Product Information Management System
A Product Information Management (PIM) system catapults your customers’ experience to the next level
A product information management (PIM) system helps you collect, consolidate and distribute accurate product data across your business network. It gives your customers consistent access to detailed and relevant product information including SKUs, descriptions, specifications, images, videos and more.
When your business is small, it’s easy to keep track of all your product information. As it grows, managing all the data can quickly become a minefield.
There’s a lot that can go wrong, from discrepancies in SKUs, prices and promotions through to out-of-date inventory numbers or incorrectly allocated images and videos. Every error costs you time and money – and negatively impacts your customers’ experience and hence your bottom line.
Avoid these costly mistakes with a PIM that holds all your product data in one master system and ensures your customers know exactly what they’re buying.
Note: A PIM is sometimes known by these alternative names:
Item Master
Product Data Manager (PDM)
Product Content Manager (PCM)
Product Resource Manager (PRM)
Product Image Manager (PIM)
What can you do with a PIM?
A PIM centralises all your master product data into a single management system. This allows several teams to collaborate in approving one true version of all product information. With a single source of data for every product-related purpose, you can quickly and easily:
Update product prices, descriptions and specs across the board
Link products to all their related images and documents
Create cross-sell and up-sell relationships between products
Create categories for easy management
Create, publish and update product catalogues
Create and distribute approved marketing material to all your sales channels
Manage product data for different geographic locations, languages and currencies
Manage multiple price lists either through your ERP or in the PIM
Your PIM is hosted in the cloud and is available whenever and wherever your team needs it. All you require is the internet and a browser.
How will a PIM benefit your business?
A PIM improves efficiency and productivity, and helps you take control of your product data as you scale your business. Improve your conversion rates, reduce your returns and boost your profits as you:
Ensure accuracy and consistency across all your data with one source of truth
Save time and reduce errors and bottlenecks caused by manual input methods
Distribute up-to-date branding and product data across your business network giving you a consistent brand identity
Optimise your content to provide rich resources for all your sales channels
Reduce overheads, improve workflows and get to market faster by automating processes
Improve collaboration across departments by eliminating data silos
Reduce returns caused by incorrect or out-of-date product information
Streamline your purchasing by closely managing stock levels
Easily manage data for all your suppliers and other providers
Provide an extremely satisfying customer experience that builds loyalty and trust
Who needs PIM software?
Any company can benefit from implementing a PIM solution, but it is essential if:
Your manufacturing business needs to consistently supply distributors and sellers with accurate product information
Your business sells many different products
Your product information is complex and comes from multiple suppliers
Your product offering changes often
Your products are interrelated
Your business processes could be automated
Your are currently using your ERP to fulfil this function
You sell across several different channels
You experience a higher than average volume of returns
Every member of your team needs access to quality data to do their job well, including your:
Sales department
to give correct information to customers
Marketing team
to promote your brand and your products
E-commerce manager and/or data management team
to continuously update content and improve user experience
Compliance team
to ensure all legal requirements are met
Technical team
to ensure the specifications and features of every product are correctly captured
What kind of data does a PIM manage?
Each product in your inventory can have a great deal of information associated with it. This data could be managed by you, received from outside the company or linked to data in other departments/resources. Your PIM needs to be able to handle each of these processes. For example:
Essential product data
Item name, SKU, price and description
Sales information
Prices and promotions
Customer content
Testimonials and customer reviews
Design specifications
Designer notes, assembly instructions, style options, maintenance videos and instructions, installation videos and instructions
Technical specifications
Dimensions, ingredients, materials and warrantees or guarantees
Product relationships
Associations between products, variations of products and their classification and categorisation
Digital assets
Product images and videos
Channel-specific information
Mobile descriptions, Amazon titles or Google categories
Marketing information
Customer personas, SEO keywords and other SEO elements
General information
Manufacturer, supplier and research data
Features of Comalytics PIM
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Collect raw data from your ERP, product suppliers, online sources and external providers like photographers and copywriters
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Decide how much of the available data to use
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Identify which sources take priority
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Clean the data where necessary
