PIM (Product Information Management) Systems are wildly popular among mid and enterprise businesses right now, but really any business looking to streamline and scale can benefit from a PIM. To first understand how a PIM can help, it would benefit you to know what a PIM can do.
What a PIM does is allows these disjointed systems, processes and applications speak to one another thus creating a repeatable workflow. You can create this workflow throughout the business to allow the back office teams to import and manage every product data point. Your merchandisers can manage the product distribution and your marketing teams can create and schedule their efforts (like landing pages, banners, etc.), and push them to multiple channels.
A PIM gives business owners and their teams back the time they need to effectively do their jobs and focus on their roles instead of doing data entry. It helps you create a more dynamic shopping experience, allows you the time to venture into new markets and adds a balance to your teams to help you beat competition to market.
What Are the Benefits of a PIM System?
By using a PIM, your entire organization becomes aligned around a single set of product data. Back end workflows can be refined, and you reduce the time and effort required to merchandise and market your products. Your back office is then able to effortlessly manage every product detail (e.g., item numbers, references, catalogs, SKUs, images and videos, translations, localizations, currencies, documentation, source, custom attributes, etc.) in one place.
Meanwhile, marketing teams can create custom landing pages, push promotional banners, schedule highly targeted campaigns, push to multiple marketplaces and easily support localized, international sites. Product information can also be confidently be shared with stakeholders, internal business operations through to suppliers, manufacturers, wholesalers, and customers.
What is the true value of a PIM System?
One of the ways a PIM System can bring value is by shortening the time to market for businesses with many product types or product variations. A PIM allows your business to spread information faster and more accurately to relevant channels across the globe so you can market and sell your products. By providing a streamlined and accurate way to pass information across multiple channels, a PIM helps you create a more uniform customer experience. Without a PIM in place, product information can be managed individually per channel which could lead to errors or misrepresentation of product information from channel to channel.
Another way a PIM provides value is by helping businesses regain lost time. There are still far too many companies relying on disjointed data, both from digital sources and from print/manual data sources. Improperly allocated time is considered to be one of the biggest costs to a business' bottom line. The way through that is to provide automation where it make sense. Having a PIM resolves a lot of those time related issues by giving your employees a centralized repository of data that is connected to each and every aspect of the business.
How do I get started with a PIM?
The best way to get started is to speak with someone who has working knowledge of PIM systems in action. Having implemented PIM systems for businesses with multiple millions of product SKUs, Fortuitas is highly capable of helping you determine the best course of action. It also helps that we have partnered with the folks over at Sales Layer and BigCommerce to provide our clients with a full suite of completely integrated solutions. If you would like to learn more, feel free to book a free consultation.
