Driving E-commerce Value with PIM – Product Information Management

What is Product Information Management (PIM)?

PIM stands for Product Information Management. It is a system or software that helps businesses manage and organize their product information in a centralized and structured manner. PIM is particularly important in the context of e-commerce, where businesses need to efficiently handle large volumes of product data and ensure its accuracy and consistency across various sales channels.

The Value of PIM for Small and Midsize E-commerce Businesses:

PIM tools streamline the internal processes associated with product listings, marketing initiatives, translation/language versioning, product life cycle management and more. Here are the key benefits of Boyum‘s Product Information Management solution, Perfion:

1. A single source of truth for product information: PIM allows businesses to collect and store all data related to their products in a centralized location. This ensures that all product information, including images, videos, descriptions, and specifications, is easily accessible and up-to-date.
2. Improved efficiency and productivity: With a PIM system, businesses can categorize and customize their product information in a way that works for everyone in the organization. This helps to streamline workflows, reduce bottlenecks, and eliminate data silos, leading to increased productivity and efficiency.
3. Enhanced data accuracy and consistency: PIM ensures that product data remains clean, tidy, and adheres to a single source of truth. By eliminating manual updates and redundancies, PIM helps to maintain data accuracy and consistency across different sales channels and marketing campaigns.
4. Time-to-value: Designed to be implemented quickly, user-friendly/easy to use and easy to maintain, Perfion is a 100% standard system for Product Information Management (PIM). It means that it can be integrated into existing systems without the need for extensive customization, which allows businesses to deploy/start using Perfion and benefiting from its features in a short amount of time!
5. Scalability and future readiness: PIM systems are highly scalable, allowing businesses to manage thousands of product listings and variations within the system. This makes PIM particularly valuable for growing businesses that need to handle diverse product lines and work with multiple sales channels and suppliers.

Main Features

The main features of Perfion’s Product Information Management (PIM) solution, as mentioned on their website, include:

• Product Data and Digital Assets Management: Perfion allows you to manage all your product data and related marketing assets from one central location, making it easier to keep information consistent across all sales and marketing channels. Supported types of assets include text, image, video, audio and more!
• Multi-Channel Publishing: Publish your product data simultaneously across your platforms, ensuring that your information is always accurate and up-to-date – from websites to e-commerce, data sheets and catalogs.
• Automation and Digital Workflows: Perfion PIM offers automation features, such as data inheritance and item triggers to streamline processes and reduce manual work.
• Translation Management: The PIM system automates collaboration with translation agencies, making it easy to maintain an overview of product texts that have been sent for translation and their status.
• Out-of-the-Box Integration: Perfion PIM seamlessly integrates with your existing IT systems, including business management software and online stores, making it easy to incorporate into your current infrastructure.

Should Your Small or Midsize Business Use a PIM?

The decision to utilize a Product Information Management (PIM) system depends on two key factors:

1. Detailed Information Provision: It is crucial for your company to provide comprehensive and detailed information to your customers. A PIM system goes beyond simply displaying product features. It helps you standardize and present quality standards, maintenance recommendations, and repair options.
2. Size of Product Catalog: Consider whether the size of your product catalog necessitates better management through a PIM system.

If you meet any of the following criteria, it is recommended to implement a PIM system:

• Offering more than 15,000 products to your customers
• Providing supporting content such as images, certificates, and PDFs
• Displaying product information in multiple languages
• Selling complex products that require detailed explanation
• Using product data in various places like your web store, brochures, or marketplaces
• Having products with many different and specific characteristics, such as food companies, technical wholesalers, or chemical wholesalers

Overall, PIM offers small and midsize e-commerce businesses the ability to effectively manage their product information, improve efficiency, maintain data accuracy, and prepare for future growth.