import and export specific improvements | Q4 |
| – Merge Hexagon and Syndy platforms | Q4- |
Focus on providing B2B e-commerce clients best-in-class solutions, including platform integrations, high-volume product information management and supply-chain management.
| Release Amazon Connector service for Seller accounts (DONE) | Q1 |
| Implement Product stories in Icepim (DONE) | Q1 |
| Icepim Icecat import and UI improvements (speed and GTIN control) | Q1 |
| Change and improve Logs display and management in Icepim (DONE) | Q1-Q2 |
| Icepim menu improvements (DONE) | Q1-Q3 |
| Create Image server and improved image resizing functionality (DONE) | Q1-Q3 |
| Improve Icepim performance, stability, usability | Q1-Q4 |
| Release Amazon Connector service for Vendor accounts (DONE) | Q4 |
| Migrate Shopify connector’s customers from REST to GraphQL (when applicable) (DONE) | Q1-Q4 |
| Shopify connector performance, stability, usability updates (DONE) | Q1-Q4 |
| Change Category Export and add bullet points for Magento connector (DONE) | Q1-Q2 |
| Magento connector performance, stability, usability updates | Q1-Q4 |
| Salesforce connector performance, stability, usability updates (DONE) | Q1-Q4 |
| Iceimport performance, stability, usability updates (DONE) | Q1-Q4 |
| Iceorder performance, stability, usability updates | Q1-Q4 |
| Customer portal: Elastic search implementation for products | Q1-Q2 |
| Customer portal: Order create/edit functionality | Q1-Q2 |
| Re-design portal interface with new order system interface | Q2-Q4 |
In 2023 we will continue further development of the Product enrichment tool and we want to introduce the Mapping and transformation tool.
| Refactoring existing projects to product story v2.0 (DONE) | Q1 |
| Upgrades of WYSIWYG editor (DONE) | Q1-Q2 |
| AMAZON A+ syndication via PET (DONE) | Q1-Q2 |
| Google Manufacturing Center syndication via PET | Q1-Q2 |
| Product story Analytics release (DONE) | Q1-Q2 |
| PET performance, stability, and usability updates (DONE) | Q1-Q4 |
| Data mapping and transformation tool development and release | Q1-Q4 |
| New statistics with new metrics, fully in-house solution (DONE) | Q2-Q3 |
| New asset type – snippet or story in story solution(DONE) | Q2-Q3 |
| Support of videos in hotspots (DONE) | Q2-Q3 |
| ar/3d support, pre-defined module with responsiveness (QR code vs laptop experience) (DONE) | Q2-Q3 |
| Testseek review switch on-off module with new design, refactoring into 2.0 version (DONE) | Q2-Q3 |
| UGC module with new design, refactoring into 2.0 version (DONE) | Q2-Q3 |
| UGC/Testseek live API (DONE) | Q2-Q3 |
| Refactoring Lego autoimport into story 2.0 (DONE) | Q2-Q3 |
| Typification of stories ( in-house variant solution with back-up logic) (DONE) | Q2-Q3 |
| Standard/Premium/Amazon (DONE) | Q2-Q3 |
For security, performance, and functionality reasons, tech stack innovations are continuously applied during 2023
| Redis-cluster cache migration | Q1-Q3 |
| Downloads Stats upgrade – ClickHouse | Q1-Q3 |
| Cassandra version upgrade – v2 to v4 (DONE) | Q1-Q3 |
| Editorial Journal upgrade | Q4- |
| MySQL 8 (DONE) | Q2 |
| Removing legacy from perl to PHP | Q1-Q4 |
In 2023 we will focus on the following security points:
| 2FA for users (Google Auth + email) | Q2-Q4 |
In 2023 we will focus on the following developments:
| Update existing Iceclog with outdated content (DONE) | Q1 |
| Re-launch Iceclog design | Q2 |
| Implement AI Chatbot | Q2 |
| Add multilingual option | Q3 |
| Add CDN network | Q3 |
| Enrich pages with content | Q1-Q2 |
| Add multilingual option | Q3-Q4 |
The Icury is still a research project. The main goal in this direction for 2023 is to investigate zero transaction cost distributed ledger technologies (DLT).
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