Manufacturers and retailers from abroad in particular secure their market share primarily through their quantitative strengths, i.e. price. German companies, on the other hand, aim to differentiate themselves primarily through product quality. Regardless of which positioning a company focuses on, differentiation based solely on price or product is becoming increasingly difficult due to growing market transparency. In both the B2C and B2B environment, buyers research and evaluate products via online stores, comparison portals, marketplaces, product catalogs and other channels. Information asymmetries are decreasing, which ultimately results in a shift in power from retailers to potential buyers. In order to stand out from the competition, the expansion of the customer experience is becoming increasingly important. Marketing and sales managers are faced with the challenge of providing their interest groups with relevant information that delivers real added value in the purchasing decision process – anytime, anywhere.
In order to meet these increasing demands in product communication, innovative technologies are required that centrally collect, manage and enrich product information and digital media and distribute it to the relevant channels. However, conventional merchandise management or store systems are not designed for such extensive data maintenance and quickly reach their limits. An efficient and user-friendly product information system (PIM) is therefore needed that can keep pace with future increases in data volumes and the growing requirements of the various stakeholders (customers, suppliers, partners, retailers, marketplaces).
A modern PIM solution offers enormous advantages both for retailers, who are confronted with a constantly increasing amount of product data, and for manufacturers, who need to compile coherent product information centrally.
For example, a shorter time-to-market, as a large number of different employees and departments are involved in the marketing of products and services for organizational reasons. This is usually accompanied by an equally large number of data silos, each of which stores different data sets. If each of these individual teams now has access to a uniform data source, essential processes can be optimized in terms of time and costs. At the same time, internal workflows are noticeably harmonized, as a PIM system enables a freely definable and flexibly adaptable role allocation at any time. This means that practically any person with access rights can retrieve all relevant data from a central repository, significantly reducing research and search effort. Redundancies in work processes are avoided, the productivity of individual teams is increased and a uniform implementation of marketing strategies is made possible.
As a PIM system functions as a “single source of truth”, it also serves as a continuous and automated checkpoint for the product information stored in it. If essential attributes are missing, for example, these can be added (partially) automatically. This creates a complete and consistent data set for all products and services.
This consistency is also a critical factor in the distribution of information. This is because customers quickly come into contact with dozens of touchpoints during their customer journey and expect uniform, detailed and quickly retrievable product data. A PIM system offers the additional advantage of being able to automatically display individual product or service components to the intended target group. The optimized presentation to the respective channels also takes place automatically and thus contributes to a successful product experience and more brand awareness beyond the purchasing process.
The efficient management of personalized content also increases the conversion rate and reduces the number of returns for e-commerce operators, as customers are provided with relevant information during their information process, which contributes to better purchasing decisions.
The use of PIM solutions offers further explicit advantages in marketing, for example through automated production processes for sales materials such as manuals, product presentations and price lists. Detailed analysis tools also help marketers to better assess the performance of content-centered advertising campaigns and thus adjust priorities and budgets more efficiently. Last but not least, eCommerce SEO also benefits in the long term by providing product pages with accurate and highly searched metadata for appealing product titles and descriptions as well as high-resolution images and high-quality video content.
Strong PIM systems such as prodexa Cloud also offer a wide range of industry-specific benefits: From the versatile use of cross-selling potential for spare parts and accessories, to the time-saving creation of entire product sets, to the support of (also self-defined) data standards such as BMECat and the enrichment of digital assets such as CAD files, product documentation or exploded drawings.
At the same time, web-based PIM solutions also serve as an additional, useful tool for sales and advisory discussions, even for the sales force. All relevant product information is available on mobile devices, which significantly improves the quality of customer advice. In addition, important marketing and sales materials (brochures, instructions, graphics, 3D visualizations, videos, etc.) can be shared directly with the customer on site, which also leads to greater customer satisfaction.
The larger your own product portfolio grows, the more output channels you serve and the more markets with different product declarations you have to consider, the greater the time and cost savings.
Experience the advantages of prodexa live for your industry and arrange your non-binding and individual product tour now. Continue to gain valuable insights and inspiration in the success stories of our industry customers.
Professioneller Omnichannel Commerce ist längst nicht mehr eine Disziplin, die ausschließlich große Unternehmen und Konzerne betrifft. Der boomende Markt an digitalen Lösungsanbietern öffnet auch kleinen und mittelständischen Unternehmen die Türen…
Professioneller Omnichannel Commerce ist längst nicht mehr eine Disziplin, die ausschließlich große Unternehmen und Konzerne betrifft. Der boomende Markt an digitalen Lösungsanbietern öffnet auch kleinen und mittelständischen Unternehmen die Türen…
Die Qualität von Produktdaten ist oft kaufentscheidend. Mit der Einführung eines PIM-Systems sparen Unternehmen Zeit und Geld. Die fünf Top-Gründe haben wir zusammengefasst.
Wie unterscheiden sich die Disziplinen PXM, PIM und DAM? Wir demonstrieren die Unterschiede der Datenmanagementsysteme und zeigen auf, in welchem Zusammenhang diese zueinanderstehen und für welche Geschäftsmodelle sie sich eignen.
