Understanding the PIM definition and how it works is the first step before you start working on product page optimization. Product Information Management (PIM) is software that provides a central space to create, manage, and syndicate product information across sales channels in a unified manner. Internally, PIM comprises components to store and share product information across multiple systems and to facilitate workflow.
PIM can store all sorts of product information:
- Product Descriptions
- Configurations
- Logistics Information
- Reviews
- Warranty Details
- Prices
This makes PIM a reliable, all-in-one source of product information. Content is the king of ecommerce, and quality, tailored content that ensures a delightful customer experience is built on product information accuracy.
PIM components deliver this accuracy to your product pages.
Essential PIM Components
At its core, PIM allows companies to work with every platform for product information retrieval and distribution. Companies must ensure customers receive complete, accurate information to make purchase decisions.
PIM and its standard components make this possible.
Your PIM must syndicate product information easily.
Product information syndication is crucial because storage spans individuals, teams, and devices. Bulk editing, for example, ensures information consistency.
Editing information on marketing channels and platforms one by one takes forever. This also leads to product information inconsistency and increases the chance of including errors on product pages. Make sure your PIM can edit product information across digital channels simultaneously.
A good PIM is also highly flexible and configurable.
Users should be able to view product information by channel and adjust it according to specific channel requirements. Your PIM should also integrate easily with other systems to produce quality product content.
Content analytics is another essential element of your PIM. Analytics allow you to monitor product sales performance and fix problems as they arise.
Your PIM has to include a Digital Asset Management (DAM) feature. DAM allows you to optimize digital assets for specific channels, such as images and videos. Your DAM should be able to transform assets for seamless syndication across all the channels you use, regardless of their specific requirements.
When choosing a PIM based on the components it has, first, know what your goals are.
Define Your Objectives
What do you want your PIM to do?
Answering this question will allow you to structure your PIM to support your marketing strategy and organizational goals. PIM capabilities are numerous, and performance tends to vary from one organization to another.
Start by defining your central business objectives.
You can deliver quality product information or improve internal team coordination. You may also want to expand across channels, reduce time to market (TTM), or improve your customer experience.
It’s essential to set goals and define how success will be measured. It’s no use investing in a PIM if you can’t understand its impact. Ultimately, you have to determine how your PIM will support brand growth, because if you’re not growing, you’re dying.
Determine Your Implementation Parameters
Ask yourself how you’re going to implement processes with your PIM.
To define the implementation scope, consider your preferred channels, operation region, and market time.
There are two models of handling product information:
- Model all product information from the outset.
- Start with subsets of product information and increase in subsequent phases.
Large companies opt for the second method because they prefer beginning with a particular product line or region. The second method allows process testing to ensure proper functioning before full implementation.
Companies may prefer the benefits of complete information centralization, which means rolling everything out at once. While both methods have pros and cons, your decision should reflect your company’s current and future needs.
Implementation Strike Team
Successful PIM implementation requires a strike team.
Even for a small e-commerce operation, one person will unlikely be able to handle all the implementation requirements. The implementation tasks are as different from each other as the knowledge and skills required to complete them successfully.
You will need:
- An executive sponsor to see everything through
- A project manager oversees daily tasks
- A product manager gathers all the product information
- A group of individuals to input all the information
- A marketer to write your product page text
- A designer to supply images
- A tech who knows how your ERP system will integrate with your PIM
Determine Your Product Catalog Structure
The only way to build a strong catalog is by using accurate product information regarding your offerings.
This means your product categories, attributes, how they vary, and their use regarding different customer touchpoints.
PIM offers a broad range of options.
You can structure your catalog virtually any way your company requires. But craft that structure carefully, as the success of your PIM implementation depends upon it.
Your catalog structure should reflect the attributes of the specific sales channels you intend to use.
The structure should also support different product categories and attributes, and how these may vary.
Finally, the catalog must include the relationship of a given product to another and metrics for different online sales areas.
PIM Components Include Workflows & Integration
Getting the most out of your PIM depends mainly on the strength of the workflows you set up.
You must consider which teams interact with what product information and each team’s core function. You must also consider how each team will use your PIM and how processes must be ordered to maximize efficiency. Permissions should be defined carefully so that the right people can access the correct information, nothing more or less.
Correctly understanding the entire workflow will guide business operations and increase efficiency.
Previous work processes may need updating to reflect how they will work after PIM implementation. You may want your PIM to support processes you think you can’t change, but those processes might be the most in need of overhaul.
Remember that one of the greatest strengths of PIM lies in eliminating the placement of product information in silos.
PIM workflow support allows for information sync, driving accuracy in real time. This integration helps streamline your entire e-commerce operation.
Digital Asset Management (DAM)
It’s essential to ensure that your PIM includes DAM capability.
While some companies have modified DAM to mimic PIM, the result is often clunky, incomplete, or both. Moreover, PIM and DAM may seem similar in function, but they are fundamentally different.
PIM centralizes and facilitates the syndication of product information, while DAM specifically handles digital assets.
Some assets, like company logos, may not even relate to products. DAM ensures proper management of images, videos, and documents attached to specific products. PIM allows you to store and manage these digital assets alongside product information.
Long story short, PIM is not DAM, and DAM is not PIM.
DAM is one of the many critical PIM components.
Digital consumers absorb media of all kinds every second they spend online. The rise of digital technology and the acceleration of innovation have only increased this digital media consumption, which is driven by market and popular trends.
Media files include:
- Animation
- Videos
- Interactive ads
- Games
- Audio files
Navigating these media has become a challenge that companies and their customers share. Today’s digitally empowered consumer doesn’t want a rich digital customer experience; they expect one.
Companies that don’t meet and surpass customer expectations will suffer dwindling sales.
Customer expectations include access to high-quality media content to convince them that their buying choices are correct. This is the key to conversions because disappointed potential customers won’t give you their money.
Digital assets are more than just files; they also include metadata about the asset.
Strong, searchable content can be produced only if the correct metadata is associated with digital assets. Searchability saves your team time and makes it easier for customers to find you in the crowded digital marketplace.
Enrichment Components Tools on PIM
PIM integrates with multiple resource planning systems to extract and store product information as product attributes. This allows marketing teams to enrich product descriptions and assets for syndication across sales channels.
PIM systems are specifically designed to support information syndication regardless of the particular formats various channels require.
With PIM, information can be enriched from internal and external sources. Internal sources include your marketing department, while external sources are your suppliers, external information bases, and agencies.
Information from both sources increases product information accuracy, driving sales.
Product Attributes
The description of product attributes directly affects purchase decisions.
It’s essential to properly manage both the tangible and intangible attributes described on your product pages.
Tangible attributes include:
- Size
- Feel
- Packaging
- Weight
- Quantity
- Material composition
Intangible attributes include:
- Quality
- Aesthetics
- Reputation
- Price
Customers expect products and services to have certain specific attributes.
Points of parity refer to how a given company’s products are similar to those of another.
Some companies go a step further and incorporate “points of difference.”
To differentiate their products and services from those of the competition, they discuss how their products are superior to those of their competitors.
Optimizing your product information means including both types of information.
Ultimately, product attributes discuss product quality, features, and style/design. All three should add value to your customers’ eyes.
PIM Analytics Components
PIM implementation allows access to powerful components that detail product content performance.
Product information quality and team performance can be analyzed. Management can see all system activities and how much time they require.
With analytics, you can quickly search for, find, and fill in product information gaps and errors. These gaps are not limited to text; your images, descriptions, and translations may also be missing crucial information.
You can also analyze by product groups.
By analyzing product information by section, language, or geographic region, management can control the accuracy and overall quality of the information.
Analytics also covers your syndication channels by pushing out the correct product information. You can also streamline searches by field and create multi-variant tests using different versions of standard documents.
This will go a long way to improve content quality, even that of custom content.
Audit Trails
This core PIM component provides a time-stamped record of every change or operation your team undertakes.
Optimization becomes easier by automatically tracking actions, from sales to customer service complaints. Audit trails also support product information maintenance, helping quickly identify errors for correction.
There are two approaches to audit trails:
- Progressive: Tracks and monitors all actions from beginning to end
- Retrograde: Tracks results back to the starting point
Audit trails are used to maintain a log of all information modifications.
Monitoring all modifications acts as a check against unauthorized or mistaken changes. You can monitor specific entities in the PIM for modification.
These include:
- Items
- Media assets
- User groups
- Products
- Structure
- Supplier catalogs
- Structure features
- Structure groups
There are two ways to retrieve audit trails.
- Call a given audit trail from the context menu to display specific changes.
- Display an overview of a given audit trail.
Regardless, every PIM has a default audit trail configuration. Users can create specific queries to search for specific entities or users, and a search window will display the results.
Use PIM Expertise to Enhance Your Website’s Product Pages
Product pages should focus more than just listing what a product can do. You must use your PIM experience to arrange, boost, and send product data to every required location. Using proper PIM tools and strategies helps brands keep their product information accurate and complete, which leads to satisfied customers and increased sales.
Why PIM Syndication Matters?
With PIM syndication, data about products can be shared quickly across all your selling channels and company systems. No matter which industry you manage, PIM syndication software distributes up-to-date information to all platforms. A substantial PIM syndication solution ensures data is accurate and accessible to more people.
Using the Right PIM Components
The main elements of every PIM system are DAM, workflows, and analytics. Even so, areas like fashion require dedicated features. For example, typical components in a PIM for fashion could be color samples, information on sizes, details on fabrics, and terms used by fashion companies to describe seasons. By using these elements, it becomes possible to improve product experiences.
Studying how different components work with each other helps you develop your PIM skills, which, in turn, can improve the company’s work efficiency and please customers.
PIM Absorption and Data Integration
Your system can collect raw data from different sources, such as ERP, suppliers, or content partners. Correct mapping and data cleansing can transform random data into data that follows a pattern. By using Business Central PIM, product data can be transferred in sync to other departments and third-party applications.
The Importance of PIM Enrichment
Data enrichment is vital for product pages to stand out. Three simple ways to enrich an item include SEO descriptions, high-res pictures, and lifestyle content. Enriched product information forms can be created that appeal to your specific customers and support your brand’s story.
Here, product information (PIM data) and its attributes are key elements for building strong and detailed listings.
Real-World PIM Examples and Structures
Check out some practical examples to gain more insight into PIM. All kinds of businesses, from fashion to furniture, use structured PIM data to help them grow rapidly. A correct PIM structure makes it possible to deliver the duplicate PIM content worldwide.
Looking at Catsy can teach you how to improve your PIM page layout and learn about Catsy meaning in PIM workflows.
Learning what PIM means is only the first step. After that, you should choose the best PIM software. Leading tools give you flexibility, allow you to import PIM BMECat data, and let you customize your dashboard.
With the compo PIM, teams can handle everything from the first setup to handling complex syndication quickly and easily.
Bells and Whistles
PIM components and tools include more benefits than spreadsheets or manual solutions could ever offer.
Companies can derive maximum value from delivering quality product information by unifying product information in a single repository. This reduces the risks and delays associated with displaying outdated or incomplete information.
The flexibility the PIM system affords allows for significant customization.
With an expert team, you can configure your PIM to include the specific components you need to manage all of your product information. However, it’s always best to add only what you need, meaning only what you’ll use.
Companies can develop flexible and effective product pages worldwide using the proper techniques and tools that match a clear PIM definition. It is ideal to opt for the best PIM software that satisfies all your e-commerce marketing and distribution needs.
The quality of your data will determine the strength of your product page. You can stand out in the competitive world of eCommerce by relying on powerful PIM software, learning the tools inside and out, and ensuring your PIM content remains structured on every platform. Get working on your pages now, as it takes time and effort to perfect them.
Now that you know what a PIM is, click here to see what Catsy can do for you.
