PIM Software Guide: Choosing a PIM Solution in 2023

According to The Statista Digital Market Outlook, revenue from retail e-commerce in the United States was estimated at roughly $768 billion in 2021. The same outlook forecasts that by 2025, online shopping revenue in the US will exceed 1.3 trillion dollars. With almost double growth from 2022 to 2025, we can assume that more buyers will come to the US digital market. Therefore, the number of goods presented and sellers providing them will only be growing accordingly.

The consequential question coming from this data is: how to manage your business successfully if you are a seller, distributor, or platform in this fast-growing e-commerce market? How to avoid drowning in tons of items with their SKUs, UPCs, names, titles, descriptions, prices, photos, and channels? How to manage your business successfully in order to provide the best results and keep up with e-commerce development trends?

To answer these questions, consider implementing a PIM solution for your business. It will help you centralize all the product data and make your and your customers’ experiences as smooth as possible.

What Is a PIM Software Solution?

So, what is PIM software, and how can it help with optimizing your product data? PIM stands for Product Information Management, which is the process of gathering, managing, and sharing product information.

With PIM software solutions, companies can centralize the data for internal use and for sharing with customers and third-party partners. PIM systems help businesses improve the quality of the data they collect, keep it up-to-date, and make sure it’s always ready to use. In short, PIM is software that centralizes all your product data and helps maintain it effortlessly.

How Does PIM Software Work?

When managing a company that provides lots of products, you’ll want all the data to be stored in one easily accessible place. Also, you want your team to be updated in a timely manner about all the changes and product events, so they can react proactively with actions that need to be done. That is exactly what implementing PIM software can help you with.

As a first step, as soon as a new product is designed, the PIM software collects all the essential information that makes up a product sheet.

Then, it alerts your product and marketing teams, so they can start to enrich the information, including marketing descriptions, technical specifications, cross- and up-selling materials, and everything else that your product might need.

When the quality level of a product sheet is up to the required level, PIM can automatically distribute that to all sales channels you have and adapt it to the constraints of each.

If any changes need to be implemented to a product sheet, a PIM system helps you smoothen the process via automated information distribution and by sending timely alerts to your team.

As an outcome, you reach a seamless process that improves teamwork, speeds up reactions to changes, and organizes a smooth sales flow.

PIM solutions may become a game-changer to any business, regardless of the company size or quantity of provided products.

Features and Benefits of PIM Solutions

There seems to be no way to underline enough how beneficial PIM software can be. However, we’ve made up a list of PIM key benefits that enhance the operational efficiency of an e-commerce business.

Workflow improvement

Using workflow management modules built into the PIM software, keep your team on the same page all the time. Automated alerts and the possibility to organize the work using multiple themed channels keep the team connected. That decreases the reaction time, reduces micromanagement, and makes the information more accessible at all company levels. Overall, the team gets more work done with less time required; therefore, the overall performance increases significantly.

Centralized product data

The store-in-one-place approach implemented with a PIM system makes product data management easy. You have all the data from different sources, such as suppliers, brand owners, and product and marketing teams, collected in one place— with automated updates and easy access anytime. With this approach, you can constantly enrich product catalogues, update sales and marketing materials promptly, and boost conversions.

Reduced error rate

With a company’s growth comes a growing level of chaos—unless the processes and information are organized properly. By centralizing data and improving communications that PIM systems offer, you reduce the field for possible mistakes that might happen. The chaos of using sheets and decentralized storage may be easily replaced with smoothly organized catalogues, which come with timely updates and notifications to the relevant teams and stakeholders.

Marketing improvement

PIM software offers handy tools that may help marketing teams monitor data, model product groups, and set up different points of focus for each product. It becomes much easier to run different marketing campaigns by adjusting the information showing for each location, for instance. The easier it is to manage marketing campaigns, the more flexible your product becomes, and the higher your conversion rate will be as a result.

Speed up your business

The last (but by no means the least) and maybe even the most important benefit of using PIM software is speeding up your business. With all the data adequately stored, communication processes improved, marketing campaigns easily adjusted, and possible errors reduced, your business runs fast and smoothly. Your team has more time to come up with new ideas, propose changes, and react quickly to all the challenges that the growing e-commerce market brings.

Conclusion

Today’s fast-growing e-commerce market will not tolerate a company’s chaotic process organization. If a business wants to keep up with the market, it should go beyond the average. Good product information management is one of the essentials that will help your business reach a new level and maintain continuous company development.

A good PIM solution tailored to your company’s needs can help with deep and detailed data, results analysis, effective communication, and timely changes. This leads to a positive customer experience, attracts new clients, and increases your company’s revenue. Request our PIM development services now.