PIM Ecommerce Software
PIM ecommerce: As brands contest for profitability in a crowded and competitive online marketplace, staying ahead of the curve is more important than ever in today’s digital landscape, according to Forrester Research. The ability to guide product information effectively is critical because it allows you to be confident that your product data is complete, consistent, and up to date at every stage of the process. A Product Information Management (PIM) system can assist you in the management of data associated with your product lines and can be found here. PIM ecommerce solutions offer numerous advantages that can help businesses increase profits in today’s fiercely competitive consumer and business-to-business (B2B) markets.
What is PIM?
Product information management, also known as PIM, is the process of collecting and organising all proper information about a given product, including descriptions, images, and other media, in a single central repository. The ability to more effectively consolidate your product data allows you to save time at every stage of the marketing process.
When updating existing product information and adding new products to your online platforms and sales channels, a PIM ecommerce solution can help you save time and money. Also demanding is that it ensures that your customers have access to the correct information about your products when they are ready to purchase, regardless of which sales channel they are using..
The Relationship Between PIM and ecommerce: Why Does Your Company Need Product Information Management?
It is possible for your company to reach out to more customers and provide them with the information they lack in order to make a purchasing choice if you use a PIM ecommerce system. In addition to the four major benefits listed below, PIM ecommerce solutions can provide your company with the following additional benefits.
In order to streamline product information, one point of approach should be established.
It is possible to obtain product information from a variety of departments and tools. Individuals across teams can no longer manually pull data from multiple systems and create time-consuming spreadsheets because a PIM ecommerce system brings raw product specifications, marketing copy, and creative assets together in one place. Automatic data ingestion from sources such as an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, as well as manual info entry into the PIM, are both possibilities.
Products from your PIM ecommerce system are exported to your e-commerce website, marketplaces, and social media shops, allowing you to sell your products more quickly. As well as ensuring that any corrections, updates, or adjustments made to these records are applied uniformly across all product lines and distribution channels.
Get to the market as soon as possible.
The length of time it takes you to announce a new product or establish a new sales channel is regulated when you begin to generate revenue. PIM ecommerce solutions make it possible to manage product data more efficiently. Instead of waiting for product information requests from the ERP system, marketing and e-commerce teams can find it on their own through the PIM system, which is proactive.
This trim the length of email threads and the confusion over where to find the most recent information, among other benefits. Furthermore, by integrating information and assets into other marketing technology systems, integrations reduce the amount of time spent on administrative tasks.
When workflows are automated, it shortens the need for manual data entry, allowing teams to launch and maintain new products and sales channels more quickly than previously possible.
Product data should be more consistent and of higher quality.
Product data that is incorrect or incomplete costs your company sales and increases returns, resulting in a significant reduction in overall profits. Given the capacity to ingest, add, and review data in a single system, PIM ecommerce solutions can help you improve the quality and consistency of your product data.
Any modifications made in the PIM system can be made available across all of your e-commerce platforms. Providing accurate and up-to-date information will aid in the development of your brand’s opinion as a reliable source of information and services.
Improve the effectiveness of your marketing strategies with PIM ecommerce
84 percent of customers believe that a company’s customer experience is just as crucial as its products and services, according to Salesforce’s State of Marketing report released this year. With today’s customers interacting with businesses through a variety of channels, it has never been more critical to deliver a consistent customer experience across all customer touchpoints.
It will be easier for you to improve the user contact for your customers if you have a single source of product data. This will allow you to ensure that your customers receive accurate and up-to-date information at every stage of the purchasing process.
It is inevitable that every company will outgrow its current e-commerce platform because of the constantly changing nature of e-commerce. The time has come to boost your platform if it is no longer capable of providing the functionality and performance that your company requires.
The stakes are extremely high, given the high monetary and human resource costs associated with implementing a new system. Your company will be committed to your choice for many years to come. Making sound choices is critical to your ability to compete and thrive in today’s market.
When selecting an PIM ecommerce platform or solution for your company, you must be confident that it will assist you in the following ways:
- Complete the goals that are necessary for development.
- Look into what is causing the change and how to resolve it
- Utilize a solution that is customised to your organization’s needs.
- Ensure that customers have a positive contact in order to foster brand loyalty.
- Maintain product data that is clean and buyer-ready.
- To be sure, that is a tall order, but it is not insurmountable.
We will assist you in determining whether it is time for an upgrade; if so, why Product Information Management (PIM) is a wise next step; and the effect of preparing for a transition by ensuring that you have clean, complete, consistent, and contextual product data that serves the needs of your business and your customers before the growth takes effect.
Let’s get started.
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Achieve the objectives necessary for development.
As you look to the future, it is likely that your company has earnest plans that will rely on the capabilities of your e-commerce platform, such as:
- Expanding the number of SKUs that are available
- A significant reduction in time to market has been achieved.
- Gaining prominence in search results and increasing website traffic are two important goals.
- Employees are being liberated from manual labour and spreadsheet-driven confusion.
- Acquiring the assistance of discrete departments as well as suppliers, vendors, and affiliates
- lowering the number of returns and calls to Technical Support
- Putting in place a workflow process that automates the approval process
- Publish products across multiple channels with relative ease.
Your organization’s progress is being slowed by an outdated e-commerce platform that is unable to support such objectives in the future. List the strategic goals you have for your company and the features that you hope a PIM ecommerce platform will have that will assist you in achieving those goals.
Suppose you want to increase the number of SKUs possible. You may require a platform that is scalable and can accommodate a virtually unlimited number of SKUs. Finally, classify the features into three categories: must-haves, want-to-haves, and nice-to-haves (not deal-breakers).
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Address the issues that are driving the need for the transformation.
Your current platform, it should be noted, has flaws. Some of them are minor annoyances, but others seriously impair your ability to charge business or manage your PIM ecommerce process in an efficient manner. The good news is that your pain points can serve as indicators of the functionality you’ll lack in a new system. For example:
List these sore spots in descending order of severity, starting with the most painful and ending with the least painful.
Reframe them as features that you would like to see in a new system. For example, “having to manage photos and assets from a separate programme” could be rephrased as “having to manage photos and assets from an integrated digital asset management system.”
Sort the features into three categories: must-haves, want-to-haves, and nice-to-haves (not deal-breakers). When evaluating a potential solution, you can use this guidence to identify the features that are most important to you and prioritise them.
When you include this in your dream state list, you’ll have a comprehensive, prioritised list of the functionality you’re looking for to alleviate the pain of your current state and assist you in transitioning to a future state that will allow you to achieve your business objectives in a timely manner.
Above all, you should never be forced to make do with less functionality than you currently have applicable to you. In fact, you should be looking for a quantum leap forward that will serve you well beyond your initial ROI and will enable future capabilities such as intelligent recommendations, voice search, native mobile apps, marketplaces, and expansion into global markets in addition to your initial ROI.
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Ensure that you have a customised solution in place that is appropriate for your business.
Is the solution tailored to your needs, or do you have to tailor your needs to the solution? Not all PIM ecommerce platforms are created equal in terms of functionality and adaptability, however. Some of them are solely dedicated to e-commerce.
If you plan to disclose to channels other than a website — such as mobile devices or print — find out how the potential solution supports these channels. Seek out a product that can be customised and scaled to meet your specific requirements. If the sales call deviates into the realm of “round peg, square hole,” end the conversation.
A vendor may attempt to assure you that their product’s “catalogue” feature serves the same purpose as a PIM ecommerce. These solutions are generally sufficient for storing product information, but they are insufficient for managing it. Request a proof of concept while keeping in mind the need for a solution that is future-proof.
In the event that you find yourself in need of a powerful tool that allows you to organise, create, manage, and publish content to an ample range of endpoints, now and in the future you should consider implementing a PIM ecommerce solution as a core component of your overall e-commerce infrastructure.
You might be under the impression that you don’t understand what product information management software is or what it does.
As a consumer, you are, on the other hand, already familiar with the benefits that a PIM ecommerce solution can arrange:
If you’ve ever used a search engine and been presented with relevant results after entering a few product criteria, you’ve had an experience similar to the SEO and findability that PIM ecommerce software provides.
It’s the type of compelling, contextual content that PIM ecommerce software can deliver if you’ve ever purchased something online and felt confident in your accord because you were able to review features and benefits, view photos or a video, and be offered necessary accessories at the time of purchase.
Having received a flyer with a product selection tailored to your interests, you’ve probably experienced the kind of targeting that PIM software can grant you.
The foundation of a positive buying experience, from the perspective of the customer, is Product Information Management (PIM). It simplifies product selection, eliminates doubt, and ensures customer satisfaction.
4. Create an enjoyable customer experience that will encourage repeat business and brand loyalty.
As new technologies are introduced, customer behavior shifts, causing the “expected” customer experience to be redefined. Recent research confirms that, as a result of the increased number of product purchasing options feasible to consumers, the shopping experience has become more of a differentiator:
The expectations of today’s shoppers must be taken into consideration when companies design their e-commerce journeys.
This will allow them to:
Locate and search for products using a change of criteria, including but not limited to size and weight as well as colour, material, and so on.
Make informed purchasing decisions by referring to product pages that are jam-packed with useful information, such as multiple images and videos, complete specifications, descriptive copy that highlights distinguishing features, user guides, related products, required accessories and supplies, and other useful information.
Receive product recommendations that are relevant to your needs.
This level of customer experience necessitates the use of all of PIM ecommerce capabilities in order to distribute a shopping interaction that is satisfactory to the customer, also known as Product Experience Management (PxM).
PxM is completely relying on the entire and consistent product content that product content management and product information management make possible through their implementation. In today’s market, there are only a few comprehensive solutions that can provide shoppers with the discoverability, context, and personalization that they require to become brand loyalists.
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Make sure your product information is current and buyer-ready.
A PIM ecommerce software can assist you in overcoming a challenge that all product content managers face: keeping your content “clean.” As a result of multiple users contributing information over time, the quality of the content in terms of organisation, presentation, consistency, and accuracy will inevitably degrade.
Bringing bad data from the old platform to the new is one of the most common mistakes companies make when migrating ecommerce platforms, according to Gartner. Pre-migration planning empowers you to clean up your operations, scrub your content, and ensure that you populate the new platform with exact and timely product information before the migration. However, while this is a necessary and time-consuming step, the rewards are well worth the effort.
Form a migration team to decide your data model, taxonomy, and content before you upload even a single product record to your website.
The data model should account for all of the different ways in which you use and publish product data. When it comes to managing multiple outputs from a single source of content truth, the ideal situation is when you can. In order to be effective, the number of product copy attributes must be sufficient while not being excessively granular.
If you want your product intake mechanisms — whether they are manual authoring or electronic imports — to be as efficient as possible, you should consider outsourcing.
Most likely, your product taxonomy is incorrectly classified. The visitors to your website will receive incorrect or incomplete browse, search, and refinement results as a result of this.
For example, we knew of a cutting tool distributor whose “saw blades” were dispersed throughout the site under the headings “Saw Blades” and “Power Tools.” The results of different search and browse methods produced a mixture of different product lists. In order to check for migration, you should examine your products in your current taxonomy and make any necessary adjustments.
We recommend that you conduct an audit — a systematic review — of your existing content, followed by the actions outlined below:
Get rid of any content that is no longer relevant, such as expired promotions, past events, and old news releases.
Content from the past should be archived. This preserves the information while keeping it separate from the current content.
Remove any replicate content from your website. You may have written a number of articles on the same subject over the course of several years. Articles that are no longer relevant should be removed, while the most recent should be retained.
Ensure that inconsistent content is standardised. When it comes to product specifications, this is especially important because it includes things like unit of measurement (millilitres versus millilitres), spelling, and abbreviations. This can be accomplished quickly and easily through the use of a spreadsheet export, which is described below.
The author’s content is lacking in some areas. Identify products that have less-than-ideal descriptions and work to boost the content of those products.
Finally, consider the state of affairs in the future with a new platform. How will you ensure that your product information is always up-to-date? How will you market to a large number of channels at a low cost while still allowing for personalization and customization? Will your new platform continue to meet the needs of your company in the future? In the event that you decide to use a PIM ecommerce as a critical component of your e-commerce infrastructure, the answer to all of these questions is yes.
Are you prepared to take the next step? Consider a PIM for ecommerce.
A good product information management system (PIM) or PIM ecommerce is configurable, scalable, versatile, and flexible, and it unite with your e-commerce platform as well as your ERP and other critical business processes on the back end. As the name implies, a product information management system (PIM) is specifically designed for the authoring, managing, and publishing of product information for omnichannel marketing.
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