What is a PIM?

These days, you have to be active on all fronts: your employees need to provide a wealth of information across various communication and sales channels—and all at breakneck speed!

In fact, the concept of the right information reaching the right person at the right time has never been more relevant.

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And if you’re still unsure about the role of each tool, we invite you to read this article: MDM, PIM, DAM… What Does Each One Do?

Why use a Product Information Management solution?

Marketing and purchasing teams are seeing a proliferation of product SKUs and product data—a reality they must adapt to on a daily basis. PIM is recognized as an essential tool for data management and relationship marketing. It ensures the effective management of your products for sale in a multichannel environment.

So, why use Product Information Management? What challenges does PIM address?

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PIM Solutions: A No-Brainer for E-Commerce Sites

Let’s take the example of an e-commerce site specializing in the sale of pants. The information highlighted on the e-commerce store will include the following: style, size, color, material, features, care instructions… And the list goes on. The product lineup thus consists of thousands of pairs of pants. This information therefore translates into an extremely large number of SKUs!

SKU stands for “Stock Keeping Unit.” In French, it is also—though less commonly—referred to as “UGS” (Unité de Gestion des Stocks). These are internal product codes that identify all of your product’s characteristics (color, size, etc.) and allow you to easily track your inventory.

While organizing and manipulating data in Excel files may seem like the obvious solution, it turns out to be much more complex than it appears. In fact, this solution is neither fast, user-friendly, nor secure.

The company must therefore be particularly agile to ensure that information is properly integrated into a database that is kept current and updated regularly. In this context, it seems worthwhile to consider implementing product data management software for the company.

Product Information Management integrates seamlessly with your e-commerce site. It can easily and quickly associate products with numerous attributes such as dimensions, color, material, and more. It can also clearly define relationships between products, including cross-sells, up-sells, and bundle offers. With a PIM software solution, you can finally say goodbye to Excel spreadsheets, which are a major time drain for teams.

Quickly Understand the PIM Process

The primary role of the PIM is to facilitate the collection of your marketing and technical information from multiple sources. It enables omnichannel organization and distribution, thereby helping to enrich the information visible to consumers.

The process is simple: as soon as a product is created in the company’s information system (often originating from the ERP),the PIM collects the raw data, centralizes it, and distributes it to the marketing and product teams. At that precise moment, the work of enriching the information about the new product can begin. Once the product sheet reaches the required quality level, it is automatically distributed to the sales channels.

It’s also worth noting that PXM (Product Experience Management) is an extremely important approach for businesses. It enables companies to deliver the right content to the right person at the right time to drive a purchase. Thus, implementing a PIM solution successfully enhances the customer experience.

What are the benefits of PIM solutions?

A PIM solution is an excellent product data management solution, particularly for maintaining a competitive edge in a constantly evolving market. Here are the main benefits of Product Information Management:

• Improving the Quality of Your Product Data
• Eliminating silos, duplication, and errors
• Multichannel Data Distribution
• Use of reliable and up-to-date reference data
• Optimizing Time to Market
• Improving Customer and Supplier Relationships
• Reduced data integration and maintenance costs
• Control over information on each distribution channel
• Increased Productivity
• Production of product reports
• Achieving a Better Return on Investment

There are many benefits to PIM

This software solution organizes information and keeps the database up to date to provide teams with a high-quality source of data. As a result, the company’s various departments have access to reliable and secure information at all times. Thanks to this solution, your employees will no longer have to spend hours manually processing data! It is a powerful automated process tool that performs time-consuming tasks for you, thereby freeing up time for your teams.

What are the business challenges for PIM?

Managing information and its multichannel distribution is a challenge that companies face every day. Here are the main challenges of Product Information Management:

• Make information management easier to handle across all sales channels
• Make the teams’ work easier
• Improving the Customer Experience
• Improving Business Performance
• Securing Data

Who needs a PIM solution?

If you want to take control of the quality of product information distribution and strengthen relationships with the various project stakeholders, then you should consider implementing a PIM. PIMs are primarily intended for retailers and e-commerce businesses that have complex and extensive product catalogs. More broadly, a PIM can be used by:

• E-commerce businesses: Data quality is a key factor for an e-commerce company, as it has a direct impact on sales. PIM enables e-commerce managers to modify and tailor product information by distribution channel, country, and language.

• Marketing & Communications: Contextualizing information is essential for the marketing division to create a 360° product experience. The communications teams, for their part, aim to produce catalogs quickly and cost-effectively, featuring a large number of product listings.

• Buyers: The PIM facilitates supplier onboarding and ensures the integrity and consistency of product information.

• IT Services: IT teams must have structured data and ensure that it is transmitted securely.

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Where does PIM fit into the enterprise ecosystem?

PIM can connect to the entire business ecosystem. It is therefore an effective solution for implementing a company’s digital strategy. Situated between the ERP, the e-commerce site, the web platform, marketplaces, print media, and points of sale, the PIM automatically distributes information across all sales channels.

How does a PIM solution work?

Are you about to launch a digital transformation in your company and wondering how PIM works? Learn how PIM works in 4 simple steps.

Product Data Inventory

First, it is important to collect all data from the services and software used within the company (Excel files, CRM and ERP data, supplier data, etc.). The PIM then centralizes all this information within a single product repository, which can also include media files thanks to an integrated DAM.

Product Data Cleaning

The retrieved information must be cleaned up. This is because the master file may contain duplicate product references or products that are no longer in stock. It is essential to ensure the accuracy of product data in order to provide high-quality information to customers.

Filling

This phase includes updating the information. This information will be adapted to comply with each channel’s guidelines. A PIM solution supports data quality efforts by verifying the completeness of your data. The PIM also features a control and validation workflow system that allows you to track the completion percentage of your product information before it is published.

Dissemination of Information

All of your reliable, up-to-date information is now centralized in a single data management system. It can finally be shared across various channels and with the relevant departments: packaging, communications, marketing, retail, external agencies, etc.

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What features do PIM solutions offer?

There are several PIM solutions available, and it is important to compare their features. However, there are certain features that are common to all of them:

• Centralized Data Management
• Integration with third-party management systems and databases
• Information Update
• Transfer and Export of Product Information
• Data Segmentation
• Data Import/Export (PDF, HTML, XML, CSV, etc.)
• Language Management
• Product Contextualization
• Saving Searches
• Product Variant Management
• Product Experience Management (PXM)

What types of data do PIM solutions manage?

A PIM manages a wide variety of data, including marketing data, media files, technical data, design data, and user data. PIM solutions primarily manage product-related data and information: technical specifications, descriptions, part numbers, photos, bills of materials, diagrams, and more.

How do you choose a PIM solution?

There is no one-size-fits-all solution for Product Information Management. A PIM solution simply needs to reflect your company’s unique needs, as these types of tools offer a wide range of features. You should choose your PIM implementation provider based on your company’s needs and your long-term goals.

It’s important to understand that the effectiveness and performance of a PIM are closely tied to the company’s investment prior to the project. Ideally, you should look for a service provider that can integrate into your ecosystem and provide recommendations on how to restructure your data.

You should alsoprovide the vendor with as much information as possible from the outset, as this is what will enable the implementation of a comprehensive, high-quality PIM system. Therefore, the relationship between the vendor and your company should be a true partnership.

Some vendors offer solutions that are more or less suited to a company’s size, with different features. You can also choose a PLM solution to complement your PIM. This combination gives you a more comprehensive view of the product innovation cycle.

Note: MDM (Master Data Management) encompasses PIM and DAM solutions. With this comprehensive data management system, once your information has been processed, it can be transferred to the PIM, where it will be centralized and enhanced before being shared across various sales channels.

How Can You Ensure the Success of Your PIM Project?

The implementation of a PIM typically takes place as part of a company’s digital transformation. Generally, this brand-new project results in a major shift in internal workflows and can sometimes be disorienting for your employees as they adapt to a new work environment. It should be treated as a full-fledged corporate initiative and requires the involvement of multiple departments. In other words, the project must be carefully structured to identify the ideal PIM solution for your business. Here are a few essential tips to ensure the success of your PIM project:

• Take a look at the limitations of your current information system.
• Clearly define the expectations for the various channels and departments.
• Define a data dictionary and the necessary data enrichment in advance.
• Ask yourself which features are necessary today, but also which ones will be useful tomorrow.
• Preselect a group of solutions that you have identified and that meet your specifications. Ideally, you should narrow it down to just three service providers.
• Consider the issue of hosting the PIM solution.
• Pay attention to the quality of the supplier’s customer service (preferably in French), follow-up, and support.

A PIM solution is a long-term investment for your company that your employees will quickly come to appreciate. It is therefore important to make the most of the design phase, which is the most critical. After all, it would be a shame if, once implemented, the platform failed to meet operational needs or proved ineffective in day-to-day use.

Are you trying to decide between a PIM (Product Information Management) solution and a DAM (Digital Asset Management) solution? We can help you choose the best option for your infrastructure. For guidance on your company’s digital transformation and the implementation of a PIM, let our knowledgeable experts lead the way!

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