Is Your PIM Digital Age Ready?
Having a Product Information Management (PIM) solution as part of your IT system landscape is a strong indicator that you are getting ready for this digital age. Perhaps, then, the better question to ask is whether your PIM system is built to evolve as the digital age advances. It’s fairly cliché to bring up Moore’s Law when it comes to the rate of technology advancement, yet it is the easiest way to acknowledge the reality that technology will continue to progress faster than we anticipate. As such, it is necessary for companies to look at their current processes as well as their digital infrastructure to ensure proper support to their business operations, today and tomorrow.
Here are a few key aspects of a PIM system that are believed to remain relevant as the digital age continues to progress:
- Establish a single source of product truth across the Enterprise
- Integrate within an increasingly complex e-commerce ecosystem as marketplaces are shifting and new technologies are becoming mainstream like Internet of Things (IoT) or Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Provide personalized content by considering devices, personas, locations and overall context
- Evolve at the pace of business
If your PIM software already has these capabilities, there is no reason to start nitpicking at the various other upgrades that it may offer. However, if yours doesn’t, let’s discuss why preparing your PIM software for the future is important.
Three capabilities a modern PIM should have
Customer-Centricity
Customer experience is crucial to any business’ bottom line. Your company’s ability to deliver powerful and emotionally compelling experiences to your customers will ultimately decide whether they will keep on doing business with your brand. Research now suggests that customer experience is the most pressing mandate for marketers, with 89% of companies expecting to compete mostly on the basis of customer experience.
By being customer-centric, your PIM software becomes as much of an experience platform as it does an information repository. A digital age PIM platform should improve content quality by providing accurate, up-to-date, and contextualized product information across all channels. This means the consumer receives relevant data, always considering the circumstances be it mood, intent, location or device.
Software that puts the customer first will create a sustainable, competitive advantage that leverages complete, consistent and contextualized product information.
Integrability
Your product information is useless short of being able to share it across your company. Having a DAM (Digital Asset Management) solution to store and manage your digital assets is necessary. If your PIM doesn’t have one, you’ll want to ensure that your PIM and DAM are seamlessly integrated. Just as important as having internal integrations, your PIM will also need APIs to stream content to different online channels such as websites and e-commerce stores, so that your products are visible and able to be sold.
Personalization
Once your products are on the right channels, are you able to put the right products in front of the right audience? Can your PIM software collect data from the channels that your products are sold on and understand the products that should be displayed based on search histories? Today, PIM systems should have built-in personalization capabilities and smart product management should be par for the course.
A PIM software isn’t just another piece of software in your digital suite. It’s foundational to the digital presence of the most important part of your company, your products. As technology continues to move forward, ask yourself if you’re moving along with it.
