Clear and simple product information is a basic component of effective e-commerce. While brick-and-mortar facilities allow buyers to try and test goods right on the spot, e-commerce is governed by different rules.
Online stores present their products relying solely on visual and textual data. Therefore, it’s essential for e-commerce businesses to provide accurate and exhaustive information to their buyers.
When an online store has thousands and thousands of items, it becomes quite challenging to manage all the product data manually or in apps barely adapted for that. That’s where product information management (PIM) software becomes a real lifeline for e-commerce companies.
In this article, you’ll learn what product information management is, how PIM systems work, who needs to use PIM in their daily activities, and how to select the right solution for your needs.
What Is Product Information Management (PIM)?
Product information management stands for the process of gathering, managing, and sharing product information across various channels from a single spot.
Using PIM applications, companies can create data for both internal use and for sharing with clients and third parties. PIM systems help enterprises improve the quality of collected data and maintain its relevance and timeliness.
Today, product data management involves more than simply filling product descriptions into spreadsheets. It involves deep and detailed data analysis, resulting in the creation of specifications, descriptions, images, and video reviews.
Furthermore, this data is needed by various channels, including suppliers, e-commerce platforms, customers, and various company departments, such as resource planning, business intelligence, marketing, and others. As a result, product data must be comprehensive and easily adaptable to various data request channels.
What Information Does PIM Store?
Every product accumulates a lot of information during its lifecycle. An effective PIM software is able to deal with incoming, outgoing, and cross-department product details information, such as:
- Channel-specific information: Amazon titles, Google categories, mobile descriptions
- Design specifications: Designer notes, style sheets, assembly instructions
- Digital assets: Videos, images, product guides, sell sheets, logos, etc.
- Localized information: Translations, multilingual copy
- Marketing data: Digital personas, keywords, SEO elements, brand guidelines, etc.
- Product data: SKUs, UPCs, names, titles, descriptions, etc.
- Sales information: Testimonials, prices, customer reviews
- Supplier & manufacturer data: Certifications, spreadsheets
- Taxonomy & relationships: Labels, categories, variations
- Technical specifications: Materials, measurements, ingredients, warranties
What Are the Core Features of PIM?
Although different PIM platforms may offer various additional capabilities, most systems share a set of core features designed to simplify product data management and improve collaboration across teams.
Centralized Product Data Management
One of the most important features of a PIM system is the ability to store all product information in a single, centralized database. Instead of keeping data in multiple spreadsheets or disconnected systems, businesses can manage product details from one platform.
Data Enrichment and Content Management
PIM solutions allow companies to enrich their product data by adding detailed descriptions, images, videos, technical specifications, and marketing content. Businesses can enhance product pages with additional information that helps customers better understand the product and make informed purchasing decisions.
Multichannel Data Distribution
Modern businesses sell products through multiple channels, including online stores, marketplaces, mobile apps, and social media platforms.
PIM systems make it easier to adapt and distribute product information across all these channels. Companies can customize product content for each platform and maintain uniform data in the entire ecosystem.
Data Quality and Validation
Maintaining accurate product information is important for building customer trust and preventing costly errors. PIM systems often include validation rules, automated checks, and approval workflows that help product data meet specific quality standards before it is published.
Workflow and Collaboration Tools
PIM platforms support collaboration between different departments such as product management, marketing, and sales. Workflow tools allow teams to assign tasks, track progress, and approve changes to product information.
Integration With Other Business Systems
PIM software is typically integrated with other business tools such as e-commerce platforms, ERP systems, CMS, and DAM platforms. These integrations allow businesses to synchronize product data across systems and maintain consistency throughout their digital infrastructure.
Who Needs a PIM System?
There are several users who refer to PIM systems daily in their work. Let’s have a look at the most common uses of PIM in e-commerce.
- Product managers implement PIM to ensure the most accurate and recent data on the products that they provide to a marketing team. If manufacturers change any item characteristics throughout its lifecycle, product managers can quickly update the data in the app, sending automated alerts to the users logged in to the system.
- Suppliers can use the PIM systems of their client companies for adding and updating any product details, starting from price to delivery dates, etc. Moreover, PIM allows suppliers and distributors to more effectively manage the variety and volume of goods they provide, as well as effectively manage the challenging demands of their customers.
- Product marketers utilize PIM to create a complete and consistent image of the products they sell. Using PIM solutions combined with other marketing systems such as DAM or CMS, they can easily assign tasks for copywriters, photographers, and video makers to create up-to-date content for presenting products.
- E-commerce managers use PIM systems to adjust product content to the needs of a specific sales channel, be it a social network or an e-commerce platform. These systems help managers consolidate data in a centralized repository, where they can update product descriptions, add new ones, or manage products with complex combinations. PIM automates routine operations and enables much faster entry into new marketplaces.
- Manufacturers can keep a single version of their product data in one place, which leads to a significant increase in production efficiency as well as faster time-to-market.
- Customers often add item reviews and comments in diverse selling channels. PIM systems can gather all the customer feedback in one place, allowing e-commerce managers to improve product-related information with the latest data from customers.
How PIM Optimizes a Company’s Internal Processes
Any e-commerce business strives to provide the best brand experience to its customers. For this, they should share the most accurate and latest information on their products with everyone involved in the purchasing/selling process.
PIM software enhances the operational efficiency of e-commerce businesses, bringing their staff and customer experience to a new level. Here are the main benefits PIM users can gain from utilizing this type of software.
Shorter Time-to-Market
The majority of businesses operate in a dynamic market where both conditions and customer demands change rapidly, so time-to-market is a key competitive criterion. By optimizing the product’s path, from development to marketing and sales, PIM software accelerates the delivery of the goods to the end-user.
For example, employees from many departments can work on their products at the same time in PIM software. Marketing specialists can start creating catalogs, even if the goods’ specifications have not been finalized yet.
Once the production department updates data in the central database, the information in the respective catalog is updated as well. Apart from allowing collaborative work on products, the PIM software streamlines manual tasks that otherwise would slow down the process of launching a new product.
Easier to Sell Through Other Channels
It is much easier to find and send product information to price comparison websites when all the data is well organized in the product information management software.
If any data is stored unstructured and scattered across databases, companies have to locate the necessary information first, get it organized into a structure, and finally, save the data in the correct groups.
PIM allows structuring the data so that it can be quickly exported to other channels. Companies can even use third-party tools to provide product details to the relevant websites.
Better Efficiency and Less Manual Work
Many questions can quickly arise when a new product is about to be launched on the market. It can take a long time to clarify them if a company doesn’t have a well-established process. PIM software helps minimize all back-and-forth communication between departments, making product-related operations much faster.
With PIM, delegating responsibilities becomes simpler, and teams can fully concentrate on their main duties and make sure that the rest of the organization can do the same.
Moreover, PIM functionality allows creating workflows that provide a visual overview of how far the different elements have advanced in the process so that no information is lost along the way.
Fewer Product Data Errors
The elimination of the chaos of Excel or Google Sheets, which many businesses use to store their product data, is one of the key reasons why they implement PIM software.
PIM allows businesses to create a structure that ensures the most secure route without errors. In other words, by replacing the Excel sheets with a central database, PIM prevents errors, meaning that all the information is correctly updated on all the channels.
Enriching Products With Additional Data
Many e-commerce businesses sell products where buyers can find identical items offered by competitors. Therefore, it is crucial for e-commerce businesses to enrich product descriptions with unique information to make their products stand out.
To avoid the case when they and their rivals offer the same goods in the exact same way, companies can diversify their product descriptions with additional details in PIM, differentiating themselves from their competitors.
Better Marketing Campaign Management
Any marketing campaign basically consists of a range of products to be presented in a particular way to customers. This is exactly what PIM software can do.
With PIM software, e-commerce businesses can model their product groups and monitor which data will be presented and in what context. For example, different points of focus are aimed at different geographical regions.
This facilitates the process of setting up and running campaigns. It also makes it easier to adjust product data along the way, since marketers just need to change the information in a single location.
Faster Product Catalog Production
Although we live in a world that is increasingly digital, a traditional printed catalog is still relevant in many spheres.
As a genre, however, the catalog is pressured by the incredible growth of the market. It’s quite challenging for marketers to maintain printed catalogs as they quickly become outdated. PIM significantly speeds up the paper catalog creation process as specialists can start adding the products to it, even though not all the details have been finalized.
When Your Business Needs PIM Software
Retailers and e-commerce businesses of all sizes can benefit from using PIM software. However, it does become an essential tool when your organization:
- Promotes products on several different channels. PIM helps to provide consistent item information across various selling channels.
- Operates in multiple markets and communicates in many languages. Each new language adds difficulty, making it hard to efficiently manage marketing manually.
- Pursues growth targets, which makes it imperative to increase the marketing activities. High activity means that there are multiple activities to organize and optimize, and this is the case when PIM software can demonstrate a high ROI quickly.
- Has complex product information. For example, this could be due to a large volume of data and descriptions, the use of metadata, or complicated data relationships.
- Wants to enrich the data you have or receive more product information from suppliers. Without PIM software, it may be time-consuming to manage the importation of information from several suppliers. What is more, the data is often provided in different formats, with inconsistent quality.
- Has to copy and paste information and send it from one system to another. PIM software can automate some of the manual processes.
How to Choose the Right PIM?
Choosing the right PIM system is important for businesses that want to organize and manage their product data. Still, since companies differ in the number of products they sell and the complexity of their product information, the selected PIM solution should match the company’s specific needs.
First, businesses should understand what kind of product data they manage. This includes the number of products, the type of information stored about them, and how many sales channels use this data. Companies with large product catalogs, detailed specifications, or multilingual content usually benefit the most from using a PIM system.
It is also important to make sure that the PIM system can integrate with other software used by the company.
For example, it may need to connect with e-commerce platforms, ERP systems, or content management systems. Good integration helps keep product information consistent across all platforms.
Another factor to consider is scalability. As a business grows, it may add more products, enter new markets, or start selling through additional channels. A good PIM solution should be able to support this growth without major changes to the system.
Finally, it’s essential to estimate ease of use. Product managers, marketers, and e-commerce specialists often work with PIM systems daily, so the platform should be simple to navigate and update.
Why Businesses Choose Custom PIM Software
There are a variety of ready-made PIM apps that can be used for selling various products and creating an effective workflow for an e-commerce company. However, many retail businesses still choose to custom PIM solutions, and here is why:
- Custom PIM software is developed based on a company’s specific needs, often with the support of PIM consulting services. This ensures that all features included in the system match the tasks and processes the company performs on a daily basis.
- Unlike off-the-shelf solutions, custom PIM apps can be adjusted to integrate with certain apps. Moreover, app owners can scale up/down their solutions by adding/removing their features, or add more computing power and expand databases with the growing number of users.
- Custom PIM creation requires major investments only during the project development. Whereas ready-made software is available only via subscription, and the fee grows if a company adds more features or wants to scale up their solution to a limited extent.
- When requesting PIM creation from a software development company, app owners obtain the source code of the app. It means that they acquire full rights over the digital solution, and all the experience and information gained through many years won’t disappear if a ready-made PIM provider stops delivering their app as a service.
Final words on PIM
Product data is the core element of any e-commerce marketing. Using a detailed and consistent product description allows online retail businesses to retain existing customers and attract new ones, effectively increasing their revenues.
However, supporting product data manually is a challenging task, especially if the volume of goods grows exponentially and companies use several selling channels. Therefore, many businesses opt for e-commerce development to build their own PIM solutions.
PIM software helps companies to simplify their product data management as well as supports the entire process of designing, preparing, enriching, and launching products.
If you think you need a custom product information management (PIM) solution, the SCAND team provides comprehensive software development services for companies looking to manage their product information and deliver superior product experience.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is PIM in e-commerce?
Product Information Management (PIM) is a system that helps businesses collect, manage, and distribute product information from a single platform. It ensures that product data such as descriptions, specifications, images, and prices stays consistent across all sales channels.
Who needs a PIM system?
PIM systems are useful for retailers, e-commerce businesses, manufacturers, and distributors that manage large product catalogs or sell products through multiple channels. They help organize product data and simplify collaboration between teams.
What are the main benefits of PIM?
PIM systems help businesses manage product data more efficiently, reduce manual work, improve data accuracy, and publish product information across multiple platforms faster. They also make it easier to maintain consistent product information across different sales channels.
Can PIM integrate with other business systems?
Yes, most PIM systems can integrate with other platforms such as e-commerce systems, ERP solutions, CMS platforms, and marketing tools. These integrations allow companies to synchronize product data across different systems.
What is the difference between PIM and ERP?
ERP systems manage core business processes such as finance, inventory, and supply chains. PIM systems focus specifically on managing product information and preparing it for marketing and sales channels. In many companies, PIM and ERP systems work together.
