What is PIM Software and in Which Cases Do You Need It for Your Business

Today, according to the recent Harvard Business Review Shopping Behavior research, up to 73 percent of customers use multiple channels during their shopping journey. So if, for example, you have a couple of real shops, an Adobe Commerce application, and some mobile applications with the same products, you need to manage product information for each of the units.

You are lucky if you have the same structure and data for each of the channels. In this case, you can utilize some simple tools for management like Excel/Google Sheets and be happy with the results and process of management. But let’s imagine that for the real shops: you need 5 attributes, and for the Adobe Commerce website: 7 attributes and 2 more images. This way, your workflow will be more complicated.

Let’s imagine you need another for your mobile app and another description compared to 2 other channels. You see that we going to have a mess in the product information management process. If you add to the combination one or 2 languages, then it is almost impossible to operate such an amount of data without a separate tool.

So if you have multiple sales channels and want to provide quality product information in all channels, you should think about the PIM solution.

Multiple sales channels themselves may not be a critical reason if you have like 20-30 products in your catalog. But the number of 10-20 thousand may be difficult to operate even with one sales channel. Usually, we advise our clients to think about PIM solutions when they have more than 30-40 thousand combinations of attributes to be managed. So it can be like 200 products with 30 attributes and 10 channels with unique data or like 1000 products with 10 attributes and 3 channels. As we have mentioned above, each case is unique, and the word ‘large’ also has unique meanings 🙂

As a beginning entrepreneur, you may have 1 sales channel and a small catalog with like 500-1000 items. Same time if you plan to rapidly grow and expand your markets or catalog, we would also advise you to include some starter PIM systems in your tools list. Using such a system from the beginning will eliminate later spending on integrating PIM into existing E-Commerce platforms. But on another hand, if you have planned your business to grow in some slow periods and cycling — you may not need to invest in PIM in the first or second cycle.

One more reason that may be critical to make a decision to implement a PIM system in your business is the need to increase customer experience. It is not only about fancy and fast E-Commerce websites or modern shop interiors. Most important is the quality of products and the quality of information about products, since the main purpose of all this is to satisfy customers’ needs with products. So low-quality product information makes customers unhappy. Unhappy customers will not return to the shop and will not buy products. Moreover, they will definitely not recommend your shop to their friends. According to the B2B Marketing/Earnest survey, 13 percent of unhappy customers tell at least 15 people about their frustration. So to make happy customers, you need to make sure all your products have the proper information in the proper language and are always up to date. If you have any suspicions that it is not — you need to review your Product Information Management processes and think about any kind of PIM system solution.

Modern PIM solutions are aimed at optimizing processes. Usually, we see that clients can lower their staff number working with product information or increase the effectiveness of the process. So if you think that your Content Department works not well, you can consider trying some PIM systems and comparing the results.

Unsatisfying productivity and efficiency can produce a chained problem — high time to market. As with all, we know, low time to market in the modern competitive world is crucial for business. So if, for example, you have some products developed and ready for sale before other companies do. Still, due to the slow product information management, you started your sales later — you definitely lose money. Also, high time to market makes your investments back to you later, slowing the development of your whole business. Resuming if you mention that non-productive product information management is a reason for high time to market — you definitely need to plan some PIM system usage.

The last but not least reason we would like to outline is high return rates. Shortly speaking, it is a chained problem in the same way as high time to market. But knowing how frustrating most of our client’s high return rates we emphases on it. As you can imagine returning the product makes all related spent for transporting, restoring, and operating real. According to recent research, the number two reason for return is a wrong or poor description.

It’s obvious if customers order the item with one description and receive another one, they will most likely request a return. So golden rule for any merchant is to have proper product descriptions. In the case of multiple channels, and large catalogs, this becomes a tricky task. But with the help of the proper setup of the Product Information Management system, it’s more than doable.

Resuming all the above, we can state that if you don’t have any issues with Time to Market, Return Rates, or Customer Experience, or have a small Catalog and 1-2 sales channels, you should not worry about PIM solution implementation into your business. But if any of these markers appear on your horizon – you need to find time and resources to choose the proper PIM solution.

Magecom Team is always ready to help you with your business processes, including Product Information Management optimization. We have vast experience working with a range of PIMs, including the most well-known brands like Akeneo, and will be more than happy to help you integrate one of the PIMs into your business as well. Drop us a message right now by completing our contact form.