Is your company managing product information in Excel or through an ERP system? Is product data incomplete or inconsistent across channels, resulting in varying customer experiences? Is maintaining and updating product data laborious and time to market slow? What if product data management were rethought and product information could become a competitive advantage for your company? A PIM system can improve the customer and shopping experience.
PIM ensures product information quality and a good shopping experience
Successful customer experience lifts the mood and is often shared with others. However, the Finnish saying 'A good bell can be heard far away, a bad one even further' holds true in this regard. If a customer has a bad feeling about a purchase, they will tell their friends, acquaintances and perhaps even on social media. This can result in significant reputational damage and customer losses for the company.
A product information management (PIM) system helps keep your company product information identical in all channels. This ensures a consistent customer experience across channels. PIM simplifies the maintenance and updating of product information, saving on personnel costs. PIM system enables flexible processing of product data and provides more possibilities than Excel or ERP.
In addition to online shopping, many of us use our smartphones while shopping. When shopping, we use our phones to check product reviews, technical specifications, and possibly check the price of the same product offered by a competitor. If product information is maintained in a PIM system, which is integrated with other company channels, this ensures that the information is the same across all channels. This means that the customer encounters consistent information, the same visuals, the same technical specifications everywhere. This creates trust and encourages making the purchasing decision.
The purchasing decision is based on information
Although the final purchase decision is often based on emotion, people usually justify the decision rationally. This is especially true when it comes to technical equipment, buying a car or other expensive acquisitions. In these cases it is important that there is as much information about the product as possible. Technical specifications and features, images, user manuals and even instructional videos about usage, as well as information related to, for example, the carbon footprint, are likely to strengthen the customer's confidence in making the right purchase decision.
Product information should always be consistent, whether the buyer is searching for information on the company's website, online store, social media, brick-and-mortar store, or browsing advertisements. With a flexible PIM system, all of this information can be maintained so that it is constantly up-to-date. This way, the customer has the information they need to base their purchasing decisions.
PIM helps target content and reduces returns
If you are buying a car for yourself or for your child who has just received a driver's license, the criteria for the purchase are different. Therefore, it is important that the product is marketed with information that is appropriate for your situation. For example, if you get search results that match your needs when shopping online, it will be easier for you to make a purchasing decision. A versatile PIM system helps to classify and enrich product information flexibly and to optimize and automate content.
If a product does not meet expectations, it easily leads to returns. This is costly for the company: sales do not occur, and a disappointed customer is likely to turn to a competitor. People today are impatient and want the right product quickly and easily. Accurate product information provides a proper representation of the product and reinforces the company's brand; thus customer expectations are met. In a modern PIM system, metrics can be set that allow the product manager to identify potential deficiencies in product information and complete it so that customers have the widest possible range of information available to support decision-making.
A modern PIM system is service-oriented and agile
Product information management is an area that can assist procurement and sales while creating competitive advantage with an improved customer and shopping experience. Procurement can do its job more flexibly when the creation of product information in the system is more agile and products can be brought to market faster. Product managers can maintain and enrich information easily and sales can provide customers with products equipped with high-quality information. Customers are more satisfied when the information received can be trusted and the product corresponds to the description given in advance.
With the PIM system it is possible develop and grow the business significantly when the opportunities provided by the system are understood and utilized widely within the organization.
