Sander Berlinski: Hi, and welcome. My name is Sander Berlinski. I'm a director of innovation at valantic. And today I'm talking with Dietz, the CEO of Pimcore Nice to have you here Dietz. Dietmar Rietsch: Thanks for inviting me to Rotterdam. Beautiful weather outside. Awesome. And I'm looking forward to this conversation today. Sander Berlinski: Yes, it's finally beautiful weather. But before we talk everything about product information management and evolution to product experience management. Please tell me how did you became the CEO of Pimcore? Dietmar Rietsch: Actually, I have been in the internet services industry, all my life. so the last 20, 25 years and actually in 2009, we had this idea to, create a new system to unify data management and experience management with, within one platform.

And, that's where the whole story started. So actually it started in a brewery in Salzburg. And, where the best ideas start, right? Yes, where the best things start. And there we: had this idea for Pimcore and, since that moment of time, I'm the CEO of Pimcore. Sander Berlinski: So already since 2009, and you were talking about data management and data experience management. Can you maybe tell me a little bit more about what do you really mean with data management and data experience management? Dietmar Rietsch: Yeah. So it's quite Easy, I would say. And, but let me begin with, this night at the brewery, because that's where we had, these visions that, are the founding layers of the Pimcore platform. So imagine we sat together with my colleague, he's the CTO of Pimcore, Bernie, he is called. And, we sat together and said, Hey, we want to have a system. With five different visions behind it. And we took five beer coasters and wrote some statements on that beer coaster. So the first statement was any, data, actually.

So it was any data. And that means that we: have one single system to manage beer. And, develop any type of data, which is structured data, unstructured data and digital assets. So that was actually the first, the first vision that we had. Sander Berlinski: You say any data. Dietmar Rietsch: Yeah. Sander Berlinski: So I think, I guess that's unique right now in the market. Dietmar Rietsch: I would say, as, platforms or software suites, now the predominant, in a prominent, really, liked by customers because they are more easy and more comprehensive, it goes into that direction anyhow, but in 2009 and in the last, I would say 15 years, we were actually, pretty unique by combining these three data items. Within one single platform, Sander Berlinski: and that's only the first of the five beer coasters. So what was the other four?

Dietmar Rietsch after the first one, I have to continue, we had a beer and I honestly have: to say we also had a little, a little snaps because we said, Hey, this is tremendous. What happens today? This is just crazy. And we took the second beer coaster and, and we are thinking about, and we put it, we stated any channel and, any channel means basically that we can deliver any data to any output channel. So that makes us, single source publishing and multi channel publishing. Sander Berlinski: So that's the second, and now the other coasters,

Dietmar Rietsch the coasters, any model. Any model means that, PimCore can be made compliant and compatible to any type of industry, any type of domain. So we have a lot of customers, from automotive, for example, retail, manufacturing. So you can really adjust the data models of all data entities to, the way you would like it, and the way You: you want to have it for your industry. So that's the third one or the third one. And then the fourth one is, so what was it? Ah, it was for, Sander Berlinski: many more beers later, right? Dietmar Rietsch: So that's why I'm, now really, thinking hard about what is really going on. So it was, any developer. Yes, because we said we want to have a framework because we know that, digital transformation is hard. So not everything. Even in a perfect SaaS world can be just be, configured. so you also need a framework that can be adjusted to really the needs of the customer. Therefore, we said also, we want a framework, that is API driven, headless. And that's the things that we already built in 2009.

even. Before, composable commerce and headless and all of that things. So we already had this base ideas when we: built PimCore the first time. Sander Berlinski: So doing composable before it was cool already. Dietmar Rietsch: Yeah, exactly. Sander Berlinski: And that's for the past 16 years already. Yeah. Dietmar Rietsch: So I'm getting old. Yeah. Sander Berlinski: but how have you seen the world of product information management, evolving or changing in the past 16 years? Dietmar Rietsch: there is, there's. It's changing all of the time because, channels pop up, technologies pop up, the topic of omni channel commerce and all of these things, that is, the basic of the transformation also of the PIM category, so product information management, and that today leads us to the topic that PIM is transforming to PXM, which is a whole new platform. Category, I would say. and that's basically the tradition or the transformation that is currently going on. So a lot of interesting things are happening in that field.

Sander Berlinski Yeah. And I read a lot about PXM nowadays, but: if you have to translate in your own words, what is the main differences between the, maybe the more traditional Product information management and product experience management. Dietmar Rietsch: PXM is product experience management. So it's combining data management and experience management in one single platform. And guess what we've been talking about that since 2009, because that's the DNA of Pimcore combining data and experiences in one platform. Platform because they belong together, just product information doesn't make sense without an output channel. So things belong together and therefore this new category is born and this really makes them damn sense. Sander Berlinski: Yeah. Yeah. And you're talking about experience and of course it's about product experience, but I guess it's essentially. Also around customer experience, right? Dietmar Rietsch: It's about customer experience, because product experience leads to customer experience.

if you have good products,: descriptions, product attributes, if you have product configurators and, intelligent product data, also powered by AI machine learning and all of that things. And really good digital assets and everything can be personalized, then you also automatically get a great customer experience on top of that. And that leads to better conversions at the end. So it's, it's all about the customer. And, and that is the strategy of PXM. Sander Berlinski: Yeah. So PXM focus a lot on that customer experience. And if you look at the typical customers that you offer, what do you see that are the main challenges in improving this customer experience?

Dietmar Rietsch in today's, time, it's, it's crucial to be available with the right information at the right moment of time with the right target group, and the right content basically. and you have tremendously. A lot of different channels,: digital channels, but also, even print or POS or digital signage and wherever you have a touch point with the customer or the customers, that the journey crosses with your journey, you have to be there and that things are not that easy because it involves so many different pieces and, and that's basically the main challenge. And I would say this is the main challenge. Actually for any industry, not only like retail. Sander Berlinski: Yeah. So if I am a customer and I want to go to say a retail shop, I first do my research online and then I see some products that is, data that needs to be in the experience. And when I go to the store, then I need to see that same data or how does it work? Exactly.

Dietmar Rietsch So it's, it's topics. It depends on the business model of the customer, of course, but it's like research online purchase offline. It's all of those. Models that you can have to be: really omnichannel aware. and omnichannel aware means, you have to fulfill the dreams of the customer. So it's the customer's demand in terms of what they want to see, what they want to experience, what the customer journey should be. And PXM, is now, a really a valuable tool. Of software that really, I would say that, utilizes or cares about the supply chain of data until the last channel. So data in and then delivered to the last channel. And so it's also about feed management. It's about product data syndication, There are actually, I think 12 or 11 pieces to it, which, differs actually between PIM and PXM.

Sander Berlinski Pretty complex. So many channels, so many data points, so many customers, different business: models. How does a software solution cope with that? Or better said, how do the people working with that software cope with that? Dietmar Rietsch: it's, I would say it's two things that you have to be aware of when you're doing product experience management. and also e commerce and all of this, our content management, all of these topics. The first. One is you have to get the data right. shit in, shit out. if you do not get the data right, you will never have an experience that is really successful out there. getting data right is very important. Then, the second one is, know your customer. You have to be intelligent, you have to be aware, you have to know your customer, you have to define those personas, and then tightly use the data to personalize, as far as possible, to the demanding customers on any channel.

And the most important thing is, this has to be doable.: And you have mentioned that before, it seems to be complex, that whole beast. Yes, it is. But, if you have this supply chain from the end From the beginning to the end and the control, then it is far simpler than you believe. Sander Berlinski: So the software in this case actually tries to make it less complex. as long as you have the right data, if you know enough about your customers, if you know about anything, but it means that you also have to work with both. Developers, IT people with marketers, with the whole supply chain. Dietmar Rietsch: and there are probably, it gets tricky. it's, it's technical people, it's marketing people, it's business people.

And those guys often talk in a different language. Because they have, a different approach and a different, business setting in mind. So getting all of those guys together in a room and so that, and: talking the same language is probably one of the harder things because a lot of, a lot of the things have to do with change management and being aware that we are doing something for the customer experience. And that has to be the focus from every. individual in the room, Sander Berlinski: and who is normally then in the, lead of bringing all these different people together from technical from business, from marketing, Dietmar Rietsch: PXM has to be steered from the top. why is that? it's because it's a cross company and across department initiative, and therefore, this. This, the stakeholder has to be on top in a certain way because he has to bring together that people. And, so this is really a, an initiative that goes from the top to the bottom throughout the whole company. Sander Berlinski: Yeah. And, these kinds of initiatives, these are, I think, ongoing exercises, right?

Because the data will always change. The customer will: always change. So never ending. Story there, Dietmar Rietsch: never ending story there. Yeah, it is. but that's the, it's, a story that always now, of course, gets optimized and there are so many new technologies popping in, in terms of, marketing tool links, conversion rate optimization, analytics, the whole thing of Jenny I and machine learning. So there are always, tools and also strategies popping up where you can even make it. More efficient, more better and, all of that things. So it's, it's, a story that always continues. Yes, you're right. Sander Berlinski: Yeah. And it's good that you mentioned Gen AI because well, Gen AI is booming and even though people are still figuring out how it will add value, I think that's also something that you guys are. Probably working on or being busy with, right?

Dietmar Rietsch Yeah, we have started actually since, yeah, two and a half years right now. So we have a: collaboration with Hugging Face, which is nowadays the lead, the leading platform for open source, artificial intelligence and machine learning models, so large language models such as Lama and so on. And they have, a repository of over 500, 000 models. And. We built the PimCore Copilot, which is an additional tool for PimCore that can access all of these, models for doing various things with the data, generating of text translation management, but also, of course, build up chatbots, using it for rack toolings and all of that thing.

So it's. What is going on with AI is just, it's just crazy. And it will change the whole industry because, these things, these models will get better and better. And as soon as we have a g z, or a GI, then, everything changes: anyhow. Sander Berlinski: Because I imagine in a world where you need a lot of data or you have a lot of product data, you also have a lot of. Like you mentioned, descriptions of products, translations to all the different countries you want to offer. So you see that now already these technologies are improving that processes to translate to. Dietmar Rietsch: it's a daily work actually, even nowadays already for our customers. So basically, you have a product and a product description.

Now, for example, we are using AI and behavioral targeting to, to change the product description, To the, to a certain persona or persona group. And that's done in real time, depending on the consumer, basically. So we optimize all the time. Our also our product data, also our digital assets to be able to, to personalize once, customer experience during the, the customer journey: to, to even work a little bit better and therefore, AI, together with personalization, a huge topic. Sander Berlinski: Yeah. So most or a lot of people think that AI will take over the world and will take over a lot of jobs, but you actually, if I understand correctly, are using it to further improve the capabilities of the platform and of the. Dietmar Rietsch: Yeah. So I also have the opinion that this will really replace jobs and we are doing a lot of. different experiments today, for example, for automating data management, translation management being one of the first logical things, but also converting, for example, descriptions to attributes and all of the things that, previously involved a lot of work by editors and, and data stewards.

So this can be fully automated. In terms of data management and on the experience management side, it's the same beast: actually, because you can now really personalize on scale without having somebody that has to, always has to enter now new texts and new editorial content that is then manually personalized, but everything can be personalized. Automated and this is a huge topic and this, this is a fucking huge. Sander Berlinski: I Dietmar Rietsch: truly Sander Berlinski: say that way. And the automation is used, but it's for all different markets, right? Because you work for retail, you work for manufacturing. So do you see the impact of this technology? Being larger in retail or manufacturing or Dietmar Rietsch: no, it's, it's cross industry, I would say so it's, if we are talking, for example, that topic of automation, which is also tightly connected with the I and machine learning and, these kind of things.

true for any industry, it's, travel, it's: retail, it's finance, it's, everywhere, manufacturing. So what you can build with those tools, based on your P exam strategy, it's, just tremendously, just for an example, creating like product configurators, based on the data and, based on the intelligence within that data by AI, Hey, this wasn't possible before. And now. I would call this, for example, a true game changer. Sander Berlinski: Yeah. So if you look at all these different, industries, is there a certain industry that is adopting these technologies faster than others?

Dietmar Rietsch if I'm looking at the Gartner hype cycle, for example, and, matched it up with the industries, then of course there are some, some industries that, way, a little bit before I would say other industries and one of them being, of course, retail because B2C retail in that case, because: they are also talking to that target group, and that that uses these technologies day to day. And, so there are. industries that, more on the top than others, this is an impact for any Sander Berlinski: impact for anyone, any business. And earlier you mentioned that these kinds of initiatives and not only on gen AI, but products experience management, PXM needs to start from the top. But I can imagine that for leaders, it's pretty difficult to know where to start. If you would have to advise the leader of retail or manufacturing, where do they start tomorrow? Dietmar Rietsch: always start with the customer experience because that's why you are actually doing that. So it's, it's not the product experience or it's not the product.

It's, the customer. You have customers and customers have to, get the best information during their customer journey. So that's: the reason you do that stuff. And, And at the end you have toolings like, PXM to help you achieve a better customer experience. So always start with the customer in mind. Sander Berlinski: And how do they do that? How do the CEOs of today's retailers start with the customer? Dietmar Rietsch: so that's, probably an easy question to answer. Know your f*cking customer, know what he needs, or he or she needs, what they desire, what their ambitions are, how you can make their life easier.

And of course, it's not a matter of tooling, it's not a matter of, all of that things. It's a matter of understanding the customer and the individual needs, and I would also recommend that to the CEOs and show some passion. For those customers. And it's, so it's not a matter of a tooling, but,: understanding the needs of your customer. Sander Berlinski: I'm not sure. I think it's something that even Steve Jobs said years ago, start with the customer experience. Yeah. I told him Dietmar Rietsch: I told him. So Sander Berlinski: you told her, yeah, you learned a lot about, yeah. Yeah. And when the customers or when the leaders of these industries are starting with the customer experience and they're trying their best and they're probably succeeding a lot in improving the product experience afterwards, please tell me what are the common pitfalls in this whole process of creating a better customer experience and better product experience?

Dietmar Rietsch the pitfalls, I would say, there are quite a few pitfalls, I would say, and it always starts with, the final definition of the objective itself. what do you want to achieve with such a strategy? and what is the customer and what do they expect? And I often experience that, even nowadays, that companies do not really understand.: Still the customers. So it's, a matter of understanding the customer. And then of course it starts with, the further problems or challenges start with, data quality, for example, data availability. So that's, for example, that a lot of data is hidden in silos within company departments. And everybody is, they are not. Open to opening up the data, a little bit hidden and, and that's of course an issue because if you do not have the data and the needed intelligence, and analytics and so on, then it's hard for you to also, test your hypothesis of, You know what you actually want to achieve in terms of the customer experience. Sander Berlinski: Yeah. And then it gets difficult. If you're not able,

Dietmar Rietsch it follows up and then you have the cross channel complexities. So there are a lot of different things that can happen. but: shouldn't. And on the other hand, it's, it's fail forward culture. That is needed because, it's, you have to try things out, before you, you have to learn and you have to experience good things and also the bad things. and that's a good thing. So if you want to innovate and if you want to change things like the customer experience, then you have to test it. You have to, it's, all this data driven anyhow. Sander Berlinski: So, feel forward to feel forward and getting the shit done. And not being afraid to fail. Just try and innovate. Do not be afraid Dietmar Rietsch: to fail. Sander Berlinski: And we talked about a lot of things about the customer and of course, about the dreams of the, customer and how you can achieve all the needs of those customers. But I'm also wondering what are you guys at Pimcor, what are your needs and dreams for the coming years? Where are you working on?

Dietmar Rietsch we are working. We are working on really a lot of different: things because, so if you ask me personally, then I would say, for example, it's a really big honor that now something like PXM is appearing in the world, because 15 years ago, we, we said we have to have a system that combines data and experiences and now even the analysts, so You know, from Gardner, Forrest, IDC and so on say, Hey, this is really a good idea because it, comes together. Those pieces come together that always would have to been together anyhow. And of course that's a very good idea. that's beautiful for me because it gives you the feeling that, Hey, I was right one time in my life. So that's a good thing. Other than that, of course, there's so much things going on.

So Pimcore is currently, for example, used by 118, 000 customers or: companies around the globe. So Sander Berlinski: 118, 000, yes, Dietmar Rietsch: 118, 000, throughout various industries. a lot of attention. I have to mention though, that most of those guys still use the free community edition. But, that's just fair because our fifth mission, vision that we had in this brewery was making it fucking open source. Making it free and make it available for anyone. So that was also the idea. So I'm not too picky about the community edition being free because that's also, a way how you change the world in a way to, give back to the community in the sense of open source. So that's Sander Berlinski: part of your DNA, right? Yeah, it is. Dietmar Rietsch: It is. Sander Berlinski: So for the next year, 2025 is almost around the corner. What is the biggest goal?

Dietmar Rietsch I would say, there are a lot of different goals actually, but I would say in terms of the: product, it's for sure Pimco Studio. Pimco Studio will be the new UI for Pimco. It will be released approximately in April 2020. 25 at the PimCore Inspire conference. This is a crazy beast. I tell you, I will show you some screenshots, some screen videos or some live things afterwards. So it's a new invention, I would even say, of making data and experience really powerful and easy to handle by editors. And it's a beautiful, Beast and a beautiful user interface. it looks like an Apple phone. It's oh, it's this little shades and this little, shadows and, oh, it makes me, it just makes me horny if I'm thinking about, sorry for that, I think about Pimco studio, it's like wonderful. So that's one thing Pimco studio, then, Sander Berlinski: did it need that update then? Dietmar Rietsch: Did Sander Berlinski: it need to? Yes,

Dietmar Rietsch it surely: needed that update because it was, Pimco was always, technical and it was always a, a beast that just worked and for heavy users, but of course it also sometimes looked exactly that way. some, People would say, Ooh, is that the interface that our people would work with? And they would, get a little bit shining head and, some sweat because it truly hasn't been a beauty, for a long time, but, this is going to change. Sander Berlinski: All right. I think we have covered a lot of topics today. And before we close it off, a lot of the challenges and a lot of the, solutions for those challenges are around people. So I want to close it off with, if you could give today's retailers and manufacturers one piece of advice to start with from tomorrow, Dietmar Rietsch: passion for the customer, Sander Berlinski: passion for the customer

Dietmar Rietsch: and passion for your team, because that's also needed. And put the customer in the absolute focus. And that's it. If you're doing that, I would say, then you're probably ahead of, 80 percent of the other companies. Sander Berlinski: All right. That sounds like a good idea. Starting with the customer. thanks Dietz. Thanks for all the information. Thank you very much. Wish you all the best for the coming years. Dietmar Rietsch: Thank you very much. It has been a pleasure.