Salsify

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Product information management (PIM) software is necessary for eCommerce businesses to manage their customer-facing product strategy. This is because consumers today prefer researching a product online before making a purchase. Consequently, the need for quality content has become more important for retailers and eCommerce firms. The PIM software today has a big role to play in creating a seamless customer experience online. I as a part of the team present here info on the best PIM software to choose in 2020. Syncrasy Tech a PIM solution provider Here are the two main reasons why PIM software is important for modern retailers: PIM software allows you to have detailed product descriptions on your eCommerce website which is the main differentiator in customer experience. According to studies, 30% of the people in the USA would prefer shopping from online retailers where product information on the website is detailed. Due to the increase in the PIM software allows you to have detailed product descriptions on your eCommerce website which is the main differentiator in customer experience. Image Source: marketsandmarkets According to studies, 30% of the people in the USA would prefer shopping from online retailers where product information on the website is detailed. Due to the increase in the demand for high-quality product information, 33% of eCommerce businesses cited that investing in PIM software is their top priority in 2020. What Are Some More Reasons To Invest in PIM? If you’re investing in a PIM solution, first understand that it is not the same for everyone. The needs of eCommerce businesses differ depending on their industry type, and type of business line. There are reasons that make businesses invest in PIM. Below are the main reasons. PIM is important for having a single view of all your product data like the product category, product weight, color, and dimensions. Businesses also need PIM software for creating one repository for the trusted product content that is accessible across their enterprise and retail distributors. PIM software also reduces the time to market new products that have been launched recently. It eliminates the need for manual processes such as the publishing of content, catalog management, inventory data, and product approval. The PIM helps automate most of the processes needed in product and catalog creation. PIM software allows eCommerce businesses to manage SKUs and products with complete system scalability. PIM software gives the ability to ensure the consistent cross-channel customer experience. Now, I am sure you understand how effective Product Information management PIM software can be for your business. And you must invest in the best PIM software that is right for your business. Best PIM Software To Follow in 2020 1. Pimcore: Open-Source PIM Software for Medium to Large-Scale Enterprises More than 82,000 customers trust Pimcore PIM, as it offers software for product information management, content management, and customer experience management. Pimcore is an open-source DXP platform with inbuilt capabilities for data management and customer experience management. It allows tech-savvy enterprises to connect data, technology, and people to ensure a seamless user experience to its full potential. Features of Pimcore PIM, DAM, CMS: Create the most flexible open-source PIM solutions on a private cloud or on-premise. Build API-driven PIM solutions that allow integration to BI tools, CMS, and ERP. Support XLIFF files for web pages and products that can be exported and imported for automated translation of content. The asset grid mass data editing view enables batch editing of metadata.The new input field type Geopolyline enables you to draw a line and calculates its length. The user can select the points for the line on the map. Workflow management engine to define business processes. Based on an agile data model for flexible data management. Delivers high-quality and clean data that scales. For large scale enterprises that are looking to manage or consolidate their product information, digital assets, master data, and improve customer experience. Who It's Best For? Pimcore is free to use software for startups and enterprises. Cost: 2. Salsify A Cloud-Based PIM Software For Retail Startups & Enterprises Salsify offers PIM that combines all of the elements needed to succeed in the digital world including PIM, DAM, GDSN, digital catalogs, content syndication, digital shelf analytics, high-quality content, chat feature, and third-party marketplaces. It is a cloud-based PIM software that delivers intuitive user experience and makes it simple to create a product, promote it across the market and sales channels. Features of Salsify PIM: Salsify's PIM provides validation capabilities, fast data imports, multiple data domains supported for digital assets, inventory management, and customer data. Allow editing of product attributes, inheritance rules, and entities. Support enterprise-grade architecture and security features with the role-based access control (RBAC), Single Sign-on (SSO) support, robust workflow, multilingual support, and SOC 2 compliance. Salsify software supports drag-and-drop UI that helps map business processes. Creates a central view for your eCommerce data, with validation, versions, and auditing options. Salsify PIM software is ideal for large scale retailers looking to improve their customer experience. Who It’s Best for? Salsify PIM cost depends on the clients’ requirements. Cost: 3. inRiver PIM: A Cloud-Based PIM Software For Small Businesses More than 1000 brands across 19 countries are using inRiver PIM software to control their product flow. InRiver PIM is the best fit for the needs of small to much larger enterprises. The software is known for its flexibility that helps create, update, maintain, and distribute your web content across the globe and helps businesses to achieve increased revenue, customer satisfaction, and successful branding of their products. Features of inRiver PIM Software: inRiver PIM software allows launching your new products and builds better customer experiences with rich & informational product data. Allow you to publish your printed catalogs and high-quality product information to any sales channel. Once published changes can also be made to the content from a single place. The software allows you to access product data from external systems like ERP, PLM, and other third-party systems. It helps manage your media files and allows you to decide the context for presenting your product content. The inRiver software enables you to collaborate with your team to create rich and product content. It allows you to manage, optimize, and schedule your content for specific channel requirements. For small businesses and e-retailers that want to cuts down on in-house labor costs. Who It’s Best For? For inRiver, the cost depends on the subscription model. Cost: 4. Plytix: An Easy to Use PIM Software For Small to Medium-Sized Enterprises Plytix PIM is an all-in-one platform that’s simple to use for small-to-medium-sized businesses. It’s a feature-packed software that optimizes, centralizes, distributes, and analyzes product data for multi-channel e-commerce businesses. It’s easy to manage your product data on Plytix PIM, as it has been a complex process for enterprises. This software product also takes a little time for implementation without blowing your budget. Features of Plytix PIM: Plytix manages all your product data in one place and makes it accessible to everyone. The software manages images, videos, text, files, and graphics of your eCommerce website and links all this data directly to your products. Enables unlimited access to users so they can work on your product data at no extra cost. Uses APIs to integrate with any third-party tools and get your product information workflow in order for all. Filter product information using multiple attributes and conditions to use in your workflow. It’s easy to edit and select product attributes across multiple channels at once. Provides you complete control of defining the product attributes for deciding specifications, prices, and content, etc. Support exported data to be received in CSV, XLSX, and customized PDF product files with your company's branding. Plytix PIM software is best for enterprises of all sizes with larger data management issues on their hands. Who It’s Best for? Plytix offers free plans for businesses with requirements of up to 10,000 products. The fixed paid plans are also available that start at $830 per month. Cost: 5. PIMWorks: A PIM Software Built For Creating Better Customer Experience PIMWorks uses cloud-based PIM software to improve customer experience by using product data. It helps brands and retailers to centralize, syndicate, and enrich product information with ease. The software enables the creation of contextual content to multiple channels in a quick and easy way. It also helps in collaborating with in-built workflows and succeed in multichannel retailing. Features of PIMWorks PIM: PIMWorks PIM unified data across multiple systems into a standardized repository for instant access. Streamlines data and enriches product information for personalized product experience. Syndicate the right category of content for the right channel by considering channel requirements. It gives you a 360-degree view of product data by considering all your product information and digital assets. The software helps coordinate with business partners, team members, vendors, by creating workflows in real-time. It brings all your data from ERP systems, Excel sheets, PLM, and databases to a centralized location. It helps you create rich customer experiences by adding high-quality product data in your PIM platform. PIMWorks PIM software is ideal for small to large-scale retail businesses who wish to succeed in multichannel selling. Who It’s Best For? PIMWorks PIM implementation cost is not provided on the website. You can opt for their free trial service. Cost: Bottom Line The product information management or PIM software is surely a great investment you can make for your retail business. You just need to choose the right solution that suits your business. If you have any questions or need any help, simply contact us . We are serving PIM implementation and web development services to global clients for over 6+ years. We will be happy to give you the help you need for PIM, DAM, CMS implementation on your website. here Syncrasy Tech

5 Best PIM Software To Add To Your Web Stack 

Every Product Manager inevitably comes to a point in their career where they wonder, “how do I take the next step? How to add more value to my organization and grow my career?” Maybe you’ve been a PM for a year or two, maybe you’ve been at it five or six years. Regardless, when you get to this point you’ll realize there is a chasm of missing information. There are 5,000 articles, courses, and blogs dedicated to a Product Manager, but few deal with how to become a Product Manager. becoming great Here are three practical ways you can become better at your job, starting tomorrow. Bring As Much Context As Possible It’s often too easy to get caught up in the “software is hard” mentality and suddenly find yourself months behind on an ill-scoped, ill-discovered, and ill-defined feature. In 2019 do less of this. The more time you spend on keeping the lights on, the less time you can spend on being exceptional. Focus on bringing as much context as possible to the conversations with your team and doing it for each and every project or feature, regardless of how small. Context is absolutely critical to delivering great products while keeping engineers excited motivated. Deliver the best context you can by ensuring your team can answer questions like: Who are they’re building this feature for (is this a power user? Someone who has never seen the product before?) What they’re building and how customers are going to interact with it How what they’re building plugs into the bigger story you’re trying to tell, and what solutions customers are currently using to solve the problem One way to help is to get your engineers involved in discovery. Invite them to customer calls. Have them demo prototype features to customers. By hearing directly from customers and interacting with them, you can help put faces and voices to features and functionality. Doing so helps everyone remember exactly who is going to be using the feature you’re building. Capture this context in clear, clean, and concise documents that the team can reference. Write comprehensive scenarios that the whole team reviews. Make stories user-actionable. Write acceptance criteria with the team as they pick up stories. Ideally all of this is presented in a kickoff meeting and placed prominently for the team to refer to. Being able to consistently deliver good context requires a lot of work. It points to a PM who speaks with customers regularly, has a strong discovery loop, and has put lots of thought into the vision and future of their product. Most importantly, go through the SAME process for everything. A two week feature might need less design and less buy-in than a six month project, but that doesn’t mean the process you follow should be any different. You’ll get yourself in trouble when you choose to skip steps because “this feature is well-known” or “it’s too small for this process”. Not only should you be bringing context for individual projects, but you should also be placing these projects into a broader story that your team buys into. That way, when you move from project A to B your team understands how they tie together. By creating a narrative, you are building a roadmap, justifying that roadmap (both to your team and stakeholders), and aligning resources in your company to achieve the goals you’ve set out. Focus on Deep Work If I could give you one piece of advice in 2019 it’s to focus on maximizing the amount of Deep Work you get done in a week. Cal Newport introduced me to the idea (via his book, Deep Work) and the principles truly resonated with me. Most of your day conspires against you getting things done. Between meetings, Slacks, emails and other interruptions most PMs lack the mental space to focus on big-picture questions and problems. Cal’s suggestion on avoiding this problem and getting your head out of the fray is to focus on structuring your day to maximize the amount of time you can purposefully structure. There are two strategies that have served me well. First, build a plan. Even if it’s a bad plan that you know will get blown up, go through the process of lining up your tasks for the day against the free time you have. Budget your time. Each time your schedule changes, update the plan. Second, tune out the noise. Be thoughtful about which notifications you allow to take away your focus. Cut down on the number of times you check your email. Even think about physically moving yourself to a different part of the office (temporarily, obviously). When you are less available people get really good at solving their own problems. They realize their questions may not be that urgent. Most importantly though, each time you interrupt yourself to answer an email you lose your focus. You get pulled out of whatever you were doing and start working on the interruption. It doesn’t sound like much, but those interruptions add up. Each time you get pulled out of what you were working on, you have to spend energy getting focused again and run the risk of getting distracted by Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, or a conversation with coworker. This doesn’t mean you should be a jerk or a hermit! Your job is to communicate and orchestrate, but that doesn’t mean every waking minute of your workday should be occupied by being a human router. Block off time to focus it on important long-poll things. What is your product vision? Are we on track to deliver on this vision? Are your KPIs right? Are you on track with your OKRs? What are your competitors up to? Has the market changed? What does the roadmap look like? What does next quarter/half/year’s roadmap look like? How are we going to build a specific feature? What are the pitfalls? What are the use cases? “Deep Work” time doesn’t have to be spent alone, but it should be spent purposefully. So, I count time spent collaborating with engineering, UX designers, or talking directly to customers as Deep Work. It’s time blocked off dedicated to a specific task where there is little to no interruption. You’d be surprised how much you can get done! Be a Leader (Not Just a Product Leader) Instead of only focusing on your area, learn to manage upward and outward (beyond just your organization). Though you may be a often front-line contributors, excellent PMs are looked to as leaders within an organization. Their voice is grounded in the customer context they bring to conversations, along with the deep understanding they have of the business, the priorities, and the market. This might sound intimidating, but you can take small actionable steps tomorrow: If you don’t already have strong relationships with the leaders in your company, go build them. Grab coffee with your VP of Sales, your CTO, your COO, or any of the cofounders. Get their perspective on the business, their careers, and the company trajectory. Find out what they’re passionate about, what they think the company is doing well, doing poorly, and where the biggest opportunities lie. Find out if there are projects or ideas they’re interested in exploring. These conversations are often incredibly fruitful and lead to insights and ideas you wouldn’t have had without their external perspective. Beyond the senior management of your company, think about departments where you can strengthen relationships. Have you talked with a sales manager lately? Or a sales rep? What about someone from your Success / Support organization? How about an account manager? What about Marketing? At Salsify we use Donut to help connect people from different parts of the organization, but I’ve also found it tremendously helpful to target specific people across the organization and build connections. Not only is it fun to make new friends, but it’s a great resource when you’re planning, launching, or prototyping a new feature. There are set of go-to people I have across the organization for feedback / validation on ideas we have. I lean on other people to get good customer interviews. And I rely on others for good, honest feedback about our product and how it’s performing. Don’t be intimidated — these people are eager to hear from the product team and will happily talk your ear off. Most of these teams are very curious about what the PM team is up to, whats on the roadmap, and how you see the product evolving in the future. These connections serve as a great way to get feedback on your ideas, sharpen your product vision, and expand your knowledge of how your company operates. It’s not just your manager’s job to communicate beyond the PM organization. Cultivating relationships at all level of other organizations helps position you as a leader, build awareness of you within the organization, and get better feedback to ultimately build amazing products. Conclusion Hopefully the three ideas outlined in this article are a helpful way to start bridging the gap between becoming a PM and becoming a great PM. They are small, actionable steps that you can start implementing next week and they’re aimed at exposing you to new ideas, helping you continue executing on a very high level, and finding the time to step away from the day-to-day in order to focus on things that might not help you today, but will reap rewards tomorrow. Let me know how it goes and good luck!

3 Practical Ways to Become a Better Product Manager in 2019

11 CRO Hacks That Will Boost Your eCommerce Sales

Lights! Camera! And Action! That’s what John McCarthy (a computer scientist) thought when he introduced the concept of cloud computing. He said, “ in 1961. Computation may someday be established as a public service” The web-based technology needed to support SaaS, however, wasn't widely available until the late 1990s. At that point, businesses like SalesForce began providing everyday business products like CRM as SaaS. Do you remember when you used to go to visit your local hardware shop just to purchase a new software CD? Having to purchase a physical copy was a headache. Issues like security problems, expensiveness, or non-scalable software were recurring. As Plato once said, Salesforce took it seriously. They launched their first “time-sharing system” aka the first SaaS solution for their CRM platform in 1999. , “necessity is the mother of all invention” In simple words, SaaS or software as a service is like a one-stop solution for businesses where rather than installing software, you can access data via the Internet. company has been in the spotlight for a long time now. Companies are integrating SaaS features into their workflow system to automate and skyrocket their results. Software as a service This liberates people from complex software and hardware management issues. Enough about SaaS history! Let’s see why this industry is expected to reach USD 720.44 Billion by 2028 as per . Globenewswire So fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a SasSy ride! What is a SaaS Software? “I am gonna make him an offer, he can’t refuse” As a B2B founder, you often think about this, right? SaaS startup Yes, It’s a quote from the Godfather movie. SaaS is a platform used to sell, distribute and manage cloud-based software services. It enables users to access information or resources from anywhere through a simple internet connection. SaaS software removes the need for organizations to install or maintain applications on their own. Customers can easily pay or negotiate through a simple subscription model. The smooth integration of third-party applications and add-ons spares vendors from unnecessary costs. This novel system works both ways and is less expensive in terms of infrastructure, logistics, and manpower. It’s no surprise that SaaS startup Darwinbox became the fourth unicorn of 2022 and is ruling the industry. new unicorns Talking about the features, SaaS business solutions handle all your updates which leads to negligible disruption in the business operations and processes. Some examples of Saas tools are email, calendering, Dropbox, Salesforce, Cisco WebEx, and SAP Concur. These platforms have redirected customers from traditional brick-and-mortar businesses to the modern technology market. Now people can use SaaS tools, easily purchase applications and then lodge them on a device through this model. : Fun fact The phrase "ATM" is redundant. As "machine" is represented by the "M," you are repeating the word twice. In the same way, "SaaS software" truly refers to "software as a service software”. Now that we understand the essence of SaaS. Let’s talk about the benefits of SaaS software. 5 Benefits of Using SaaS Software for Companies Here’s the thing: “ .” Here’s my unique functionality, I want to press a button and I want to make money That line got you hooked? Right? What we are going to discuss now is practical for every SaaS company building a SaaS product. So listen up! In the , Jakob Greenfield and Travis Fischer (founder- of Sassify) discuss why there is no Shopify for SaaS. business brainstorm podcast You can listen to the full podcast . here According to (IDC), public cloud spending is estimated to grow from $229bn in 2019 to around $500bn in 2023. International Data Corporation Well, these stats clearly show why Saas is going to rule the future. Here’s what the CEO of Visma, Oyestin Moan has to say in a discussion on “ ”. The future of SaaS https://twitter.com/i/status/1496818305499344899 It’s time to analyze the benefits of using SaaS  software for companies: Easy to use SaaS business solutions can work in favour of you, all you need is an internet browser and connection. Since the software is hosted externally by a vendor, you can update and debug your software without any challenge. It removes the workload and responsibility from your shoulders. Consider this situation for B2B businesses.  If an online shop needs to store a huge amount of data, uploading directly to google drive isn’t feasible. SaaS applications can help you in these situations. They are designed to integrate and collaborate with many users. New services and solutions can be added without the need for software, making it easy to share information across teams anytime, from any device. For example, is a project and issue tracker. The platform is useful because it allows you to organize tasks, plan sprints, and assign different tasks to software teams. It monitors workflows and can implement and survey large-scale projects. Jira Product-led Storytelling Peter Thiel (co-founder of Paypal) once said, “ ” in his book Zero to One. Customers won’t CARE about any particular technology unless it solves a particular problem in a superior way Yes, care is the right word here. Today, people need to care about your product hence, old-school ways are not working anymore. Armed with this, if you want to share your new SaaS business solutions in the market, Product-led storytelling is the way to go. Here’s what you need to know about the Product-led storytelling approach. First: you can have an incredible SaaS product but to market that “incredible” product, you do need a compelling story that puts the company in motion. Second: It’s a way to help your customers remember what problem your product solves and how it can better their lives. In short, each product-led story should be aimed at showing how one of your ideal customers will overcome one problem. Third:  When you have done the grunt work of showing rather than telling how your product is the best, it’s time to blend content strategy and story-product narrative. It’s time to get your audience to take action when they read any piece of your SaaS content. All it takes is the right SaaS storytelling framework and a product story narrative. Take it from the master of “ Victor Eduoh ( a product-led  SaaS content strategist) who appeared on Hubspot and Growth mentor. “ Product storytelling “It is a product-focused form of SaaS copywriting. It involves the art of crafting your copy with helpful stories, showing how your target audiences can overcome obstacles using your product.” Scalability and Integration SaaS helps in strategies like collaboration, e-commerce, and billing software. For example, If you install sufficient billing software, it has extra capacity and can handle all your data spikes plus billing resources. The benefits of SaaS are that it's simple, fast, and scalable. Look, you pay for the services you purchased. Everything else is handled by your Saas product whether it’s anticipated or unexpected. For example, companies like Badger Mapping integrate with Excel to import locations. presents the user to upload information immediately after signing up, this is the power of SaaS integration. On that note, it also improves the overall customer onboarding experience. Minimal Commitment We all know running a business means having a lot on your plate. Nobody wants to keep an eye on every process in a business. SaaS is flexible and has pay-as-you-go models that allow flexible payments. It reduces the burden on companies. You don’t need to worry about any investment in IT infrastructure or day-to-day maintenance.  The SaaS provider takes care of all of this for you as part of their all-inclusive service.  This approach is cost-effective and makes your expenses predictable. As per , SaaS providers do need to address service quality loopholes and find out which factors are crucial for continued SaaS usage. research When it comes to minimal commitment, most offer different plans that include varied pricing options. Now, this helps your customers to choose what's best for them and minimizes your team's work. SaaS companies Better Collaboration Collaboration in today's age is important for every business. SaaS applications are everywhere. From healthcare to the cloud-based industry, it's important to connect your teams and bring them on the same page. SaaS supports your team to manage all the tasks, share projects and also exchange ideas in real-time. This is crucial if you’re working remotely (which now everybody does). Even are planning to improve their collaboration strategies. 73% of businesses Tools like Mockplus idoc help designers, and developers work together. It’s easier to connect your entire product design workflow which saves your team's time so that they can focus on making better . SaaS products Real-time collaboration can also save you from bummers. If your team member in one location makes a change in any file, document, or presentation, this information is immediately available to the others on the team in other locations through the cloud delivery system. Conclusion To conclude, SaaS software is like renting an Airbnb, where you don’t have to pay for refurnishing or food, you pay as per stay (sometimes for extended stays). On top of this, you don’t have to worry about any cost associated with the house maintenance or even marketing it. The cloud-based model takes care of everything, eliminating the need for an onsite maintenance team. Sid Nag, vice president at Gartner claimed, “ ,”. Cloud is the powerhouse that drives today’s digital organizations The unique nature of SaaS allows potential buyers to look through the lens of brands and focus on the .  The very reason why end-user spending is about to reach $500 Billion in 2022 as per . advantages of  SaaS products Gartner The goal of this article was to help new SaaS founders choose the best solutions for their business and use software and data access over a web application. It’s high time to utilize the beauty of SaaS and employ this ready-to-use software over the Internet. Also, incorporate it into your business strategies and enjoy the results.

What is a SaaS Software? What are the Benefits of Using One?

I want to talk a little about how you can use content-based addressing (aka data fingerprinting) as a general approach to make your applications faster and more secure with some practical JavaScript examples. I find the concept of content-based addressing to be dope af. It’s an extremely powerful tool for building services that are fundamentally more performant, scalable and secure. 💪 It’s related to immutability, decentralization, data integrity, and more buzzwords… But it’s also so useful and under-appreciated in general that I wanted to write a practical intro to show how it works alongside some real-world JavaScript. What the hell are you talking about? You can think of content-based addressing as . fingerprinting for data Just like how fingerprints allow you to: Identify a person based on their fingerprint Refer to a fingerprint as a unique ID for the person Tell if two people are the same person based on their fingerprints Quickly test to see if a person is in a database using just their fingerprint Just replace “person” with “data” in the above descriptions and you have a rough overview of what content-based addressing enables. Put another way, content-based addressing allows you to uniquely and efficiently reference data based on it’s actual content as opposed to something external like an ID or a URL. Database-generated IDs, random GUIDs, and URLs are all useful in their own right, but they’re not quite as powerful as data fingerprinting. Shut up and show me some code Let’s see how this looks with some real-world code that I’ve used for reals: pick = ( ) stableStringify = ( ) data = pick(myData, [ , ]) fingerprint = hash(stableStringify(data)) const require 'lodash.pick' const require 'fast-json-stable-stringify' const 'keyFoo' 'keyBar' const This tiny snippet is hiding so much power… This snippet leaves out the hash function (more on that below), but it does represent the core algorithm pretty clearly. It creates a content-based hash of any JavaScript object that is a unique representation of that object based on the keys we care about . fingerprint myData [ 'keyFoo', 'keyBar' ] In short, this fingerprint offers you a very efficient way of telling when two JavaScript objects are the same. If two content-based IDs are the same, the data in those objects is the same. No need for a deep comparison. No need for Redux. Just pure immutable goodness. So how does this actually work? We’ll break this process into three distinct steps: 1) Input data 2) data cleaning 3) simplification. Let’s take another look at our JavaScript code: pick = ( ) stableStringify = ( ) data = pick(myData, [ , ]) fingerprint = hash(stableStringify(data)) const require 'lodash.pick' const require 'fast-json-stable-stringify' const 'keyFoo' 'keyBar' const , we take as any JavaScript object myData. This could be a model from your database or some object containing Redux-like app state, for instance. First input , we our data to ensure that we’re only considering parts of the data we actually care about via . This step is optional but usually you'll want to clean your data like this before proceeding. I've found in practice that most of the time there will be parts of your data that aren't actually representative of the uniqueness of your model (we'll refer to this extra stuff as metadata 😉). Second clean lodash.pick As an example, let’s say I want to create unique IDs for all of the rows in a SQL table. Most SQL implementations will add metadata to your table like the date an entry was created or modified, and it’s unlikely we’d want this metadata to affect our notion of uniqueness. In other words, if two rows were inserted into the table at different times but have the exact same values according to our application’s business logic, then we want to treat them as having the same fingerprint so we filter out this extra metadata. , we our cleaned data into a stable, efficient representation that we can store and use for quick comparisons. Most of the time this step involves some sort of to normalize the way we refer to our content in a unique, concise manner. Third simplify cryptographic hash In the code above, we want to make sure that our hashing is , which is made easy for us by the package. stable fast-json-stable-stringify This awesome package recursively makes sure that no matter how our JavaScript object was constructed or what order its keys may be in, it will always output the same string representation for any two objects that have deep equality. There are some details this explanation is glossing over, but that’s the beauty of the — we don’t have to understand all the bits & pieces to take advantage of their abstractions. NPM ecosystem Let’s hash things out Up until now, we’ve glossed over the hashing aspect of things, so let’s see what this looks like in code: hasha = ( ) hash = hasha(input, { : }) const require 'hasha' const ( ) => input algorithm 'sha256' Note that there are lots of different ways you could define your hash function. This example uses a very common hash function and outputs a 64-character hex encoding of the results. SHA256 Here is an example output fingerprint: 2d3ea73f0faacebbb4a437ff758c84c8ef7fd6cce45c07bee1ff59deae3f67f5 Here is an alternative hash implementation that uses the Node.js crypto package directly: crypto = ( ) hash = { buffer = Buffer.isBuffer(d) ? d : Buffer.from(d.toString()) crypto.createHash( ).update(buffer).digest( )
} const require 'crypto' const ( ) => d const return 'sha256' 'hex' Both of these hash implementations are equivalent for our purposes. The most important thing to keep in mind here is that we want to use a cryptographic hash function to output a compact, unique fingerprint that changes if our input data changes and remains the same if our input data remains the same. So where should I go from here? Once you start thinking about how data can be uniquely defined by its content, the applications are really endless. Here are a few use cases where I’ve personally found this approach useful: Generating unique identifiers for immutable deployments of serverless functions at . I know uses a very similar approach to optimize their lambda deployments and package dependencies. Saasify ZEIT Generating unique identifiers for videos based on the database schema we used to generate them at . If two videos have the same fingerprint, they should have the same content. One note here is that it’s often useful to add a version number to your data before hashing since changes in our video renderer resulted in changes to the output videos. Automagical Caching Stripe plans and coupons that have the same parameters across different projects and accounts. Caching client-side messages and HTTP metadata in a React webapp. We’ve really only started to scratch the surface of what you can do with content-based addressing. Hopefully, I’ve shown how simple this mindset shift can be done in JavaScript and touched on a bit on the benefits this approach brings to the table. If you enjoy this stuff, I would recommend checking out: — An awesome intro to the topic with a focus on content identifiers (CIDs) as they’re used in . The power of content-based addressing IPFS — Self-describing hashes. 💪 Multihashes — A recursive data structure built on top of content-based hashes. Merkle trees — An efficient string searching algorithm that uses content-based hashing. Rabin fingerprinting — InterPlanetary File System. IPFS — Modular building blocks for decentralized applications. libp2p —  An easier way for devs to earn passive income... Oh wait, that's my company and it's not really related to content-based addressing but cut me some slack haha Saasify Thanks! 🙏 Previously published at https://blog.saasify.sh/content-based-addressing/

Data Fingerprinting in JavaScript

A breakdown of the best free resources I've found for developers bootstrapping their own indie SaaS businesses in 2020. 🔥 I'm a software engineer through and through. I'm also trying to do the whole indie entrepreneur thing. Over the past year I've started to really appreciate just how important marketing is to building a real business. After spending a lot of time leveling up on the marketing & strategy side of things, I wanted to share some of the best resources I've found for developers like myself who are also learning to bootstrap, market, and sell their own indie SaaS products. Epic Guide to Bootstrapping SaaS Startups Epic Guide to Bootstrapping SaaS Startups 🔗 Simply put this is the so far. It's down to earth, practical, the author doesn't take things too seriously, and most importantly it's filled with very actionable strategy and tactics for sass founders. best overall resource I have found Marketing is anything that gets people to know that you exist and that gets them excited about what you have to offer. - Clifford Oravec Broken into five parts: Setting expectations & validating ideas The No-BS Approach to Building Your SaaS Startup’s Launch List Make It Rain: Building an MVP for Fun and Profit Ewww — Your Startup Funnel Is Leaking All Over Me! Real-World Startup Sales and Marketing for the Lost and the Clueless Justin Jackson 🔥 How to get more customers 🔗 Justin's writing and insights are extremely actionable. I'd also recommend checking out his additional content at and how blog posts on . Marketing for Developers how to build something people want A developer who knows how to code and market a product is basically unstoppable. I want to help my developer friends to be unstoppable: to build, market, and sell their own software. - Justin Jackson Bootstrapping Reality 🔗 So so soooooo sooooooooo much 🔥in here – Justin Jackson's content is way better than mine. Seriously. Please stop reading this and check out his . stuff Encharge Marketing SaaS Marketing: The Complete Guide 🔗 These guys know the shit out of marketing. Like for reals. Some of the best and most well organized content out there. I also ended up having a free consultation call with one of their founders to discuss marketing for my use case without it being sales call-y. Awesome sauce. How to Validate SaaS Ideas Pre-launch Marketing for SaaS How to grow your email list via engagement posts The essential guide to marketing automation for SaaS How to generate traffic with $0 marketing budget From idea to exit: how I launched, marketed, and sold my first SaaS Micro SaaS E-Book "All the stuff I did wrong building a six figure Micro-SaaS business and how to do it better yourself. Anecdotes, pseudo-philosophy and self-deprecation." - Tyler Tringas This free is all about bootstrapping a profitable SaaS business. I really enjoyed the authors writing and found his concept of Micro-Saas businesses very analogous to what we're building at . e-book Saasify What is Micro-SaaS and Why Should You Read This? What Makes a Good Micro-SaaS Idea? Finding Micro-SaaS Ideas From Idea to Building a Minimum Viable Product Getting Your First Customers Thriving in the Long, Slow, SaaS Grind Retention & Customer Support as a Solo Founder It's also worth checking out the author's relatively new seed fund, . Earnest Capital 19 SaaS Marketing Strategies There are lots of great posts from successful SaaS founders on , but this of how bootstrapped itself to $40m ARR is definitely worth your time. SaaS Hacker extremely focused summary 🔗 Ahrefs Marketing Examples Marketing Examples 🔗 Awesome. Focused. Free. Growth Design Growth Design 🔗 Great set of case studies from larger companies around growth & UX. Their comic book format was really approachable, but maybe that's just cause I'm an anime / manga fan... 😂 Conclusion It's really amazing to me the quality & quantity of free resources out there these days to help SaaS bootstrappers like myself level up our game. Whether it's general product strategy, marketing strategy, specific tactics, examples to learn from, or just other like-minded founders venting about their experiences, 2020 is a really great time to be bootstrapping your own indie SaaS business. If you're as interested in this stuff as I am, give a quick look-see at (the author is the founder of Saasify). Saasify We're making it as easy as possible for indie developers to earn passive income from SaaS APIs. And lastly, what resources have you found the most useful for leveling up in the wide world of indie SaaS businesses? – thanks! 🙏 Hit me up & lemme know

Best Free Resources for Devs Bootstrapping Indie SaaS Startups in 2020

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