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"Generating competitive advantages with PIM"

Excerpt: We present typical issues from daily business in digital marketing, sales and product management that question the benefits of a PIM system. At the same time, an excerpt of independent KPIs is intended to illustrate how companies from different industries use PIM to increase their efficiency and further expand their competitive advantages.

Profitability of Pim Systems

In this article we have shown that product information management (PIM) plays an important role especially for growing e-commerce companies. While many companies in this sector have already successfully established their PIM strategy, there are other companies that still have doubts about the benefits of PIM software. We have explained in this post that a PIM system is useful for companies from all sectors and of all sizes on the basis of various problems in daily business.

“PIM is a broad set of processes that ensures an organization has the ability to collect, store and access all information related to their products. PIM provides a central product information system that works as a single interface for all enterprise-wide product based information. The application of PIM is evident in e-commerce business processes, where one product may be globally available to one or more stores. Vendors often use PIM techniques in a single database application to store product portfolio information – such as images, data sheets and videos – that are shared and accessible by third party retailers or business partners.”

Source: Techopedia Dictionary, 2022

Even small companies that market just a few products benefit from a PIM system as they no longer have to spend time managing their product information manually in confusing Excel spreadsheets. This is especially helpful when the product portfolio is constantly growing and the product information is compiled from many different sources and suppliers. A PIM system is also advantageous when companies focus on an omnichannel strategy and need to ensure consistent product communication across numerous touchpoints. The following questions should encourage you to question the benefits of PIM for your own company:

  • Is the number of products to be managed in the company constantly increasing?
  • Do you have to manage digital assets (e.g. images, videos, 3D visualisations, etc.) in addition to product information?
  • Do you spend a lot of time each month correcting, enriching and distributing product data?
  • Do you present your products through multiple sales and communication channels? Are there discrepancies in the information content of product communication?
  • Are your stakeholders (partners, suppliers, customers, employees) dissatisfied due to outdated, incomplete product data?
  • Do you have above-average return rates or too low conversion rates that could be prevented with better product information?

If you can answer “yes” to most of the questions above, your company will benefit from a PIM system – no matter which industry it is in.

Remarkable Benefits of PIM

A PIM system is one of the most important tools for retailers and manufacturers in multi-channel marketing and sales. It makes the process of information enrichment easier and smoother. Teams and external stakeholders manage product-related information in one central location, regardless of their location. From there, they have an overview of all published and shared product information. Changes and updates can also be transparently tracked in a detailed history. This is why the PIM system is often referred to as the “single source of truth”. At the same time, clear dashboards provide important information on the use of the individual data. For example, valuable insights can be gained regarding which product descriptions and digital assets provide real added value for the customer in the purchase decision process. 

PIM systems not only improve data quality and thus the customer experience. They also increase efficiency by accelerating the speed of recurring processes through workflow automation. Especially for companies with international markets and increasing brand touchpoints and channels, a PIM system scales with the number of products.

Below you will find some KPIs that exemplify how companies can use PIM to increase their efficiency and thus further expand their competitive advantage:

  • 100% reduction in email traffic for approval and capture of media data (from 25 to 0 emails) (industry: luxury goods retail)
  • Accelerate product launches by up to 400% (Industry: retail)
  • Up to 70% time savings in translating product information (from 10 to 3 days) (Industry: Luxury goods retail)
  • Up to 94% time savings in system integration after the acquisition of a new subsidiary (from 3 months to 5 days) (Industry: Industrial distribution)
  • 60% increase in business volume after only 2 years, as the entire product range is available online (sector: retail)
  • Up to 25% fewer returns on online orders thanks to comprehensive product information and a better informed purchasing decision (sector: building materials)
  • Increase in average basket size by up to 21% thanks to improved cross-selling (sector: building materials retail)
  • Increase in conversion rate from 10 % to 20 % (sector: fashion)

Source: Data-Talks, „How PIM & MDM Boosts eCommerce KPIs”, 2020

PIM systems help companies automate and accelerate the entire marketing process of their products, improving productivity across departments (marketing, sales, product management). By standardising complex workflows, efficiency in the company is increased in the long term and at the same time more resources are available for new projects.

Find out in a non-binding online demo how you can use prodexa Cloud to better connect your products, customers, suppliers, employees and locations to generate additional competitive advantages. Our experts will be happy to demonstrate the benefits of prodexa Cloud for your industry based on practical use cases with a similar requirement profile.

More articles:

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PIM simply explained

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Manually collecting product data from numerous suppliers and manufacturers can result in very time-consuming and error-prone processes for retailers. We show how retailers can use intelligent supplier onboarding to transfer product data quickly and securely, thereby ensuring scalable workflows.

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Due to their enormous reach, online marketplaces are increasingly being taken into account in B2B and
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Germany and give you tips on how to market your products successfully on them.

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