Organizing Product Data for Internal & External Use
It’s difficult to keep an accurate inventory of all of your business’s products. And it can be even harder to surface inventory accurately to your website in order to entice potential customers to buy.
If your company needs an online catalog, the first and most important step is to gather and process the data to support that catalog.
After all, you can’t simply make your company database public. An enterprise resource planning (ERP) system only has limited product data, so it cannot be provided directly to customers. ERP data rarely includes photos or marketing copy, and is often missing information necessary before a purchase. ERP data also frequently includes proprietary information that shouldn’t be shown to customers.
How can you organize data about your products and services so that it’s helpful to potential buyers and it fits in with your ERP data?
Create a Custom Product Information Management System
Get the right product information to the right people with a Product Information Management (PIM) System. A PIM System becomes the single, canonical source of all of your business’s data. It will send and receive information from your ERP system, your marketing website, and any other tools that your business uses to manage your products. And unlike your ERP, your PIM System will store all of your product imagery, product documents, and can even support storing CAD drawings.
One of the most powerful things about your PIM System is that you can edit the data fields in it yourself. When you need to add or delete a field, you won’t need to contact outside programmers; you’ll be able to do it at your own company. The PIM System guarantees your company control over your data and autonomy.
How are PIM Systems created?
In order to create your personalized PIM System, SteadyRain will work with your team to capture a full picture of your data. Thinking through data relationships can be complicated, but we can guide you through the process. Together, we’ll map out all of your product categories and attributes in order to define how you want your PIM tool to support your organization.
Next, we’ll create the tool. Our programmers will write a system that creates the relationships that your team describes. Then, we’ll undertake several rounds of testing and revision to ensure that your data is collected and stored properly.
Finally, we’ll show you how to use the tool yourselves. Your team will be able to make edits to your data fields and control data relationships on your own, without additional development fees.
Key Advantages of PIM Systems Include:
Attribute Permissioning
Set permissions so that different users see different pieces of information about your products. For example, you might want to only show an item’s price to customers who have bough from you before. With the PIM System, you can set the “price” attribute to only be visible to customers who are logged in to your website. Attribute permissioning will help you optimize the path to purchase for all types of potential customers.
Leverage Data for Additional Sales
Your digital catalog can be more powerful and persuasive when your data is well-organized. A PIM System will store and transmit information about which products are related. Then, you can set up your online catalog to suggests additional purchases when related products are viewed. Without these data relationships—which are only possible with a PIM System— your catalogue won’t create these opportunities.
Custom Integrations
When SteadyRain creates a custom PIM System, our programmers design it to read data from any source you request. Your PIM System is not limited by pre-written integration capabilities. By connecting data in one centralized location, your PIM System will help your team streamline workflows.
Ready to Solve Your Product Management Challenges?
Are you interested in a PIM System for your products? Let’s talk about how to configure a tool especially for your business.
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