OM DENNE EPISODE
Everyone agrees the legacy PIM has hit its ceiling. Almost nobody wants to own the move off it.
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In the third and final part of the PIM series, Matt Johnson and Floyd Blaikie get into the part the first two episodes set up. How do you actually move? Jay Roxe of inriver and Willem Van Dijk of Pivotree both argue the move has gotten faster and cheaper in the space of a year, because AI now sits at every stage of the delivery cycle rather than one.
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That creates a different problem. If standing up a platform that looks like your old one is now easy, the temptation to lift and shift gets stronger exactly when it's least appropriate. Jay's position is that B2B buyers are already researching and selecting with AI, so a migration that preserves the old model preserves the old invisibility. Floyd pushes on the credibility question from the buyer's chair, and Matt names the valley of pain in the middle of every implementation where the schedule quietly goes.
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👤 Guests
Jay Roxe is Chief Marketing Officer at inriver, the product data platform. He came up through software engineering and product before marketing leadership roles at Microsoft, GE, athenahealth, Rapid7, and BitSight, and most recently HYPR. He lives near the Boston Marathon course and has run it.
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Willem Van Dijk is Director of Data Platforms & Services at Pivotree. He has spent close to twenty years in master data management and PIM, including multiple leadership roles at Stibo Systems where he opened the retail vertical and later the Australia and New Zealand business.
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📌 What We Cover
- Where AI now sits in a PIM delivery cycle: needs gathering, user stories and the grooming of them, build instructions, test scripts written as the build happens, and post-delivery support triage.
- Why Pivotree can quote fixed bid now, and what has to be true about delivery for that to work.
- Why writing user stories with AI surfaces the workflow that actually exists, including the Tuesday afternoon email from Bob to Mary that no system has ever recorded.
- Jay on lift and shift as the wrong goal, and what happens to discoverability if you carry the old model across.
- The line between free content and governed, on-brand, compliant, regulatory approved content, and why only one of them needs infrastructure.
- Floyd on the person who has been burned before, and what has actually changed since their last migration went sideways.
- Jay's customer survey: about 65 customers, more than two-thirds cutting product data maintenance time by more than 30%, and 75% launching faster.
- The valley of pain in the middle of every implementation, requirements bloat when the light bulbs go off, and what a good SI does about both.
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🔗 Resources Mentioned
- inriver product data maturity research, covering more than 400 manufacturers and distributors
- Pivotree
- LinkedIn Live event with Jay and Willem, Wednesday September 2nd, linked from the Data vs. Commerce, Pivotree, and inriver LinkedIn pages
- MCPs, referenced by Jay on moving prototypes into production
- Contact: jay.roxe@inriver.com and willem@pivotree.com
