You may have been hearing a lot about PIM lately, and you may be wondering what makes it so important. Or how PIM for eCommerce is changing the B2B and B2C spaces.
As of right now, it looks like more than half of the product-focused companies around the world will use PIM by 2023 to give their customers a great experience with their products.
But what does the PIM mean? By reading this article, you will learn everything there is to know about PIM for eCommerce and the features it offers.
What’s PIM?
PIM, which stands for “Product Information Manager” and should not be confused with “Personal Information Manager” or “Pym Particles,” is a piece of software that can be used to create a central hub for storing and managing all of your organization’s product information data.
Even though the term “Product Information Management” has been around for a while, it didn’t really start to catch on until after the year 2003. Since the number of online shops has grown so quickly in recent years, it’s hard to think of an eCommerce platform that doesn’t have a PIM system.
If you are a manufacturer or distributor, you probably already know how hard and time-consuming it is to create and manage product information like photos, titles, product descriptions, and specs for your online and offline product catalogs.
When you give your customer such a large amount of data, you also have to spend a lot of time formatting it according to the instructions they gave you. PIM is a useful tool that can help speed up not just one process, but a lot of similar ones as well.
PIM gets product information from ERP systems, data suppliers, procurement systems, marketing teams, product suppliers, and warehouses. It then stores this information. It then sends this information to a number of eCommerce channels, such as an online store, a marketplace, a mobile app, print catalogs, and POS (point of sale), among others.
You and the rest of your team will have access to a unified user interface that will let you change and manage a wide range of data, such as the product title, specifications, SKU number, photos, and videos. This huge amount of information about products can be easily shared both inside teams and with wholesalers, retailers, suppliers, and customers outside of the company.
Now, if you’re wondering what else you can get out of saving and sharing better product information for your product or catalog, here are a few use cases that might help you figure it out.
How PIM is used
- Easy growth into new areas and the ability to keep track of different marketing channels.
- Give customers a great experience with the product in an easy way. Reduce the number of wrong product orders, which will increase conversion rates in the long run.
- Serve as a data store and connect to the software of other companies.
- Marketing works better and is easier to do.
When do you need a PIM system?
A PIM system usually has more than one application and can be used by a wide range of people within an organization or by everyone in a supply chain. Here are some common types of people who use a PIM system:
Suppliers
Using the Product Information Management system, a provider can change or update the information about a product and then share that information with either his or her customers or with retailers and brands.
Team for Marketing and Sales
These groups always give information about products in the form of features that grab the reader’s attention or shiny, appealing photos. They need a PIM system so they can add information and make sure that information is the same across all of the marketing channels they use.
eCommerce Managers
Managers who work in the eCommerce market can use a PIM to learn more about how the quality of product data affects online sales.
Data Teams
PIM is used by data teams to make sure the data meets compliance needs.
Help for customers
The customer support team must have a PIM system so that they can track the flow of complaints and comments from clients and pass this information on to the team working on the product.
R&D Department
They might use it to store technical information like CAD/CAM drawings and product specs.
Even though the above users are likely to be the most common ones who use a PIM system, how the system is used varies from company to company.
Information a PIM Can Get to
- A PIM can be used to handle many different kinds of data, but the most common ones are:
- Technical data is information about the most important parts of a product, like its size, weight, material, color, and parts.
- Use Data: Information about a product, such as how to use it or how to put it in a sentence.
- Emotional data can be anything about the product, like a story or a description, but its purpose is to make people feel something about it.
- Media Data: Any media data like music, video, or a picture.
What a PIM System Can Do for You
As was just said, PIM is used in many different ways by different companies. Even though each has different requirements and ways to use it, the benefits are the same for all. Some of the benefits of adding a product information management system to an online retailing platform are as follows:
One Experience for All Customers
If you are a manufacturer or brand that needs to look at thousands of products and make sure that all of the product information is the same across multiple channels, you probably already know that doing this by hand is a hard and time-consuming task. You can save a lot of time and work by making this process automatic.
This process might be much easier to handle with a PIM system. You can also make sure that all of your customers have the same experience with you, no matter what channel they use to talk to you. It also lets you speed up your marketing tasks while you’re on the go.
Controlled Distribution of Content
When you have a PIM in place, you’ll be able to limit how much information you share with your customers and vendors.
For example, if you sell uniforms and share product descriptions with a number of different shops, you could just limit the amount of information you share with those shops to make your website stand out from the websites of other retailers.
You can also choose to limit the information your favorite merchants share with other people by giving them better or more product information, photos, or other details.
More work done in less time.
Most manufacturers, retailers, and distributors work with their partners and suppliers to find better ways to cut down on time wasted on mistakes and jobs that involve doing the same thing over and over again.
By automating the repetitive process of exchanging high-quality data, you can reduce the amount of time you spend entering data by hand. Because of this, you’ll soon have more time to work on other things that need your attention.
Combined the latest technologies
There is a big need for structured data because B2B and B2C eCommerce is changing quickly. This is due, in part, to the introduction of new technologies like artificial intelligence and augmented reality. A Product Information Management system (PIM) is a key part of these kinds of technological advances because it makes it easy to get the product data that has been collected over time.