It would be impossible for online businesses to thrive without a proper product information system. Online shoppers cannot take items off the shelves, experience them, and feel them the same way physical shoppers do. Often, they depend on the information they see, hear, and read about the item on the internet. Due to this, businesses need up-to-date, robust, compelling, and accurate product information to succeed in digitale marketing. Click here to learn more about PIM.
What is Product Information Management?
Simply put, it is the process of collecting, organising, and giving all the required information about a specific item from a central location. PIM system aims to protect and enhance the value of product information available to external and internal systems, partners, and collaborators.
Characteristics of Product Information Manager Tool
Elaborateness
A correctly designed product information system database can handle all data regarding a product. This structuring gives your product perfect ordering, so customers can easily and quickly find the required information.
Centralization
The information is instantly accessible to all appropriate parties in suitable formats. It’s no longer essential to manually create new files and documents and ensure they are up-to-date.
Actuality
Storing all data in a specific location means that updating it is easy and quick. This way, you will quickly differentiate the latest data.
Features of Product Information System
The quality of product information manager systems is pivotal for product sales. Here are the crucial features of this tool.
Data Collection and Importation
A product information manager should be able to import data from several internal and external sources. It should also have the ability to integrate with various applications and platforms where you outsource your product information.
Data Processing and Enrichment
After collecting data, you have to process and merge it to improve its quality. A good product manager lets you refine data and perfect the product information. For example, it should add necessary photos, technical characteristics, relevant texts, and other media data.
Data Standardization
This software helps you ensure that your product meets the required standards. Use existing internationally acceptable standards or define your owns standards to make it easy for all involved parties, such as retailers, wholesalers, and suppliers.
Data Validation
You need to automatically or manually review and validate all data before publishing it to various distribution channels. A product information manager tool allows you to outline the product characteristics to fill and the optional and mandatory parts.
Integration with other Applications
You can connect this product information management software with other applications for importation and exportation purposes. This data exchange can occur fully automatically, semi-automatically, or manually.
Distribute Data through Different Channels
With this system, you can distribute detailed and consistent product information to all people that need it, either the customers or your employees (e.g., digital marketing team, sales team, and customer support team).
What can You do with a Product Information Manager Tool?
- Sanitise and centralise scattered data
- Track product completion process
- Improve product specifications and descriptions
- Categorise files and products
- Link media, documents, and images to respective products
- Manage the relationship between different products
- Create and produce product sheets
- Manage upstream data and ensure it’s ready for sales channels
- Analyse product performance
- Create custom product feeds
- Automate the creation and maintenance of your brand portal
- Format product data for multiple syndications
- Locate all the items in a single database
What are the Pros of using a Product Information Manager?
This system is vital for organisations that handle massive data and sell in several channels. The pros are weighty, particularly in the productivity section.
- Eliminates manual updating and data entry
- It minimises redundancies and errors by depending on one truth source
- Sell much more due to great data and content accessibility
- Get into the market quicker and earlier than your rivals
- Create constant, rich, and customised content for your sales channels
- Remove data silos and bottlenecks
- Reduce wasted resources and overheads
- Quickly import and sort supplier data
- Increase your product offering sustainability
- Enhance client loyalty and satisfaction
Who Benefits from Product Information Manager Software
- Sales teams that require accurate, up-to-date product information while on the go.
- Marketing teams that handle substantial data to produce and alter campaigns across different channels.
- Ecommerce managers who constantly improve user experience, update content and improve conversion rates.
- Your clients can confidently buy from you because they trust your brand’s valuable product information.
Final Thoughts
A product information manager solves some critical issues about product descriptions. It eases the increasing consumer demand for high-quality product information. In general, it creates a positive brand image, which quickens the customer buying decisions. Similarly, it streamlines a company’s internal processes, saves time, and boosts cooperation within company departments.