Irrespective of a business’s focus on scalability, product information is bound to get scattered, isolated, and duplicated with the growth of the company. The particulars are entirely based on how things have been required to grow along with the widening of the business in various spheres.
Over time, specifics including catalogs, references, item numbers, images, videos, documentations tend to bring more challenges when it comes to data Product Information Management. Consequently, workflows begin to slow, discrepancies arise, conversion rates drop, returns, and cart abandonment increase.
That being the case, implementation of product information management is essential when the company is growing and the amount of data is increasing at the same pace. It’s one of the reasons why PIM is regarded as the lifeforce of commerce when it comes to smoothly integrating into commerce technology stacks and tackling the processes of managing, merchandising, and marketing inventory which is nothing less than nerve-racking work.
According to Jenny Buchar Sr. Simultaneously, version control and updates were tiring and erratic plus the responsibility fell on the digital team for sourcing and serving product data globally. However, all this happened before the implementation of product information management.
However, the problem is that a lot of companies are spending a huge amount of money on building unnecessary custom or overly complex solutions to achieve scalable and quick global expansion. Given below are the points that tell the typical ways companies adapt to handle product information management problems.
The most common product information management attempts
- Handling a “Manual” PIM
Businesses generally begin by balancing several Excel sheets with fundamental tables and cross-scripting SQL to ensure the ease of managing the flood of product data. Consequently, back-office workflows slow down, headcount becomes expensive, and risk of losing consumers that impact the growth of a business.
- Custom build a PIM
There are not a lot of companies that can afford to stall operations to rip or build or replace technology systems. Companies that can resort to building a custom solution for handling their unique custom management problems often become counterproductive.
According to Jon Marsella, CEO of Jasper PIM, when businesses try to execute a PIM all by themselves, they often fail to grasp what the integration depth of their product reach is. At the same time, they are taken by surprise about the complexity and strenuous nature of the product data management needs in reality. They cannot predict the amount of work involved when it comes to integrating a PIM with other business systems.
- Invest in an All-In-One Platform
Although an all-in-one platform may sound promising, the trade-off is specialization. It has been found in many cases that consumers discover that they are underutilizing the aspects and putting more money for the value that they receive from the platform. In other words, it’s nothing but a high investment, but a low return process.
The Best Commerce Technology Stack Developed for Scale
The target is to put your money on a sound commerce technology stack that centralizes all the product data points besides allowing product information to be supervised, exhibited, and streamlined so that it can be utilized to support the complete commerce environment.
When a business has the right systems in place and works in harmony, all the teams get the support to function seamlessly, quickly, and confidently.
Even though the importance of extra business applications and tools are completely dependent on the business’s particular requirements, but there are always three fundamental things in common, which are:
- Enterprise ecommerce platform
- Enterprise resource planning (ERP) system
- Product Information Management
When should businesses invest in a product information management system?
The best time to use PIM software is when brands are aiming to expand internationally by supporting several geographic locations, languages, currencies, and marketplaces. Even a lot of businesses want to future-proof their technology stack before workflows become a hindrance and affect their power to scale.
Irrespective of whether a company likes to stay prepared for the future or is already in a problem, integrating or migrating into any technology takes time. It is advisable to stay proactive whenever it is possible, yet when you are working with solid technology, it shouldn’t be a showstopper (or require months after months to stand up).
Advantages of a PIM solution
Even though there are many cases where companies typically develop the need for PIM system support, in reality almost all businesses can benefit from PIM solutions if they can afford it.
Implementing a PIM system helps staff in managing all product data points, customize merchandising efforts to match demand, tailor, and set marketing campaigns, and seamlessly meet the requirements of a dynamic omnichannel buying experience.
Furthermore, product information can be confidently shared with stakeholders, wholesalers, manufacturers, and customers without any hindrance. Following are the biggest benefits of leveraging product information management that can help a business expand seamlessly.
- Track progress and product completion
- Enrich product descriptions and specifications
- Centralize and sanitize data
- Link documents, images, media to products
- Divide products and files into groups
- Supervise upstream data and make it ready for sales channels
- Prepare basic info and the entire database for more advanced analysis, such as data valuation.
- Manage relationships between products
- Find everything in a single central database
Things to look for when choosing PIM for your business product data management
- Data Normalization and Conversion
- Advanced Merchandising and Search Tools
- Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS)
- Bulk Product Editing
- Advanced Pricing Rules
- Secure Data Backups
- Static Content Scheduling
- Readiness State Change Events
- Easy-Build Custom Product Attributes
- eCommerce Platform Publication
- Variant Products and Bundled Products.
- Multi-Language and Multi-Currency Support
- Digital Asset Management (DAM)
- Google Merchant Center Publication
- Custom Product Readiness Status States
- Legacy Data Conversion
- Cross Channel Inventory Synchronization
- Enterprise Resource Management (ERP) Integration
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Integration
If you are thinking about investing in product information management software but don’t knowwhere to start, let Codifyd help you. Get the best-in-class PIM services to help your business grow without any hindrance Read More