What kind of data is managed in a PIM solution?
At its core, a Product Information Management (PIM) solution manages all of your product-related data. But that might be more data than you think.
In this guide, we cover the importance of using a PIM system, take a detailed look at the types of data offered in a PIM system, and explain how the Dynamicweb PIM solution can benefit your business.
The Importance of Using a PIM System
Commerce for many industries has shifted from selling products in physical stores with the help of a personal sales assistant to selling products online. Now, digitalization and optimization of product information are necessary for all supply chain participants. Managing product information entails much more than attaching a name, description, and price to each product. In the present and future digitalized world, product information needs to be rich, detailed, accurate, deep, and complete, or customers will quickly bounce to a competitor’s site that fulfills their expectations. Customers look for a way to quickly and clearly understand how a product will fit into their lives. Detailed information is the only way to convey that a customer can benefit from your product.
Unless you sell a couple of products on one or two channels, managing product information can quickly amount to a time-consuming, costly, and error-prone headache. A PIM system provides numerous benefits by intelligently helping you manage your product information. To better understand the magic at work, let’s take a look at the types of data offered in a PIM system.
The 7 Types of Data Offered in a PIM System
Core Product Data
A PIM handles core product data that is typically integrated and pulled from your ERP as a best practice. This maintains consistency between things like the core Product ID Number, SKU, etc., and the enriched information needed to sell on a website.
Pricing
Pricing data is typically integrated and pulled from the ERP as best practice, but it can also be managed directly within PIM. A PIM can help you take pricing information a step further through personalization and customer-specific offerings.
Product Sales and Marketing Details
A PIM handles all of the product sales and marketing details, such as names and descriptions. It is important to make sure that the descriptions are rich, clear, accurate, and complete. It is also best practice to align these details with your SEO strategy to ensure prospective customers locate your products through web searches.
Product Specifications
PIM helps manage product specifications which help shoppers understand how the product will fit into their lives. Include any specifications that are relevant to making purchasing decisions, choosing between similar products, or choosing between your product and a competitor’s, such as:
- Weight
- Size
- Materials / ingredients
- Compatibility
- Other
Digital Assets
A PIM helps businesses get deeper into the product experience by incorporating digital assets in the ecosystem of product information. Digital assets include:
- Product images
- Product videos
- PDFs / user guides / spec sheets
Variations and Families
A PIM helps businesses organize how products are related to each other in terms of variations and families. The relational structure of products is typically pulled from ERP as the best practice but can also be managed in the PIM system. The relational structure extends to recommendations and personalization as well.
Channels and Feeds
A PIM system can connect to your front-end sales and marketing channels so you can manage all your product info in one place and publish it everywhere. You can create custom feeds to push product data to virtually any channel or format. With a PIM, you can also house and organize those channels and feeds. Workflow and data rules can be customized per feed to meet the differing requirements of various channels (i.e., Amazon needs certain data that Walmart does not).
Dynamicweb's PIM Solution
The Dynamicweb Product Information Management (PIM) solution allows you to consolidate, enrich and validate your product data in one place and publish to all of your online and offline channels to deliver consistent and engaging omnichannel experiences. The Dynamicweb PIM solution measures the quality of your product data to ensure the information is complete, timely, consistent, accurate, and adherent to specified standards, all while minimizing complexity and maximizing flexibility.
To get a head start on PIM implementation, watch this recorded webinar PIM from A-Z.
If you would like to learn more about the benefits that our PIM can provide to your business, download this whitepaper, The Case for Integrated PIM.
And finally, if you have questions or would like to take the next steps to optimize your business with a PIM system, contact us today.