Product Data Management – An Effective & Innovative Way To Experience Business Growth
As businesses around the world undergo digital transformation, business leaders understand the importance of product data/information. Better data management tactics help businesses to avail themselves of more benefits and push to achieve business goals.
This article elaborates on the importance of product data and why businesses should give importance to the efficient management of product data.
What is Product Data?
For a product-based company, the product data feed provided to the customers and the retails plays a very crucial role. This is the data based on which the customers are attracted to the product. The product data feed contains all the essential data related to the products that are generally looked for by the customers.
This data allows the different eCommerce channels to collect all data and then allows the customers in searching, select, or categorize based on their needs. There are different approaches used for providing the product details or in defining the product.
Here are the different techniques being utilized for defining product data:
Product scheme
In this, the product is defined based on its attributes. The business can define as many attributes as possible and then select the main ones that play a crucial role in building customer confidence.
AI-defined product data
This helps to provide a universal definition of the product. This allows defining the product on a common platform, thus enabling comparison with similar products for better clarity and comparison.
Product metadata
The metadata for the product does not relate to the physical aspect of the product but includes the intellectual information for the product. It includes the details like its availability, location, review score, number of variations, etc.
Do you want to discuss the use of product data in your business and how product information management helps in effective product data management?
Why Should You Optimize Your Product Data?
For a product-based company, the growth of the business depends on the sale of the product. For this, the company should focus on bringing the best product to their customers thus satisfying their demands. Different product factors play an important role that helps the customers to connect to the products. A customer feels a sense of confidence in the product when many product details are provided to them.
The main key factors that are included in the product data feed include:
Product Title
It is very important as it influences the customer to click and get diverted to the shopping site.
Product image
The image of the product helps the customers in deciding on purchasing the product. Product image helps the customer to get the true details of the product thus making the selection.
Product category
Customers always start their search by defining the category of their choice. Thus it is essential to define the category of the product properly so that the product is not missed out while searching based on category.
Product type
Providing the keywords, help the customers to reach the product more efficiently. It also allows the channel to identify the product.
Product description: Description influences the customers to make the purchase. The true description of the product helps to create the product’s confidence in the customer’s mind.
Do you want to learn about the benefits of optimizing your product data in detail?
How Product Data is So Useful?
Nowadays most customers prefer online shopping as they get to search and select the product of their choice from the pool of similar products. Thus for the selection of the best product, the product data plays a very important role. It is important to provide adequate product data as it forms the basis that allows the search channels to display the product.
The product data qualities required by the different search channels to make it to the top search list include:
- Rich product data satisfying the keyword requirements.
- Mentioning the strong benefit statements.
- Providing product specifications and assortments.
- Providing details in the languages based on the targeted public.
Product data is the main thing that attracts the customers and retailers and this leads to increased or enhanced business. Thus it is important to keep the product data always updated. This plays a very important role in developing customer confidence in the product as well as in the business.
What is Product Data Management?
The product data management (PDM) system allows the business to manage all the product-related data. This software enables the organization to update the product information, track revisions, generate bills, track inventory details, etc. at a centralized location.
Here are the lists of vital data managed by PDM software
- Product description
- Brand name along with product
- Information about supplier/vendor
- Product order details along with price
- Details of product materials
The benefits of this product data management include:
Improved design workflow
The PDM software use allows the organization to effectively and faster data search, incorporation, data replacement, removal, up-gradation, etc. This data change takes place across various channels thus making it smoother for data management.
Enhanced collaboration
It allows the organization to share their product details efficiently with the other teams and get direct comments and feedbacks that allows making better collaborations for product development.
Streamlined process
The use of PDM makes data management automated. it allows efficient data control, BOM management, etc. and enables them to keep the engineering process under control
Do you want to implement the product information management platform to get the benefits of streamlined and automated product data management?
Importance of Managing Product Data
Managing the product data is very important as it helps the eCommerce channels to provide the product details to the customers. There are different challenges faced while managing the product data across the different channels.
The different reasons stating that the product data is useful to include:
Enhance sales strategy: understanding the competitor’s strategy and the public demand will help the organization in developing its marketing strategy for the product.
Pricing data: managing product data allows in understanding the market trend for the product thus the business can adjust the prices of their products to stay ahead in the competition while managing the sales and profits.
Curating other products: Curating the product details from the different sites can lead to a better comparison of the products and proving the best to their customers at a reasonable cost.
Affiliate marketing: Embedding the affiliate links for the product reviews can help to build the product-focused customer response. This will enable in providing the most accurate inventory information to the marketers thus easy handling of the product sales.
Product inventory management: The eCommerce site relies on the manufacturer to provide all the product-specific information. This data collection, organization, and maintenance can at the time become a tedious and time-consuming process.
Do you want to leverage the benefits of product data management by implementing the right PIM solutions for your specific business needs?
Challenges of Product Data Management
Managing product data is never easy for enterprises and growing businesses. Here are the top 3 most common challenges every business faces without proper product data management software.
Data Ingestion
Many businesses suffer a lot while collecting data from various suppliers and organizing. Sourcing and data consolidating is a big problem for enterprises and growing businesses when they start selling a wide range of products. As the different suppliers, onboard data in different data and storing in a different location will result in data silos and data redundancy.
Data Transformation
With normal data handling tools transforming product information into digital assets is become a bit difficult. For enrichment of product data owning PDM software is essential.
Data Distribution
Data distribution challenges occur for brands and retailers when they tend to share data with multiple vendors or suppliers. Without proper and uniform data format support distributing product information via multiple channels becomes a hectic job for brands and retailers.
In addition, without proper data management offering, personalized product data/content to potential buyers becomes impossible. Without personalization, it is hard for businesses to sustain themselves in today’s heavy competitive marketplace.
Are you facing other challenges related to product data? Feel free to discuss it with our PIM experts.
Essential Features of Product Data Management Software (PDM)
Product data management benefits businesses in many ways like improving customer experience and time efficiency along with good management of product data. Take a look over the below-given features of PDM software that gives a lot of benefits to businesses.
1. Centralized Data Storage
Centralization is the core feature of data management software. Almost all top PDM software in today’s market provided a centralized location for storing all data. With the centralized storing of product data, data accessing and sharing becomes so easy for businesses.
The centralized data storage along with data linking through its relationship helps eCommerce businesses to become successful. Data centralization allows suppliers, internal departments, and manufacturers to access the product data at any time easily.
2. Managing Digital Assets of Product
Digital assets of products play a key role in driving the attention of the modern age buyers towards the product. In general, product images, videos, catalogs, and so on are referred to as digital assets of a product.
Having a proper link between product information and the product’s digital asset is essential for creating a beautiful and appealing product page.
3. Bulk Data Importing & Editing
Many organizations suffer a lot when it comes to data importing & editing. Nevertheless, it is a tedious task as there are many challenges an employee should face while importing and editing multiple documents at a time.
PDM software like the PIM tool allows business leaders to import data in bulk in different formats; also it enables leaders to edit the exciting product data in bulk, thanks to the centralized data storage feature of PDM software.
4. Enriching Product Page Content
Instead of just allowing business leaders to manage and access their product data, good PDM software must take responsibility for data enrichment and data organization. Having standard and updated product data will always benefit a business in terms of increasing product sales.
PDM software does this product page update through automation; this eliminates the risk of happening man-made errors and mistakes.
5. Auditing & Tracking
Auditing and tracking is an essential feature of data management software for a business that depends on a cloud-based solution. Data auditing and tracking features of PDM software like PIM allows business leaders to audit and track all those changes caused by editing or updating the product information.
Apart from that, PDM software enables business leaders to assign roles and permissions for the users on accessing product data. This provides excellent security features to the stored product information.
6. Data Validation
As the modern age business relies heavily on their product data, managing product data becomes inevitable. Also, businesses need to ensure that the product data or information they provide is current and accurate. So that they can avoid product return and customer chart abandonment.
Having good product data management software like the PIM tool supports all data validation measures while uploading. Moreover, the automated data cleansing ability ensures the onboard product data matches the desired data quality standards.
7. Omni-channel Experience
Product data management software like the PIM tool offers an omnichannel experience to the business. In general, omnichannel allows businesses to expand their business operation in full-fledged.
Also, with the aid of omnichannel experience, businesses get more opportunities to sell or reach their products to potential buyers across the globe. Modern businesses require a modernized solution for gaining a competitive edge in today’s evolving marketplace, PDM software delivers such a solution for businesses.
8. Multisystem Integration
The ability to integrate with multiple systems is one of the biggest aspects businesses can avail from the product data management platform. With the perfect management tactics, a business can easily share product data among multiple systems including both internal and external.
By doing so, communication becomes much easier and it gets rid of the time consumption factor on data transfer. Also, it cut the cost of the business operation significantly.
Do you want to integrate these features into your product information management solution for effective product data management?
Conclusion
Product data is very important for gaining customer confidence. Creating the product data, managing it, and optimizing is a tedious task and time-consuming. But it is very essential in creating product visibility across the various marketing channels. In this competitive world, while targeting multiple territories, it is essential to have a robust and true product information database.
A true and reliable product information management platform allows the retailers and brands for efficient campaigning of the product. Good product data ensures the best quality product with better product visibility. This helps in retaining the original customers while attracting the newer ones efficiently.
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