What is Product Information Management (PIM)?
Product Information Management (PIM), lets companies store, organize, and improve data about their products from a single place.
Companies can use this centralized method to ensure all their marketing and sales channels have correct and well-organized product information.
Some examples of product information data are:
- Product descriptions
- Pricing information
- Availability details
- Color and size variations
- Product images
- Delivery methods/options
- Product tiers or micros
PIM systems are made to help companies manage all of their products more efficiently, which helps them get new goods to market more quickly.
Without one, businesses may have to wait a long time to release new products, which means they miss out on sales opportunities.
More importantly, they have trouble giving their customers the engaging product experiences they want.
Giving customers correct and up-to-date information is one way a PIM system helps businesses make more money and improve sales.
Synonyms
- PIM: The abbreviated term for “product information management.”
- Product Data Management: The complete process of organizing, storing, and managing product-related data.
- Product experience management manages customer interactions and perceptions about a company’s products.
- Product Content Management: The practice of organizing and maintaining product-related content.
- PIM Software: Software designed to store and manage product information.
- Product Information Management Solutions: A suite of services that use technology to store and manage product information that’s been hard to manage. Product Information
The 2020 IDC PIM for Commerce MarketScape shows that B2B and B2C customers want more exciting and organized experiences in a digital world.
For omnichannel product promotion, retailers, makers, and brands must provide accurate information about their goods.
Despite this, there are some problems.
Problems with the Quality of the Data
Data quality problems are some of the most important ones for businesses. Due to insufficient data, businesses lose between $10 million and $14 million in possible sales yearly. Marketing data is a big part of this number.
Compact can’t track customer behaviors and preferences correctly without the correct data. This means you can’t develop the right marketing messages, targeting strategies, or changes to the sales process that get more people to buy.
This also means they can’t give potential buyers the correct information about the product.
Silos of data
If a company doesn’t manage its digital assets the same way across all its platforms, its data quality is all over the place.
A company can lose money because of data walls in two ways:
- Maintaining product information is slow and challenging because it is not centralized.
- The current product data is broken up, making it hard to find patterns, trends, or correlations in the customer data that can help make strategic choices.
Inconsistent data or not having access to data can cause teams to make mistakes and get confused, which can lower the quality of the customer experience.
Companies often have data silos when they use a lot of different software, like websites, social media tools, and email autodon’tn tools, but don’t have a single system or database to link them all.
Keeping up with what the market wants
Keeping up with what the market wants is essential in many ways.
- The development of a product should be based on what customers want. • A product’s marketing and sales messages should clearly and briefly explain its value.
- The omnichannel must always be in sync with the customers’ systems.
- In terms of PIM, this means that accurate goods need to be on the proper channels in the right way. This can be done if you don’t have access to data to help you decide where to put things.
Taking care of many platforms and channels
The typical business uses eight different marketing platforms, each with its own set of rules.
On company websites, social media profiles, and other outlets, product information needs to be organized and communicated differently.
This makes it possible for multiple touchpoints but also makes it hard to give users a uniform experience.
Inconsistent systems and processes
The way product data is gathered and put together within the company must be uniform.
Prices, pictures, descriptions, and other details about a product can be wrong when the marketing, sales, and product teams do not agree. This can make the customer’s experience terrible.
For example, information that isn’t consistent can confuse potential buyers and make them less likely to buy.
And if there is a gap between sales and marketing, marketing messages might not connect with the ideal customers that sales reps are trying to reach.
Problems with managing digital assets
Digital assets are the visual parts of a product that give it its look. They have pictures, movies, logos, and graphics.
Many digital assets need to be managed because of how many channels they need to be used to promote goods.
It can be easier if you use the same images on multiple platforms, but you still have to ensure they are correctly optimized to look and work their best.
Making sure that all channels have accurate and up-to-date products
Ensuring the information is correct is one of the most complex parts of handling product information, especially for companies in charge of more than one type of product.
Customers can get confused and buy less when product details are wrong ocompany’sdate.
This isn’t hard to do on a company’s platforms—updating the website, telling customer service, and telling warehouse staff to change their stock is pretty simple.
However, many e-commerce brands and software companies profit from third-party sites like G2 Crowd and other review sites.
There is a different way to manage product ads on these sites. Prices on third-party siorganization’sch an organization’s don’ts; if they don’t, the organization should contact the third-party site owner.
Advantages of a Good Product Information Management System
PIM makes it easy to share accurate and high-quality product information across all marketing and sales platforms by streamlining the complex needs of product content.
- More work got done. PIM reduces the time needed to enter and organize data manually, giving workers more time to work on critical tasks.
- Correct information about the goods. Customers always get the right information when they buy something when the product information is consistent and correct.
- A better experience for the customer. Because product information is spread across many channels, customers can look at, compare, and buy any product they need on the channels they are most comfortable with.
- Strategies for involvement that work. When sales and marketing are better targeted to get more of the right people, buyer engagement and conversion rates increase.
- Better ROI. Companies can reach more people and make money with accurate and up-to-date product information on many sites.
- Success in the long run. A company’s products last and do well; product lifecycle management relies on a PIM system being set up correctly.
When you combine a sound PIM system with an easy-to-reach source of product data, you can speed up workflows, find and fix quality problems, take advantage of new market possibilities, and give customers a great experience.
Setting up a solution for managing product information
Companies must encourage teams to work together, gather data from various sources, and set up a central product information hub for product information management software to work well.
How to Set Goals and Objectives for Your PIM System
Setting goals and targets is the first thing that needs to be done to set up a PIM system.
Goals should be measurable and manageable to keep track of. They should also include small things the group can do daily to reach those goals.
For example:
- Post new product content twice weekly on social media to get more people to interact with your posts.
- Get more satisfied customers by giving them correct information about your products on your website and other websites.
- Improve your rankings in organic search results by adding keywords to product details.
- Get people more interested in your marketing content by getting customer feedback on product pages, buying habits, and sales data.
- By writing down your goals and objectives, you can see how well your PIM implementation projects are going and make changes as needed.
Looking at possible solutions and vendors
A PIM solution is beneficial for managing and collecting data, adding to product content, and sending it to various platforms for marketing, sales, and online shoppinit’sowever, only if it’s the best answer.
Here are some essential things to think about when evaluating and choosing a vendor:
- The type of business and its size. The Product Information Management (PIM) software you choose should fit the needs of your business, such as company vs. mid-market, B2B vs. B2C, and SaaS vs. e-commerce.
- Perks and features. Consider how your referent Product Information Management (PIM) options will affect your KPIs, productivity, and efficiency. Think about what features you need based on your goals and then put those in order of importance when making your buying choice.
- They are putting systems together. Ensure that the Product Information Management (PIM) provider can work with your existing systems, like ERP software and WMS systems.
- Platform for technology. Choose a platform that is in the cloud and can be expanded so that you can add or remove features as needed.
- Features for managing data. You can be sure that the information your customers get is correct if you choose a system that keeps track of product data and ensures it’s always up-to-date.
- Support and delivery of value. Look for vendors whose implementation processes are easy to understand and whose customer service and technical help you can rely on in case you have any problems during the integration or implementation stages.
Planning a PIM strategy for your business
Follow these steps to make a PIM strategy:
- Make a plan for how to carry out the plan. Create a plan and schedule for implementation to ensure the PIM system meets your needs and goals on time. Please make a list of activities, tasks, and their dependencies, and give each person a part to play to make sure everything stays on track.
- Connect to your tech stack. Your marketing and sales tools must work with the systems that store and organize your data. Talk to your suppliers to ensure that all your systems work well together and are ready to go when you launch the PIM platform.
- Clean up and improve the information. Make sure the product information is correct before you use PIM software. Using taxonomies, metadata, and a unique identifier, set rules for how to enter and handle data.
- Make sure the material is good. Once the data has been cleaned up and improved, ensure the content organization meets your branding and communication standards.
- Test and release. Before a PIM platform goes live, ensure it meets your needs by testing its features and functions in a development area.
- Get comments and figure out how well you did. As you use your product information management system, get comments from people in all departments in charge of managing product data. KPIs like time-to-market, data accuracy, customer satisfaction numbers, and other metrics important to your business should be measured regularly.
- Make systems better and spend money on training. Make sure that everyone on the team knows how to use the PIM system correctly so that the sales team is ready and the marketing messages are correct. Write down the steps you need to take to ensure that best practices are followed when entering and managing product information.
Tools for managing product information
Product information sheets (PDS) are one part of a PIM system. These files contain information about a product’s parts, like price, availability, specs, pictures, videos, and customer reviews.
- It is adding to the data. Adding new sources of information or fixing up old ones ensures that all product information is correct and up-to-date.
- You are managing the content. This tool lets you keep your product content consistent, organized, and simple for customers and internal teams to find.
- Library of assets. Keep the correct pictures and videos of your products in an asset library that the sales, marketing, and customer service teams can use. This way, you can ensure you use the right ones when you market your goods.
- Sharing of product data. This tool lets Users share information about their products with this tool on omnichannel channels like markets, websites, and mobile apps.
