Product information management (PIM) manages the information which is required for selling and marketing the products through distribution channels. PIM is the single solution required for collecting, managing, and enriching the product information.
Understanding the Concept of Product Information Management
PIM is designed to collect important product information. Product information management stores almost the complete information of the product, inclusive of its description, taxation, pricing, configuration, shipping, logistics, and even including the reviews of the product.
Having good PIM gives the company an edge over competitors as now a day’s PIM is used to keep partners, stakeholders, and customers involved.
It does this by rapid maximization of the efficiency and minimization of the impact of modifications and helps in promoting faster time to market, enhance operational efficiency, and also business growth.
PIM reduces the time to market. The most important advantage may be that standardized customer experience can be produced with the help of a PIM system across all the channels.
PIM helps in the efficient management of all the data from logistics to all enriched data needed for the growth of online sales. The quality and consistency of data increases, when all the information is consistent with the customers throughout the sale channel.
Importance of Product Information Management
A PIM system used to regulate the information between the diverse systems used by organizations such as ERP, POS, Accounting, webshops, and numerous other systems.
It is a software package that enables the organization to centrally manage and enrich product information so that this informational data can tell the true story in every distribution channel. Whether it will be a retailer, producer, distributor, or supplier, all of them focus on B2B or B2C.
PIM eases assortment expansion:-there is a strong relationship with the size of company assortments with the PIM systems. When the range rises to over 1 million SKU’s, there are no companies that are not using the PIM system.
Around 38% of retailers are stated that they want to achieve additional expansion of 50% in their assortment. While approx 45% are expanding on their product.
Usage of Product Information Management
Many organizations currently use PIM.PIM system is based on the processes that manage product data. This is what helps the organization to produce content.
This is how organizations work on social media messages, newsletters, and blogs. Many of the times there is a data overload, especially if someone in possession of a web-shop.
Everyone used to deal with the expectations of product data of their stakeholders, whether it would be a supplier, distributor, producer, or retailer. To maintain and to meet the quality expectations, it is required by many organizations that they introduce more products, and more channels to be involved and how one can keep that in a controlled or in a structural manner.
One of the challenging things is to optimally offer product data which is the same or consistent in all the channels and at every point.
In order to achieve the highest possible alteration from the previously used conventional excel sheets and other solution. It is essential to integrate the sources and to use an innovative solution such as PIM solution.
A PIM system has numerous diverse users; those who employ the product information solely for the reading purpose; nearly every department in business often utilizes the PIM system in one way or another.
The PIM system is employed by the complete value chain. Suppliers use it to insert information related to their products to the PIM systems of the customers or keep posted their prices as well as the inventory levels.
The procurement department in an organization may put the PIM system to use in order to store the gathered information about the product, such as prices, in addition to the product quality criteria and contracts which are agreed upon with the suppliers. The R&D or design department may use the system to store CAD/CAM drawings, technical.
Specifications of parts and other technical documentation are also created in the product development process of PIM.
Customer care can add complaints and frequently asked questions about the product which the product design department can use to improve the product itself. Customers can easily add product reviews, photos, and videos to show how they use the product in real life. The actual number of users may vary widely per company. The number of viewers may be huge if one of the channels is of the company Web site. Usually, only a small group of people in a separate product information management unit is involved in the day-to-day maintenance of the product data.
However, even this small group can add up several hundreds of users or traffic if distributed across the entire value chain if the system is set up.
Examples
For instance you want to start selling your online product one has to be up to date in management of the information on the website of the organization so that customers will indulge and get authentic information regarding product and feel confident, so that will simply help in enhancing the sale of the product, and it will automatically lead to sale of that product because if one customer gets satisfied after buying that product it will definitely suggest other customers and enhance traffic and lead the maximum profit and help in enhancing efficiency of the business and its productivity.
Advantages of Product Information Management
- No double management: double management is now a thing of the past and now its always up to date and help in integrating all product data at one place
- More effective sales: based on the behaviour of visitors helps in effective sales by handling specific offers and customized towards product prices.
- Inspiring content: with the help of PIM attracting target groups with the help of images and videos.
- Fast time to market: with the help of integrating any material for every channel and thus achieve greater efficiency and effectiveness.
- Increased engagement: it helps in making online experiences even more special with the help of active involvement of target groups and boosting online growth.
- Multichannel range: at the correct time, be relevant to your decided target group; whether they are in-store, in the web-shop, or on social media.
Disadvantages
While using PIM, there are many factors which challenges this software to work properly and work wrong. It’s sometimes become so difficult for the management to convince for the implementation of this software because of these factors which are listed below:-
- It doesn’t focus on cost reduction: In a general way, it is seen that PIM doesn’t reduce cost and even increase cost visibility.
- It focuses on strategic benefits: it focuses on the long strategy, short time to the market, and legal compliance are, in practice, easier to explain and defend to higher management.
- It takes more time in its implementation: PIM system takes a lot of time to implement. It will take up to 3 to 12 months or more. The time taken depends on the complexity, and additionally, it also takes time to comprehend the profits as employees using the system must get used to the new processes. Therefore it is required to make sure about the “judgment day” that should be set within a realistic timeframe, preferably at least one year after going live.
When the companies sell online, they are confronted with the fact that not all the information is necessary to sell their products available with them. Marketing, sales, and finance are the core processes of the corporate world for a longer duration time; PIM is a new business process.
It is having its own unique challenges in its implementation and management. As everything is bind with their pros and cons at the same time, therefore, it is good to implement PIM system in the organization to increase the reach of the customers by giving them proper satisfaction by providing them authentic and real information through all the channels by not fooling the customers.
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