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By: Manish Shewaramani

PIM System – How Companies Achieving Values?

A PIM (Product Information Management) System is a platform that collects data from various channels and stores it in a centralized database for easy access and easy distribution to multiple channels.

In addition, the PIM system allows users to add or edit stored product data and makes it more efficient. Having a good PIM system will provide a better product experience; also marketers could find it easy to conduct an effective marketing campaign.

More importantly, a good PIM system eliminates the time delay of a new product to reach the market. By doing so, PIM plays a key role in boosting the ROI of an organization or company along with increasing user/customer experience.

This article illustrates how a company gains value through a good PIM system.

Benefits of Using PIM System

Product information management (PIM) is essential for an organization for improving its data integration process and management systems. A robust PIM system helps in the efficient collection and compilation of product-related details that are required for improved marketing strategy.

This leads to enriching the product details that help to retain the regular customers while attracting new ones, leading to enhancing sales and business.

There are various added advantages for the organization as well as for all the members involved in the product supply chain. The different benefits gained by using a robust PIM system involve:

Enhanced product data management

With the growth and development in the business, the number of products keeps increasing. For the product-based company, it is important to keep their product-related details always updated.

If product data is not handled properly it might lead to difficulty in tracking the product information that might lead to disorganization and may adversely affect the business.

A robust and reliable PIM system allows in organizing and managing all the product-related data. This updated information is easier to share across the different channels leading to growth in business.

Better Customer Experience

Public while shopping online prefers to check the product specification and other product-related details. The customer feedback related to the products helps in providing more detailed product information. This also leads to a decrease in the chances of shopping cart abandonment.

A robust PIM system makes the newer product easily available to the customers. PIM system helps the distribution and marketing team thus not allowing the product to go out of stock.

Enhance Time Efficiency

PIM system helps in saving a lot of time as due to its centralized mechanism it reduces the manual load of data entry. This makes updating the inventory easy.

PIM Allows Cleaning & Streamlining The Data

It allows removal of the obsolete and old data thus reducing the confusion. Using PIM helps save a lot of time that can be utilized in other profitable tasks.

Cost-Saving

PIM is very useful software for all the different departments involved in the product-related business. It allows in keeping the accurate product details thus reducing the management risk while preventing the cost due to bad product data.

It reduces the cost involved in operational and supply chain management. The data from PIM helps the supplier to perform the audit and improvise their delivery methods.

Ease Integration

Using the PIM system makes the integration process much easier when compared to the ERP. This provides flexibility in managing all the data processes. IT reduces the cost involved in the management and marketing of the new products.

Provide Transparency

PIM system helps to disclose the majority of the product-related data to their users. Providing the true details for the products helps the customer to gain confidence in the product and the company thus enhancing the business.

Accurate product details help the customers make the right selection decision. This reduces the chances of product return and customer complaints.

Using the robust PIM system helps the organization in many different ways thus leading to enhanced business. Thus any product-based company should have a good PIM system to manage all their product data efficiently.

Type of Companies Benefits a Lot Using a PIM system

Customers are the key players in the product-oriented business as the growth of the business depends on them. Providing accurate and true product information to the customers helps them to build confidence in the product and the trust in the company thus leading to enhancing the business.

Accurate product information helps in retaining new customers while attracting newer ones. The product information management (PIM) system helps the organization keep its product-related information updated and managed efficiently.

Companies That Need To Use The PIM System

There are different types of businesses and each type requires some software and systems that help them in managing various tasks efficiently. For most product-based companies, it is essential to use the PIM system as it benefits the business in different ways.

The different cases or situations when the companies should use this PIM system for enhancing their business include:

Complex product with variants

When a company has a product that has different variants, then adding these details manually will take a lot of time and money. This manual work can lead to errors. In such conditions, PIM allows the data inheritance functionality to fill the common data and the variant data needs to be added manually thus reducing time and effort.

The product has different types of information

In certain cases, the products have a large amount of information based on their description, specification, use of metadata, etc. Handling these product details manually becomes tedious. Using the PIM system for these products proves to be beneficial.

Selling products in various markets

For enhancing the business, many companies target markets all over the world. They make their product available on multiple channels. Different countries need the product data in their specific format and specific language.

Providing this data manually can become tiresome. Using the PIM system will help in managing the different language layers thus easing the complexity caused by the language layer.

Increasing business activities

For increasing the business, the company needs to increase the marketing activities to new markets, add several websites, provide price lists, catalogs, etc. All these activities need several actions for optimized functioning. Using the PIM system will ease the work and will allow enhancing the business activities.

Publishing product information on various channels

Improving the eCommerce for the product will help in strengthening the business. For this, the company can publish the product details on various sales and marketing channels that will attract a larger crowd. This includes providing digital catalogs, pricelists, datasheets, etc.

Supplier data enrichment

Working with the product data received from the suppliers involves handling the data in different formats and with inconsistent quality. Handling this work becomes easier when using a PIM system. This system will allow the company to handle this varied data from the supplier more efficiently.

Overall development of the business

Using the PIM system helps the company by benefitting the different departments within the company. Using the robust PIM system benefits the eCommerce team, management team, marketing and sales team, information technology department, etc.

Overall development and growth of these individual departments will lead to improved efficiency thus leading to growth in the business.

Using the PIM system helps in managing all the product-related data over the different marketing channels. This PIM software helps all product-based companies have their business depending solely on the development of their products.

How To Choose the Right PIM System for Your Organization?

Choosing the right PIM system for your company can be a daunting task if you are not familiar with how to choose them. Here in this section, we have briefed what you have to look for when choosing the right PIM software.

1. Choosing PIM Solution Based on Users Who Handles

When it comes to choosing the right PIM software, the first and best thing one should focus on is who is going to use the tool and what features they would seek in the tool? Let’s discuss this in brief.

  • Total Number of Users: The number of users who are going to handle the PIM system could be a crucial factor in deciding a PIM system. Because some PIM tool charges are based on the user count.
  • Role-Based Access for User: Choosing PIM that allows you to set access rights to the users based on their types would allow you to utilize all its benefits. PIM system is a platform where many users like manufacturers, suppliers, marketers, salespeople, and more users can access it. So, assigning access rights to each user would ensure your data safety and data quality.
  • PIM System Matching User’s Skill Sets: Picking a PIM system that doesn’t require any up-skilling of users for effective handling of the PIM system. Else, you need to spend money and time to train users for handling it.

So, as a business person, you need to consider the technical skills of the users along with the learning curve of the PIM solution while deciding on purchasing a PIM system.

2. Choosing PIM Solution Based on Its Management Functionalities

While selecting a PIM solution for your company/organization you need to be aware of what a PIM system can deliver you in terms of data management. Let’s discuss this in brief.

  • Data On-boarding: Many companies suffer a lot while onboarding data from their suppliers and vendors while doing verifications, accessing in different formats, checking their standards & regulations. Having centralized PIM software will allow suppliers and vendors to upload data as per the assigned formats and the PIM system takes care of managing and regulatory processes automatically. So, picking a PIM system with enriched onboarding features is a must.
  • Data Quality: Product data quality becomes so important to run a business successfully in today’s market. A good PIM system should have the capabilities to fix data format errors, highlight discrepancies and maintain the data quality before distributing data to multiple channels.
  • Efficient Management of Product’s Digital Asset: For every business having enriched product content is advantageous, a good PIM system should have the capabilities of effective management of product digital assets like images, videos, tutorials, product catalogs, and so.
  • Easy Configuration & Flexibility: A good PIM system should have better adaptability features so that it can match the expectation of different organization requirements. Also, it should be easy to configure and highly flexible so that organizations can customize it according to their needs. Picking such a PIM solution would be handy.

3. Choosing PIM Solution Based on Data Distribution Features

Almost every PIM system in today’s market comes with the features of data sharing with multiple systems. However, picking the one that is compatible to face all challenges prevailing in data distribution would be the best choice. Let’s discuss this in brief.

  • Easy Integrations: Integrating with multiple systems is one of the key features of a PIM system. If your business requires a lot of such integrations with an external system, then you should go with the PIM system that offers sophisticated APIs for easy integration with external organizations/channels.
  • Language Translation: PIM system plays a major role in business expansion across overseas markets. To be successful in such expansion, a business needs to provide accurate product data according to the local language. For that, the PIM system should have language translation and multi-language support.
  • Automated Distribution: Picking a PIM system based on its capabilities of partial/fully automated data distribution to multiple channels could be wise if your business involves a large amount of data. By doing so, you can save a lot of time and also eliminate the risk of time delay in data distribution.

Finally, picking a PIM system that provides a highly scalable PIM solution with easy maintenance would account a lot in business future growth.

Bottom Line

PIM tool is an effective and essential tool for all businesses to gain a competitive edge over competitors in today’s market. If you are about to implement a PIM system, first explore the latest PIM trends and start choosing a PIM system based on the provided tips for getting full benefits.

Say goodbye to data chaos and embrace the power of PIM/MDM to supercharge your business growth!