Product information can make the difference between a customer buying your product or not. Therefore, it’s essential to invest time and resources in creating high-quality product information when presenting your products online.
Product experience is the most crucial factor in creating a positive customer experience on your website, as shown by several studies. Studies also reveal that when a business enriches its products with more information, they can see a 36% increase in revenue.
A PIM solution will effectively assist you in achieving this. At Maksimer, we work with various PIM solutions in the systems we develop. In Litium, one of the platforms we work with, there is a pre-built PIM that streamlines product management by methodically structuring and visualizing the company’s products for digital commerce.
A PIM system gathers product information from various sources and allows you to tailor that information to different channels.
– Whether you have a complex or large product catalog, or a combination of both, you need a PIM system, says Johan Nilsson at Levelnine, a provider of the PIM solution PimCore.
– It is a system that lets you collect, manage, and maintain all information about your products in one place.
He explains that PIM is simply a system for centralizing and managing large amounts of product data. – Whether you have eCommerce or not, it’s mainly about centralizing product data. You have a centralized product assortment for uniform data that you route to various channels, he says.
– This can then be distributed to all your sales channels, including e-commerce, point of sale systems, and for the printing of product catalogs, to name a few.
Multiple channels both in and out
The system can collect data from many different sources, customize it, and send tailored data to the target audiences where it will be presented.
Petter Engelbretsen at Integrasjonssystemer AS, which provides the PIM system Feed, explains this in detail.
– All fields in a PIM system can be integrated both in and out. The system collects data from, for example, ERP systems and image databases. This data can then be processed by filling in attributes and sent out to the channels you want, including apps, e-commerce, catalogs, and industry databases.
Tuning Product Descriptions for Different Target Audiences
But when is it appropriate to have different information for the same product?
Imagine, for example, that you have an online store targeting retail customers and a separate one for business customers. In the case of retail customers, you can tailor information in a “common language” that anyone can understand. For business customers, you can supplement the same product with data sheets, technical language, and specific prices. You can also make the information available in different languages. And all of this can be set up for the product in the PIM system.
– It’s about showcasing your product in the best possible way in the channel where you’re selling products, says Engelbretsen.
Create Complete Packages Easily
Another significant advantage of PIM systems is that you can easily create product packages.
– When you create items in the ERP system, you can enrich the same products in the PIM solution. Then you can create bundles and product packages for the online store. The ERP system doesn’t need to know about this component package. The order in the ERP system only receives the individual items from the component package that the customer orders in the online store. Therefore, the ERP system doesn’t need to know which packages you’re building in the PIM system, says Engelbretsen.
But why do you need a PIM system when you have a good ERP and e-commerce system?
The answer is that by using a PIM solution, you can actually simplify the use of other systems, where, for example, the ERP solution focuses on core functionality such as finance and logistics.
– The extended product information will be in the PIM solution, where you can indefinitely supplement the product with data, says Engelbretsen.
Benefits of PIM
- Gathers product information from many different sources.
- ERP, media databases, Excel, and others.
- Maintains all products in the same place regardless of where they are used.
- Can differentiate the same product for different channels with different language and content.
- Makes changes at the group level that apply to all individual products in the same group.
- Builds custom component items independently of the ERP system.
- If you have more than one online store (B2B and B2C), you avoid maintaining products in two places.
- Common information base for all channels.
Jostein Nyquist
Head of our e-commerce manager team
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