Akeneo has unveiled new artificial intelligence-driven enhancements to its Product Cloud platform, targeted at companies seeking to manage product data more efficiently and improve customer experiences across sales channels.
Centralised AI control
The updated platform now features a centralised configuration hub for AI management. This hub has been designed to provide transparency and governance for product data as it moves through modelling, organisation, transformation, enrichment and migration stages. The system aims to ensure data accuracy and reliability at every point in the process, while helping teams coordinate more effectively.
Expanded data automation
Among the latest updates is an expanded Data Architect Agent (DAA). The DAA now facilitates onboarding, modelling, migration and collaboration around product information, in addition to its original role generating draft data models. This broadening of scope is intended to help businesses create scalable and future-proof structures for their product data at a faster pace and with greater precision.
AI-powered catalogue management
The platform's new auto-mapping function automates the alignment of product catalogues to different sales channels and retail marketplaces. This reduces the reliance on manual effort and is expected to speed up the process by which products are introduced into the market. In a further step, the latest version extends AI-assisted extraction from media assets to include not only images but media links as well, so product information can be generated from a wider variety of digital resources.
Integrating asset management
Akeneo's addition of AI Asset Tagging marks a move to combine product information management (PIM) and digital asset management (DAM) within a single platform. This integrated approach supports the organisation, editing and delivery of asset content alongside structured product data. Business users can use this solution to classify and distribute images, documents and videos to sales channels without needing to alternate between multiple systems. The company's new model also enables integration with third-party DAM providers.
SAP system integration
The Autumn release includes improvements for users who rely on SAP. Enterprises are now able to validate, localise and enrich ERP data taken from SAP's S/4HANA platform for use in customer-facing channels. The integration keeps governance mechanisms in place and helps reduce the need for customisation within core ERP systems, which the company says will lower costs and improve speed to market.
AI framework protocol
Another feature introduced is the Akeneo Model Context Protocol (MCP), which creates a standardised way to connect AI models directly to product data managed by the platform. MCP is intended to support further experimentation by businesses as they develop new discovery and conversational tools using AI technology.
"The Autumn release marks a pivotal moment in the evolution of our Product Cloud that focuses on the connectivity layer," said Andy Tyra, Chief Product Officer, Akeneo.
"By extending the power of AI to connect people, processes and technology, we are equipping our customers with the AI-powered tools needed to transform product data into intelligent, dynamic assets that focus on fuelling efficiency and collaboration to improve product information management for our customers and end-user product experiences for theirs," said Tyra.
