Which Kind of PIM is Best for Your Business? Five Ways to Find Out.

Data and information have always worked as the backbone of businesses.

However, in recent years more businesses have taken product information management (PIM) seriously. However, it is not new to the tech industry.

According to a study by Gartner, consumers want complete information about a product, including images, videos, and reviews by other customers. Here PIM solution comes to help businesses with Digital Assets Management (DAM). It enriches the content, which is necessary to satisfy the customer's demands.

As per Qmatic, 90% of customers leave a website after a bad experience, and 86% are willing to pay more to get a better experience.

Product information management (PIM) will automate your business data. It can collect and manage massive amounts of data, making all the data processes handy and easy to update. So, the customers will get new information quickly and become satisfied.

Let’s take a closer look at how you can pick the best PIM for your business goals.

Also, the benefits and who can take advantage of PIM with examples and case studies.

What is Product Information Management (PIM)?

In its most basic essence, PIM is a tool that will gather all your product information into one place, and you can optimise it. But what does it mean? Let’s understand this with an example of a shirt.

So much product information will go along with your product, which is just this shirt—information like size, colour, and material. And then more technical data such as care instructions or maybe shipping information.

Then you have your marketing information, like title, description, and translations, if you sell it across different countries. Also, you have digital assets like photos, videos, pdfs, and so much more. And this is only one version of one product.

Let’s not forget that this shirt, like most of your products in different sizes, colours, versions or models. So, just imagine having all this information for all of your products.

Usually, this information lives in different spreadsheets, systems, folders, or so many other locations. So it’s challenging to keep track of everything and even more difficult to keep it updated and uniform.

Here PIM enters. It is software designed specifically to host all that information in one place.

With PIM, you have one central source of truth where all your information can live together, and you don’t have to keep going back and forth between different spreadsheets and folders.

PIM can Deliver an Array of Benefits

The importance of PIM goes up across industries, while there is a need for smooth running operations, enhancing collaborations, and integration with other systems. PIM software has many advantages. Let’s take a look at some of them.

1. Faster Time to Market

PIM empowers departments to create a hierarchy to track all the product information. They can add or edit information in one place, which makes it easier to enrich it. So your data will never be outdated which is lying around somewhere.

With PIM, all your product data comes in one place, which gives you a clear view of your product. Around two-fifths (39%) of product managers worry about missing launch dates. As a result, through PIM, you can launch new products much faster than before, making you competitive in the marketplace.

2. Saves Time and Increase Customer Satisfaction

Updating every single detail in hundreds of datasheets manually can be challenging. But what will happen if all these activities can be done automatically? Simple, it saves your time. So, no need to change data every time it updates.

More than two-third of customers switch to your competitor after a bad experience. So, focusing on excellent customer experience is crucial.

With PIM, you can see how complete and ready your product is to go to the market, which provides accurate and up-to-date information. Also, it localises and enriches product content as per the customers. Brands are losing 15% to 25% of revenue because of inaccurate data.

3. Consistency Across All Your Channels

Customers engaging with your product should feel like they are interacting with the same brand. You can fix your brand colours, fonts, graphics and more.

Product information management software can help to create consistent product information. For Example - if you work with complex data, PIM will take it and standardise it before presenting it to customers. They don’t hesitate to leave your website if you do not provide them with the right information. Around 69% of customers will abandon a purchase if the product does not have complete information.

See how Nvizion helped Doterra (US-based Essential Oils Retailer) to reduce abandoned carts by 16%.

Read the entire case study here.

Who Can Benefit from PIM?

The great thing about the PIM platform, which is excellent for collaboration. You can use it across all your teams, and everyone in your organisation can benefit. Let’s see how it benefits different teams and especially customers.

Sales Teams can get digital catalogues and product sheets on the fly and become confident that it has the most accurate and up-to-date information.

E-commerce Managers can prepare data for distribution constantly, which speeds up the workflow and increases collaboration among departments.

Brand Managers or product data officers can stop worrying about tracking down that last spreadsheet that needs to be updated.

Marketing Teams need to juggle a lot of content to create and modify campaigns across multiple channels. Now use the data with confidence because the information is accurate and available right in one place.

Customers can buy confidently, knowing they can rely on your brand’s quality product information.

Which Kind of PIM is Best for Your Business? Five Ways to Find Out.

If you want your PIM system to work according to business plans, it is crucial to ensure that it aligns with your long-term goals and processes. However, choosing the right kind of PIM system can be overwhelming for starting off your PIM journey.

Ask these five questions before picking one perfect system for your business.

1. Does it Make the Uploading of Product Information and Digital Assets Easy?

Online shoppers can not physically examine your product, so giving them quality information and digital assets is crucial to help them decide on your product. These digital assets can be images, videos, pdfs, graphics, and more.

If you are running an e-commerce store, manually updating the product information across all your channels can be a nightmare for your product manager. Yet, according to Small Business Trends, 84% of small businesses rely on manual processes.

Nvizion helps Zoro (an e-commerce company based in Buffalo Grove) to reduce the manual effort of updating their data.

Read here how actually Nvizion helps them.

The Product Information Management system (PIM) is not a Digital Asset Management (DAM). But most PIMs these days do have built-in DAM capabilities.

Most business owners ask that if they have DAM, then why should they invest their money in a PIM tool.

Choose PIM for more efficiency, this is the answer.

One of the most significant benefits of having both PIM and DAM capabilities will help you manage all your product information data in one place. Take a look at how this feature will benefit you.

Let us go back to our shirt example- imagine your shirt's price changes. Now you have to update it across all your channels. You have to update it on your website, price sheets, and catalogues. So, if you are using PIM, you just make that one chance, and it goes everywhere else. It will save your time and deliver a faster update to customers.

2. Does it come with standard or customisable exports?

Many PIM systems offer several standard exports. So you can map your data according to their specifications.

If your product data already follows unique data conventions and field types, then it will be good to have standard exports. However, companies like Amazon and Wayfair are using customisable exports.

Many companies have unique data naming conventions and field types. So, after reading this, you might want to check how PIM allows you to customise these exports.

With PIM, you can get more flexibility and control over your data with customisable exports. It will adopt your data naming and formatting while uploading your product data across all channels.

3. Is the PIM system on-site or on the cloud?

It is an important decision when choosing PIM. If you select an on-site provider, you must host your PIM system on your own computer/server/data centre.

For many businesses, especially small enterprises, it becomes tough to implement it on their system because it requires IT involvement.

Cloud-based systems use the software as a service model, allowing your PIM to be accessed by the logged-in members through web browsers. Many organisations choose cloud-based systems as easy to operate. According to the Flexera 2020 State of the Cloud Report, 93% of enterprises have a multi-cloud strategy.

4. Does it support multiple languages?

If you just focus on one language audience, it will be possible that your e-commerce store will not grow. Nowadays, customers look for online shopping instead of going to physical stores.

When customers visit physical stores, the seller describes the product's features in their native language. In e-commerce, having multilingual functions is essential to stay competitive. So, if your business covers different geographies, you must ensure that your data is ready for localization. Surprisingly, half of fortune companies do not translate their data into more than one language.

For businesses, the most challenging task is to organise product data catalogues in multiple languages and tailor data as per region. 75% of customers do not make important purchasing decisions unless the product is available in their native language.

PIM is a centralised tool which eases your pain through its unique interface. Your editors can create new content in any language with the help of PIM’s multilingual content management. It also keeps the data consistent throughout the country and provides language-specific output.

5. Does PIM deliver a consistent and compelling customer experience?

A centralised PIM can collect and further manage and enrich all your product data. In addition, it helps businesses to become more customer-centric with its product catalogue management feature.

Poor product data quality can impact the shopping experience. For example - if a customer searches for ‘wide leg jeans for men’ on an e-commerce website. What happens if the product is available in the stock, but just because it was incorrectly added in the catalogue, it fails to show up in the search result.?

Linkdex says more than two-thirds of customers want more personalised shopping experiences. This will impact not only sales but the brand image as well. To solve this issue, businesses need to centralise, streamline and simplify product data management.

With PIM, you can achieve it, and all your product data will be centralised in one place. Also, when you are getting that data from one centrally located place, you can rest easy knowing that your website will not show any incomplete, incorrect, or outdated information.

You can also rest assured that all your product information will be consistent throughout all your channels. You are emitting a more trustworthy image to your customers.

Conclusion

Before adopting PIM software, companies should understand why PIM is the right solution. If you can answer these questions in yes, then you must look for PIM software. Do you:

• Manage lots of complex data

• Sell products on multiple channels

• Collect data from different sources

• Change product details several times

• Use manual processes

Managing product information gets complex as the business grows. Around 84% of companies plan to make some sort of data quality solutions. With Nvizion solutions, your business will get a strong foundation for the future.

To learn more about the Product Information Management (PIM) system and see it in action, contact Nvizion Solutions today.

Note: This article is written for Nvizion Solution