Key Takeaways

• Outpace competitors by using PIM to get products to market faster and boost sales.
• Centralize product data with PIM software to streamline workflows and cut down errors.
• Improve customer experience and build trust by offering detailed, accurate product information.
• Explore PIM features like brand portals to discover new ways to showcase your products.

With the ease of online shopping today, products move rapidly, and staying competitive in the markets is becoming increasingly demanding. Ecommerce businesses can’t afford to fall behind as a result of incorrect or insufficient information. If customers cannot find what they are looking for on your site, they will move on.In this article, we will explore several tips on how PIM software can help you enrich your product information, enhance the browsing experience for your customers, and boost sales.

What is PIM software?

Product Information Management (PIM) software provides businesses with the tools to manage substantial product information in a centralized database. 

The product data is collected, named, described, and categorized in keeping with market and industry standards. With a PIM, you can do so much more than just create a product and its description. You can upload universal products from their source of origin, attach pricing structures, add marketing information, record sales history, and even add information in a variety of languages.

How can a PIM solution help your e-commerce business?

E-commerce is a dynamic environment where maintenance of products and prices is a constant requirement across one or more platforms. With PIM software, any changes you make to a product will filter through to the various platforms, eliminating the need for repetitive work.

Whether if be for small business applications or a larger enterprise across numerous platforms, the benefits of PIM systems in an e-commerce space are numerous. By improving your product information, PIM ecommerce integration will raise your level of competency and give you a competitive edge in an ever changing marketplace.

10 Benefits of Integration with a PIM System

When integrating with a PIM system, you have access to high-quality product information that is shared across channels.

Comprehensive product information is securely stored in a centralized database where it can be accessed by your other systems through flexible API integration.

A PIM facilitates the creation of workflows that monitor the accuracy of your data, thus reducing incidences of human error.

Through the efficient management of data, the time-to-market factor is substantially quicker.

1. Data consolidation and accuracy

PIM systems facilitate the addition of products to a centralized database, where the quality and complexity of product information can be efficiently administered. By maintaining data in a single location, you can organize your stock holding, standardize information such as product numbers and descriptions, analyze and regulate the many products, and store large amounts of relevant information. Data storage in a typical PIM system includes:

• SKUs, product codes, names, and descriptions.
• Technical information such as size, weight, color, and material composition.
• Detailed pricing and discount structures.
• Categorization
• Relationships between products in bills of material or product bundles.
• Shipping information and requirements.
• Certification details
• Marketing channel
• information: SEO, specific product descriptions and preferences.
• Historical information 
• Digital material: product images, CAD designs, videos, PDF manuals, and more.
• Secondary descriptions and content information in alternate languages.

2. Multichannel sharing and integration

A PIM system facilitates integration with your company’s internal systems, such as the ERP and WMS systems, as well as external systems that include manufacturers, retailers, and logistics companies. When Dealing with companies across the supply chain, it makes sense to deal with one standard product database throughout the process. This avoids unnecessary data disorganization and duplication,  along with lost work effort managing that of information and speeds up your sales and procurement processes. 

3. Increased efficiency and a reduced time-to-market

A PIM system that allows import and updates of product details from the manufacturer or supplier will save you a lot of time as product numbers, descriptions, categories, specifications, barcodes, and more are automatically uploaded. Products created by manufacturers or suppliers should comply with existing industry and state regulations where applicable, reducing the need for additional administration work.

Theoretically, all you should have to do is add your own pricing and discount structures to the products, and they will be ready to sell. You can reduce the tedious capturing of new products and error-checking. You can capture marketing information, such as geographical or customer preferences, or upload the information from your ERP and CRM systems.

Improved efficiency naturally leads to a more stable database that requires a minimum of intervention. This means that your products reach the marketplace a lot sooner, giving you the edge over competitors that are still battling with older legacy systems.

4. Enhanced customer relationships

When a customer clicks on a product, the time taken for it to display on their screen is directly related to the size of your database and the speed with which you can access your data. PIM systems not only help you to optimize your product data, but they connect directly to your ecommerce and business systems efficiently transferring your product data. PIMinto PIM can provide live product queries and search results directly to headless eCommerce systems adding additional efficiency and further improvement of the customer experience.

If your products conform to the universal product codes and descriptions as provided by your PIM, they are more likely to appear on customer searches.

5. Analytics and reporting

Essential features of any system are data analytics and reporting. When it comes to PIM systems, algorithms can be used to detect duplication, inconsistencies, and errors. 

The data analytics function provides statistics on product movement and can assist with forecasting future buying needs. With the help of analysis and predictive software, your nightmares about over- or under-stocking should be a thing of the past. 

6. Scalability

As you onboard new product ranges your customer base should increase too, and this means that in time you will need a system that can grow with your business. Cloud-based solutions facilitate the storage of large volumes of data for the inevitable expansion of your database.

In the dynamic e-commerce space, buying trends are constantly changing and evolving, leading to stock obsolescence and a need to replace old products with new ones. An ever-growing database will eventually slow the response times, causing delays and customer frustration.

Based on usage statistics and analytics, a PIM system will make it easy for you to flag products that are no longer viable and facilitate the creation of new catalogs as your system grows.

With a PIM solution, you can link old and new products for a seamless replacement on your e-commerce platform. You can flag old products so that they are not reordered but still accept customer returns on the old product.

7. Brand portals

Brand portal facilities enable users to browse and interact with your brand and the individual items that you offer. With a brand portal, you can provide useful information such as product guides, manuals, and product sheets as well as product comparisons with other brands.  Some PIM systems offer extended functionality including brand portals.  PIMInto offers you the ability to create and share multiple brand portals and restrict what each brand portals shows to the browsing users. If your PIM does not include brand portal functionality, at minimum PIM should be able to provide a headless brand portal feed and brand portals for promoting your brand and products. 

8. Multilingual efficiency

When doing business across borders, it’s important to present your products in the relevant languages. There may also be slight nuances required when presenting your products to different audiences across the globe. A PIM facilitates the translation of product descriptions into various languages and enables you to capture the different cultural nuances for presentation to your customers.

9. Product variants

The product variant feature in PIM allows you to build links between similar products so that you can offer browsing customers a more suitable alternative. Products can be linked based on different sizes, colours, pricing, or materials. This improves your chances of making a sale and broadening your customer base.

10. Increased revenue

The overall benefits of product information management means improved efficiency in terms of data and operational processes. This in turn translates into reduced operating costs, increased sales, and a higher ROI. 

Optimize Your Business Today with Our PIM Solution

The PIMinto solution has a lot to offer e-commerce businesses. With unlimited API functionality, we provide fast and efficient access to your product data.

PIMinto’s fast data transfer and interface connections eliminate the need to store product data locally on your websites and external portals for headless eCommerce.</

The PIMinto data stream technology allows you to access your products directly from your PIM database, providing you with rich data result sets. Additional PIM features include essential product line and category navigation, product filtering, and pagination. 

Our brand portals help with the integration of brand information and digital material for enhanced promotion of your specific brand and products.

The enhancements provided by our PIM solution make sure that publishing your information across channels is quick and easy. 

Ultimately, optimization of your product database means seamless collaboration with your supply chain partners, optimized delivery processes, and happy customers. With a clearer understanding of the objectives of product information management, why not contact us to discuss your particular business requirements?