Pictures Worth a Thousand Words: Adding Product Images to CIF Catalogs

Fast-growing use of the internet for personal purchases is steadily increasing end user sophistication, making it more important than ever for suppliers to provide an eCommerce experience that matches or exceeds that found on consumer websites. The fall 2005 service pack release of Ariba® Buyer™ (version 8.2.2) will help suppliers meet this goal by enabling them to add product images to catalog interchange format (CIF) and cXML format catalogs. The following answers to frequently asked questions explain how the new feature works and the advantages it provides.

"Adding images or any information that enhances the user's experience and gives them a more robust view of what they're purchasing is a good thing, especially when it's tempered with speed and accuracy. It's also excellent for the supplier, because at the end of the day, eCommerce user-friendliness is critical in driving up compliance and sales volume."
- Sarmento Silva, DPM, Purchasing Lead, Global P2P Optimization, AstraZeneca

Q: What benefits will my company realize by adding product images to the catalog?
A: Including product images in your catalog makes it much easier for end users to quickly and easily identify exactly the right product to meet their needs. This not only minimizes purchasing errors but saves your business time and money by significantly reducing product returns. Adding images also ensures a more user-friendly experience, increasing user comfort with online purchasing from contracted suppliers and driving up sales.

Many suppliers support tens or even hundreds of catalogs that contain thousands of line items being viewed by hundreds of thousands of end users. Product images can prove especially crucial for these organizations by helping users distinguish between multiple line items with similar or even identical written descriptions.

Moreover, users frequently refuse to purchase products they cannot see first. Particularly for suppliers selling products whose appearance is a key aspect of value—such as flowers, for example—images can make the difference between winning or losing the sale.

Q: How can I gain access to the new product images feature?
A: As soon as Ariba Buyer version 8.2.2 is released, more proactive buyers may suggest that you add images to your catalog, or you may approach them to request that they upgrade to the new service pack to make the product images capability available. There are two new fields/columns in the CIF file format to include images. Image is the field for full-size images and Thumbnails are for thumbnail size images.

Q: My catalog has more than 100,000 line items. Will the new Ariba Buyer scale to support the addition of this many images?
A: Yes. You can choose to have the images hosted on your eCommerce site and simply specify URL links to each of the items in the CIF/cXML catalog you provide to your customers. Ariba Buyer application will retrieve these images when needed, and will have the ability to cache images and refresh them on a scheduled basis. Alternatively, you can work directly with buyers to store your images locally on the buyer's server behind their firewall. Either of these options should eliminate any performance problems with accessing images that might otherwise slow down the end-user experience or impact the supplier site.

Please note that your customer may also test the validity of all the image URL links you provide by running a URL validation utility from the Ariba Buyer application at setup time.

Q: Will end users be able to enlarge the thumbnail images?
A: Yes, the new release supports expansion capabilities. Users can simply click on the thumbnail image to zoom in on a larger, clearer picture. However, it is important that you provide a full size image for this feature to work. Ariba application can then dynamically generate a thumbnail size image, even if a thumbnail image is not provided, to show next to the line item in the catalog.

Q: What image formats will be supported?
A: Ariba Buyer 8.2.2 will support most of the common image formats such as JPEGs, GIFs, PNG, and TIFs. Image URLS should be specified in the catalog CIF/cXML file in the image fields.