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Product information is often stored and updated in various systems across an organization. When the same data is used by your product development, marketing, and procurement teams, the data sets exist in silos, the information is not standardized, and errors occur.
A Product Information Management system, also called a PIM system, acts as a single source of truth for all types of product data, which you only maintain from one location.
Inside the PIM system, you can structure the product information in just the way you want it to appear in the company’s various sales and marketing channels. You no longer have to go into the e-commerce platform, the InDesign files, Excel spreadsheets, or other places in order to rearrange the order of the products or remove or add product data manually. It is all handled in the PIM system, and the changes are automatically reflected in all languages and in all channels which you choose to link with the PIM system.
This way, you reduce time spent on manual work considerably. The number of errors and oversights are minimized, and everyone in the organization uses the same data when making business decisions.
A single source of truth for product data can optimize all your company’s processes that involve product data. However, implementing PIM in your organization means that you will change some of your work processes – simply because you have obtained a tool that makes optimizing possible.
Yet there is good reason to map out how your more basic work processes look and what the interfaces are like between the different departments and their use of product information.
The PIM system must support your work processes in the best possible way – not least in relation to role management. Who should have access to do what? Should different departments each have their own rights? Should product data be able to be locked in certain stages? What should external contributors have access to?
The answers to these questions will place important demands on your future PIM system. To create an overview, you can use the following fundamental questions as a starting point.
An important parameter to deal with in this context is the PIM system’s way of displaying tasks which can and must be done. One can basically distinguish between whether a PIM system sets the scene for working sequentially or in a parallel manner with the handling of product information. That is, whether a task must be finished before the next can be started, or whether several users can perform various tasks at the same time in relation to product information. Therefore, it is worth considering what is best for your organization.
It can be overwhelming to change the entire company’s data enrichment processes, but the gains justify the effort. In our step-by-step guide “How to optimize the entire value chain with PIM” you will learn to create an overview on how each department accesses and enriches product information through the product’s life cycle.
You will most likely be surprised how many different employees actually need to access and work with product data. Once you have the overview, you can utilize your PIM system as a motor for a number of business value chain optimizations.
