What Is a PIM and Why Do You Need One?

In today’s B2B market, you’d be hard-pressed to find a manufacturer or distributor with only one sales channel. With the advent of eCommerce, third-party marketplaces, social media platforms, and other tech tools that provide additional sales avenues, multichannel selling enables businesses to gain greater exposure and give buyers more shopping options. And while a multichannel approach is a good sales strategy, it lacks the tight system integration needed to provide a consistent user experience across all channels. Instead, wholesalers are adopting an omnichannel strategy with the help of a product information management tool (PIM). A PIM acts as a central source for all product data, including pricing. It also enables businesses to collect, manage, enrich, and distribute product information across multiple channels with complete synergy.

Unlike an ERP, a PIM does much more than feed data to your eCommerce site and other sales channels; it creates a controlled environment with clean, current product information so you can maximize your product content, streamline your processes, and drive efficiency across your organization.

Core Benefits of a PIM

A PIM helps you take full control of your product data so you can deliver accurate and up-to-date content wherever your customers make a purchasing decision. Additionally, it performs these key data management functions to help you realize operational efficiencies and grow your business:

• Eliminates data silos: When your internal business teams house product information in their own systems and databases, updates and changes are not automatically communicated back to them. Consequently, their data becomes disparate, as does the data they send to outside channels and partners. A PIM eliminates these issues by becoming the single, trusted source for product information across your organization. Each group procures their product data from the PIM knowing that it provides the most current and reliable information available.
• Reduces manual processes: A PIM has built-in approval processes and workflows to help alleviate any bottlenecks that can occur when publishing product changes and launching new products. At each step of the workflow, the PIM sends notifications to approvers to speed up the review process and improve your time to market. Employees can also save time searching for the latest product content by going straight to the PIM for any information they need related to a product.
• Improves data quality: A PIM has integrated data quality management (DQM) controls that help you cleanse, normalize, and validate the product data to create a golden record for your entire catalog of products. DQM is a critical function that no ERP system can provide because it ensures clean, consistent, and current data at the ready.
• Enables efficient omnichannel distribution: A PIM makes it easier to publish and syndicate product information across all your sales channels, including websites, mobile apps, distributor sites, and marketplaces. The feature-rich tool allows you to choose the SKU subsets, attributes, and delivery method to send accurate, enriched data instantly.

With so many benefits, it’s no wonder more B2B organizations are integrating a PIM solution with their business systems. However, not all PIMs are created the same, and not all product data management tools are actually PIMs. A true PIM solution has specific features and functionality to better manage your product content and drive your eCommerce efforts:

• Master data management (MDM)
• Taxonomy management
• Digital asset management (DAM)
• A prebuilt, industry-vetted data model
• Product association and relationship grouping
• Multiple catalog creation and management
• Data quality management (DQM)
• Custom import and export functionality

Read on to see why your business needs an authentic PIM and how its critical capabilities will transform the way you collect, enrich, and deliver your product content.

Why You Need a PIM

A PIM clearly helps you improve your product content management efforts but, if we take a closer look at comprehensive PIM solutions, there are additional objectives a PIM can achieve while improving your products, processes, and people.

1. Better manage and control your product content

Remove the disparity, confusion, and duplicity of multiple databases by creating a single repository for all your product data. A PIM allows you to regain control of your product catalog and all its important content so you can stand behind its accuracy, consistency, and value. For distributors, it enables you to take data from different manufacturers and normalize it to create a consistent shopping experience across your entire product catalog. Manufacturers can use a PIM to build and manage product specifications, copy, images, video, and associated datasheets and manuals for their entire SKU library. By implementing governance rules within a sophisticated PIM, the system will continually enrich and normalize your product data to keep it clean, consistent, and up to date.

2. Customize data for different audiences

A PIM also allows wholesale organizations to choose what data to export to marketplaces and other sales channels, based on their specific needs and/or audience. Some of your sales channels may require unique content such as distinct copy, regional vernacular, different language versions, product subsets, price points, and taxonomies. A PIM with data layer functionality allows you to modify your data and build separate catalogs without overriding the source data. Data layering simplifies product information management by giving you the ability to create custom content and catalogs for your different audiences within a single system.

3. Syndicate data to multiple delivery points

Once you’ve customized your data for your different channels, the PIM enables seamless syndication to those channels – whether they’re internal customer-facing teams, distributors, third-party marketplaces, affiliates, or buying groups. Once you set up custom export parameters for each delivery point, the PIM will map those specific data fields to the data model, and then automatically send the report to the designated channels. PIM solutions eliminate the need to create multiple spreadsheets, keep track of who gets which data, and ensure the content is entered and delivered correctly.

4. Grow your online product offerings

If you’re a distributor looking to expand your product offerings, consider subscribing to a content program to sell new brands, extend your existing product lines, and present additional product categories on your sales channels. Look for content providers who excel at content curation – companies that supply up-to-date and robust product information including descriptions, product images, videos, and supporting documentation – and offer flexible product content subscriptions that fit your budget and business needs.

5. Create product families and associations

If your products come in multiple variants like sizes, finishes, and colors, a PIM enables you to create product family groupings, which combine similar items and present them as one product with their available options on your website. Product groups eliminate having to scroll through pages of individual items to find a specific size or color, giving buyers a faster, more convenient way to shop your products. Look for product grouping capabilities that also enable you to associate products with cross-sell or up-sell items, bundle products together as a kit, and add alternate, manufacturer, and even competitor part numbers to items to help buyers find exactly what they want, regardless of how they search.

6. Equip your CSRs and field sales reps with robust product information

Empower your staff by providing them with easy access to a comprehensive knowledge base of your products. Find a PIM with a CSR portal feature that displays your items in a reader-friendly web storefront format and includes the product description, specs, alternate part numbers, datasheets, manuals, pricing, and more. Whether they’re in the office or out in the field, a PIM CSR portal gives your staff the ability to answer product questions, find replacement parts, and configure the best solutions for your customers.

Integrate Your Sales Channels with the CX1 PIM 

The B2B marketplace – and your customers – are constantly evolving. To keep pace, invest in an authentic PIM solution to better manage your content and meet industry needs. In addition to its content management benefits, a PIM will create continuity, improve operational efficiency, and drive overall growth for your business.

If you’re ready to add a PIM to your digital ecosystem, Unilog is here to help. As the leader in connected product content and commerce, Unilog delivers the platform, content, and connectivity you need to stay relevant and sell more. Our CX1 PIM solution has earned high praise from industry analysts and customers as a “best-in-breed PIM” and, for four years running, for its content and product data management solutions. Together, our CX1 eCommerce offerings, CX1 Product Content services, and CX1 PIM make up the CX1 Platform – a connected suite of product content and commerce solutions designed to help you get more out of every transaction. Contact us today to take a tour of our CX1 Platform of products.