For those not familiar with the new acronym, PIM stands for Product Information Management: In fact, a collaborative web application for collecting and managing all of the product information
That said, however, it may seem reductive. I would therefore like to start deepening the matter and to propose starting from “why” and “when” you should adopt a PIM solution in your company.
One of the major issues in businesses, not just for e-commerce, is the difficulty of finding the right and up-to-date product information in a short time. Information often distributed among various subjects and / or business departments. Typically, some information comes from ERP systems, others are of exclusive marketing domain, others belong to the purchasing department, and others (in extreme cases) reside with external vendors or agencies.
If the situation described above (also in part) related to your business reality, here’s a PIM solution you might be able to do at your own risk.
The PIM will not only give you the ability to group all information centrally in one place in a rational way, but will allow you to spread it over all the communication channels you need. From e-commerce to mobile applications, to go to the web site until you get to the paper catalogs.
Being sure that the information to be disseminated is complete, verified by the various departments and / or responsible and available in a single repository, is not a dream.
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By the experience, I can add that centralized management of information entails tremendous savings in time and greatly reduces the stress of those who work all day with the data.
“Less cost and more productivity”
If I had to summarize at some points the advantages of a PIM solution I would say …
1) More with less: The PIM allows you to spend less time managing the information of products already “in the catalog”, enabling you to devote more attention to new future products;
2) Uniform Product Information: The PIM eliminates inconsistent or incomplete content, centralizes data, and defines the information that is appropriate to each communication channel;
3) Think Global: The PIM simplifies workflows also for your data translation activities. Work with external or internal translators will be greatly accelerated;
4) Increased Productivity: Improving product information will inevitably lead to better returns even in sales.
Since I’m crazy about “bullet lists” here is a brief list of the main features of the PIM …
1) Import Data: The PIM allows you to import files in different formats (Excel, CSV) and to “connect” to third-party systems with customizations.
2) Organize and Classify: With the PIM you can finally organize and classify your products as you wish. With intuitive “product grids”, you will be able to search the entire catalog in just a few clicks and only view the information that you feel will really be needed.
3) Edit and translate: The PIM allows as many times as mentioned above to easily modify all data. Define the necessary attributes, complete the product tabs, and translate your information into all the languages you want, add media files, and keep track of changes directly in your product history.
4) Quality and completeness control: The PIM allows you to control the quality of your data by means of “completeness” tools to avoid publishing incomplete or untranslated product descriptions;
5) Export your data: With PIM you can choose what, how and when to export your data. Also available or implementable “connectors” to directly export your data on e-commerce, catalog, merchants, etc. …
If you believe that the PIM may be the right solution for your business, you will not have problems and talk together.
