The product data management process often begins with fields and columns in spreadsheets. Then, this raw data must be put through a PIM tool's wringer before finding its place on product listing pages on ecommerce sites.

Take, for example, a global sportswear brand that makes kits for international football competitions and gets its product inventory from suppliers in Tirupur, a small industrial town in the south of India. Or a computer brand that sources storage components from Thailand, display panels from South Korea, and plastic casings from China.

Challenges of Product Data Imports

The detailed product information shoppers see on these brands' websites or channel partners like Amazon and Walmart needs to be sourced from India, China, Thailand, and South Korea. Complex sourcing ecosystems like these create challenges with data imports.

For example:

• Suppliers can be distributed far and wide across the world. When sourcing files via outdated mechanisms such as emails and calls, delays occur as product teams have to deal with time zones and language differences.
• Brands need help to ensure data accuracy. This means the product files that end up on the desk of the product teams need to be checked and validated by a cumbersome, manual process.
• Brands may not enforce consistency in formatting product files from their suppliers. The files need to be reconciled to one standard format for internal use.
• Maintaining data in spreadsheets and documents often means members of a product team maintain multiple copies on each local machine. Distributed, redundant copies make it harder to keep track of the latest, most updated version. The wrong file could be sent out to sales channels, meaning shoppers could see incomplete and inaccurate product information.
• Collaborating with suppliers/vendors to update data over email and calls can get tedious and time-consuming. This becomes especially critical when product teams need to keep tight deadlines during peak shopping periods, such as Black Friday.

How Unbxd PIM makes data imports easy for ecommerce stores?

A cloud-based PIM tool like Unbxd PIM can make data imports a lot easier for product teams:

• Suppliers can be given their logins and directly upload product information into Unbxd PIM.
• Unbxd PIM creates a central repository of data that all product team members can easily access and update, ensuring that there's just one up-to-date version.
• Unbxd PIM can seamlessly extract data from product files, regardless of their format. Product teams can upload the files received from their suppliers, and the data is imported into Unbxd PIM.
• With Unbxd PIM, product teams can automate data correction, saving time and manual effort.
• Unbxd PIM can facilitate real-time collaboration between the product team and external stakeholders like suppliers/vendors. This can speed things up substantially compared to back and forth over long email threads.

Unbxd PIM can help brands, and ecommerce companies easily manage product data imports using AI and ML-based automation features. Product teams can efficiently handle large volumes of data, enrich it with digital assets, and easily publish it to multiple sales channels.

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