How Distributors, Retailers and Etailers Benefit from a PIM Solution
January 27, 2012 Leave a Comment
What is MDM?
Master data management, or MDM, is a set of processes and tools that defines and manages master data. This is non-transactional master data. MDM’s goal is to collect, aggregate, transform, consolidate, govern and distribute data within an organization to ensure consistency and to govern on-going data quality.
January 27, 2012 Leave a Comment
Product information resides in many enterprise systems and supplier systems. Product information managers have a big job getting all product information clean and usable. Business applications and graphics programs and marketers, merchandisers, product managers lap tops hold key product information. And with product information changing often managing product data is almost impossible.
Project information management, defined, is a series of processes and technologies, working together, to ensure product information is accurate and most important, usable to all that need it. Creating a central repository for product information is a first step. All product information, or product truth, can be synchronized with systems, business users, and partners. This central repository can cleanse, store and enrich product information. Marketers, merchandisers and product managers are on the same page.
Product information, residing in a central repository, can be leveraged faster for catalog publishing, web content, trading pools, customer support and internal operations.
January 27, 2012 Leave a Comment
The enterprise is chock full of product data applications. Product Lifecycle Management, ERP, CRM, are just a few applications holding product data.
Each application has a valuable role in an enterprise product information strategy. This brief overview summarizes what Product Information Management solutions do and explains how PIM fits and strengthens existing business applications.
Please get your copy of Product Information Management & Enterprise Applications right here:
January 26, 2012 Leave a Comment
Testosterone, a type of anabolic steroid, is not a monster maker. Not on it’s own. Hard work and dedication combined with testosterone pays of in muscular growth and higher strength.
Product information management is testosterone for e commmerce. Why you ask?
Well, PIM or product information management is the architecture that fuels the ecommerce engine. Hard work by merchandisers, marketers and e commerce people lay the ground work. Yet ecommerce sites fuel with accurate, up to date product information, rock.
Imagine building a million dollar house and skimping on the foundation. Imagine an athlete that can bench press a car, with little skinny legs. Now imagine an e commerce site, with all the bells and whistles, with lousy product information management. Like squirrels under the hood of a fast looking car, people run ragged putting supplier catalogs into usable format for web.
January 26, 2012 Leave a Comment
Learn about why your web page visitors may be far less than they should be with this Executive Summary:
This executive overview hands you a framework for re-thinking your site search challenges. It begins with a brief explanation of how product data on the web became un-findable in the first place. It continues with a survey of search techniques and associated issues, followed by an explanation of product information management techniques that help correct limitations. It concludes with initial steps, you can take now, to begin taking advantage of site search technologies.
Please get your Site Search paper right here:
January 26, 2012 Leave a Comment
Take a look at your product data. Is your product data classified with customer-friendly categories and taxonomies? If not introduction of parametric search or navigational techniques will fail. First things first; clean data, govern data. Productivity is ratcheted way up by organizing and managing your product data first. Tremendous benefits will be obtained in the longer run.
Please get your Executive summary right here. This Executive Report, “Accelerate your Site Search with Better Product Data,” can be had for Free by just submitting this simple form:
January 26, 2012 Leave a Comment
Product information management solutions are much more than a product data repository or central product data base. Take a look at this vendors offering:
PIM: central repository for product information.
DAM: Digital Asset Management
Syndication: Product information publishing to e commerce, print, ERP, partners like Amazon, Google, Ebay and more.
Workflow: Process flow to alert and notify users when changes are made to product catalog.
The first three are offered by most MDM for Product providers. Vendors like Heiler and Riversand. The workflow engine is not integral to these vendors data model. It is an off the shelf OEM’d product bolt on. And the magic of real time data driven portals?
Most vendors do not provide the magic juice, a portal framework. This framework, a content management infrastructure, creates portal based applications to leverage that leverages product data. Here are just a few usages of a Portal Framework:
Supplier Portals: Supplier self-service for product upload, product updates and edits. Role based access to supplier product data.
E-Commerce Sites: product information is posted from live data sources to web. Absolute real-time accurate product date presentation to customers for purchase.
Print Portals: Distributed sales force and sales channels customize marketing materials with Web to Print.
Dealer Portals Product information is presented to dealers, e tailers and retailers, accurate and real time.
Portal Framework usage can increase the payback of a PIM or product information management solution. Make sure your vendor has this ability.
January 25, 2012 Leave a Comment
Testosterone, a type of anabolic steroid, is not a monster maker. Not on it’s own. Hard work and dedication combined with testosterone pays of in muscular growth and higher strength.
Product information management is testosterone for e commmerce. Why you ask?
Well, PIM or product information management is the architecture that fuels the ecommerce engine. Hard work by merchandisers, marketers and e commerce people lay the ground work. Yet ecommerce sites fueled with accurate, up to date product information, rock.
Imagine building a million dollar house and skimping on the foundation. Imagine an athlete that can bench press a car, with little skinny legs. Now imagine an e commerce site, with all the bells and whistles, with lousy product information management. Like squirrels under the hood of a fast looking car, people run ragged putting supplier catalogs into usable format for web.
January 25, 2012 Leave a Comment
Hi, Working a new one here. Professional software salesguy, I am. Terrific 6 year old business. Fast grower, progressive thinker. CEO impressed the heck out of me with vision.
100 million revs and up I work. Admit the smaller more fun. The larger guys get cement shoes, slow to move, afraid to drown. Small, agile, quick to decide, there you go.
Problem is or, even better, the opportunity is, small get big and smart execs feel the IT infrastructure starting to chug like a car with miles hitting a hill. Time to get a new engine.
Back to CEO meeting at the gazelle company. All business software applications homegrown. Exec defines this as differentiated and he is right. Tech team is sharp as tacks and know what the business, marketers, merchandisers, product managers, need.
Right up against a wall now. Supplier counts growing fast and product numbers growing faster. Now is the time to look to packaged and configurable software products sitting in the MDM for PIM space. Master data management for products for Riolinda residents.
First need, to get Product data in one place. Very common pain. Marketers, merchandisers, product managers on point trying to hunt down images, docs, attributes, descriptions, etc. Just getting organized, getting data in one place in a proper taxonomy is a big win.
This is job one. Then job two may be optimizing print catalogs, faster, simpler product information syndication to partners, on demand ecommerce publishing and more…..
January 25, 2012 Leave a Comment
A business, and industrial manufacturer has a product data problem. Sales partners, sales teams and resellers use a 6 year old catalog in the field. Yes, I said six years.
The print catalog, some call the big book is older than some new entrants into this manufacturer’s market. What to do.
Put in charge of this project, a new Director has found a full plate. First, sure the new project is started yet buy-in from the business and from IT is low at best.
The director sees the issue; disparate product data all over the place. Residing on many systems and laptops. Marketers fight hard, each day, to mine, find, cleanse and enrich product data for the simplest task.
Publishing product information to web, to print and to partners is slow and painful. Product data edits, like image changes, attribute addition and deletion, happen in one place, in a silo. Federating product data to systems like ERP, is not done.
The product data mess grows and grows each day. My recommendation is PIM, or product information management. Central database of accurate product data, which can be used, would be the end game.
To be used, are the operative words. Gaining a central database of clean, accurate product information will enliven merchandising, marketing and sales.
