Introduction

Enterprises with many product lines and categories have complex product data managed by humans at all levels. Unfortunately, traditional data storing facilities are tedious, and humans often make mistakes in the entire process. In today’s competitive world, even a tiny mistake can lead to a dissatisfactory customer experience, affecting a company’s value.

Product Information Management (PIM) software collects and manages all the data of your business’ products. It allows retailers, wholesalers, companies, or manufacturers to control their products from a central place. It is the single source of truth from which stakeholders can add, manage, and retrieve information about the product.

Indications that you need a PIM platform

If a company grows only in revenue and product line, it is not real growth. 80% of people lose trust in businesses with incorrect information online. When customers stop buying your products because of incorrect product information, the time is not far. Thus, it is crucial to evaluate your company’s position based on the following factors and get a robust PIM software for your company’s growth.

Growing product line and channels

At first, a few handfuls of products and resellers will be easy to maintain in a spreadsheet. However, with business growth, the product lines increase. Moreover, a growing business also increases sales by using new resale channels, launching its ecommerce website, or selling on popular ecommerce platforms like Amazon.

Therefore, maintaining data for different products and media on the spreadsheet becomes challenging as it will take thousands of spreadsheets and tons of hours to collate the data. You must invest in a robust PIM when your product line gets more extensive and you expand your sales channels.

Low productivity from employees

Increasing operations often burden the employees. When you started your business, the product range must have been minimal; therefore, so were your employees’ spreadsheets. However, increasing your product range and channels adds up sheets, causing your employees to scratch their heads while delivering the correct information across all channels. Thus, the old product data management system not only consumes time but also hampers your employees’ productivity in different ways. First, they are burdened with redundant work that must be completed without mistakes.

With PIM, you can set up workflows and automated tasks to deliver an excellent customer service experience and have a highly productive team that can deal with everything with a fresh mind. They just need to enter a keyword to get all the related details of any product, saving time spent collecting information from different spreadsheets.

Internal product data loss

An elaborate supply chain facilitates product selling across channels. For example, a business has product managers, marketing teams, manufacturers, etc., for every channel. Hence, there are high chances of losing data when it exchanges hands. For instance, the product manager added the product details and sent the file to the marketing team. So, if the product manager makes any changes, they will get lost as the marketing team will submit the old file with their inputs. Such scenarios of data loss are prevalent in organizations with multiple departments.

A PIM solution software makes managing large volumes of information and its interdependencies easy and simplified. Besides, every department can access the software and make changes at any time, which will be updated and reflected in the system. A PIM software eliminates the risk of data loss altogether. Moreover, it lets the teams work on identical product information simultaneously, thus optimizing delivery time.

Better customer experience is the goal

Customer experience is a critical term that promotes loyalty and helps a business grow, especially in an eCommerce transaction where the product page has to perform the duty of a salesperson and persuade the buyer. This majorly pertains to the ease of the shopping experience. For instance, your product page must contain the correct product information to help the buyer identify the right product from the right vendor. Moreover, the product information page must have enriched product information that answers the customer’s questions. Lastly, providing appropriate discount details is the key to persuading the buyer to purchase your product.

PIM helps you master the customer experience by perfecting the product catalog. A product page is the customer’s first impression of your product. Therefore, it plays a vital role in a customer’s decision-making. The best PIM tool gives a perfect makeover to your product page, adding all the details necessary for a buyer to choose your product over your competitors.

Distributing data to digital channels

With numerous marketplaces and channels available for selling, data volume can pose the biggest hindrance to expansion. Customers buy from the company’s online retail store, social media, or other marketplace. Moreover, all channels have different conventions and models. Hence, the data needs to be fed differently. Using configurable templates and data mapping, PIM helps prepare the product content for distribution to different channels according to their requirement.

Customer service is severely affected

Good customer service is the center of a successful business. Accordingly, it is difficult for a company with unhappy customers to thrive and succeed. According to a study, 96% of customers leave because of lousy customer service. Companies following ancient data management techniques are prone to human error and other unavoidable inaccuracies. In addition, it affects the overall customer experience and results in piles of complaints. An error can occur at any point in the supply chain and in any form. For instance, the product data is old, expired, not updated, wrong, or inconsistent in stock-keeping units, to name a few.

It becomes imperative for the organization to adopt a PIM software solution if there have been issues in inventory management, order placement, processing, and delivery of data quality governance. However, such errors may not help them convert potential customers smoothly. Moreover, they may also lose existing clients.

Summary

When a company grows, there is an increase in the product line and selling channels. A company’s growth also leads to increased information and data, which they must retain correctly. It is not necessary to use PIM software from the beginning, but after seeing the company grow, it is better to start using it before the volume of data increases. PIM software can help your company manage a massive amount of data and keep it organized for all activities.

Unbxd PIM empowers your digital shelf with the easy import of product information, managing, optimizing, and enriching product content at scale. Reach out to us for a free demo!