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Why does Product Information Management (PIM) matter today?
DynamicWeb
Learn why optimization of product information is a must for all participants in supply chains - and how Dynamicweb PIM can give you full control.
The shift from selling products in physical stores with the help of a personal sales assistant to selling products online has made digitalization and optimization of product information a must for all participants in supply chains.
Take control of your product information
Today you need to manage much more than just an internally understood product description and a price for your products. Managing rich product information in a future digitalized world will, done the right way, make you sell more by:
✔️ Enabling happy self-service scenarios for online purchases
✔️ Underpinning personalization in product offering
✔️ Allowing you to take advantage of product relationships
Furthermore, you can reduce costs by:
✔️ Minimizing product returns
✔️ Automating the handling of product data
Enabling self-service scenarios
Self-service purchase decisions need comprehensive and granular product information because the buyer...
👉 Must be able to search and navigate quickly to the product in mind within the web-shop
👉 Needs to be sure that he/she is choosing the right product for the intended purpose of use
👉 Will like to compare relevant products from different brands using the same metrics.
Providing your customer with these possibilities will make you sell more and reduce costs by minimizing product returns.
Your customer will need to have access to very specific product information to find and choose the right product with certainty. This includes the specific and granular facts related to the product in mind as well as images and documents related to the products.
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📣 According to FDIH (Danish Ecommerce Association)... 81% of shoppers will leave a web-shop with inadequate product information (The Danish Ecommerce Association). Over 7,000 respondents were asked if they would turn away from a web-shop if the product information is incomplete or the product image is bad. 52 % answered that they totally agree and 29 % more agreed. 12 % were not sure. 4 % disagreed and 3 % totally disagreed. |
The type of product information that you need to show the customer is dependent on your industry and the product itself. Technical products such as an electric bike needs emphasis on presenting the technical data of the battery, gears and components. As compared to more visual products such as interior design products which focus on images and stories selling the products.
Making true personalization happen
35% of Amazon’s revenue is due to product recommendation (McKinsey). All large ecommerce solutions do it. They present product recommendations based on your buying behavior and its possible with a PIM system.
Personalization of product offers require specific product attributes. Knowing about your customer, what he/she wants, and their buying behavior is one side of the personalization. The other side is being able to match these data with relevant products. For this quest, you need to structure all the hard facts about the products in your range. A PIM system enables you to do both. By sourcing Product data through your PIM system and referencing it with your Ecommerce data on buyer behavior you can present the visitors with relevant products.
By doing that you will be able to do more than merely presenting the products your visitor already have looked and in best case what others also looked at. By having access to structured product information, you can suggest and present products that have the same features and fulfil the same purposes.
Utilizing product relationships
Increased online sales must encompass product relationships. The good old salesman always made sure the customer left the shop with the best option for the product in mind - and the additional products needed to fulfil the intended purpose of use.
A webshop must work in the same way and will optimally do this job even better based on the huge amount of digitalized product information available.
Automation of data flows
Handling elaborate product information cannot be done properly and in a cost-effective way without being supported by the right technology for the job. A PIM system automates the flow of data from purchases and ensures having one truth for your products throughout your corporation. You can even integrate it directly to your ERP system and distribution channels to make effective imports and exports of your product information.
A recent business case made by a Dynamicweb PIM customer showed that the cost of handling product data using manual oriented work processes were 54,000 EUR, while by using the PIM solution the costs of handling the same data were only 15,000 EUR. This means a cost reduction by 39,000 EUR or put in another way, down to under 30 % of the costs of doing it without the proper technology.
Some facts about the cost study:
✔️ The amount of data encompassed 10,000 SKUs having on average 70 attributes each
✔️ The attributes were to be populated in 3 languages
✔️ 33 % of the data were to be refreshed within a year
The main cost reductions were achieved by:
✔️ Reducing workload from 693,000 to 429,000 attributes yearly
✔️ Doubling the speed of putting through the required workload
✔️ Dramatic reduction of time spent on digital assets
✔️ The cost reduction paid well for the software license costs – in this case 6,000 EUR per year
Calculate your PIM ROI 📊
Are you considering PIM system but unsure of the business case? Try our PIM RoI calculator and see your potential yearly saving by using a PIM system for your ecommerce solution.