Manufacturers: Is Product Information Management Essential?

August 15, 2011 Leave a comment

Manufacturers manage a sea of data. Wide ranges of processes and activities stream through the manufacturing enterprise. New product introductions, regulatory compliance, and customer/supplier relationships among just a few.

Discrete manufacturers manage data and digital assets about parts, components and assemblies that go into the products made. Internal product data must be maintained. Syndicating product data to distributors, dealers, data pools and other channels is often slowed by older inefficient, manual processes. Sales can be bogged down.

Optimizing and Automating the transformation of product data into powerful, persuasive, product information delivers benefits for the manufacturer:

Supply Chain Partner Relations are improved. Manufacturers using a PIM solution report a 20% improvement in collaboration with partners.

Products Speed to Market: 7-13% reduction in time communicating product updates.

Fewer Invoice Errors and Disputes: Manufacturers can expect a 5-10% time reduction spent resolving errors and disputes.

Stock Outs are Reduced 3-5%.

Purchase Order Errors are Slashed 26%.

New Product Management time spent by merchandisers and data-entry is cut by 5000 to 10000 hours.

Invoice Accuracy Booms: 1000 to 2000 hours saved by elimination of invoice errors.

23% Reduction in Returns: Customers act on up-to-date, rich product information.

Promotions are Made more Accurate: Product Promotion discrepancies slashed by 23%.

Source: A.T Kearney, The Yankee Group

Filed under manufacturing, manufacturing sales, MDM, Multi Channel Sales, Product Information Management

The Master Data Dilemma

August 11, 2011 Leave a comment

Corporate data is created and manipulated in ERP Systems, spreadsheets, graphics programs, CRM applications, and other like systems. A wide range of corporate users and users outside of the four corporate walls, need to plug into this data at different times. And this data fuels corporate reporting, e-commerce and sales efforts, catalogs, and other publishing requirements. Completeness and accuracy is a hit or miss proposition. Incomplete data abounds, and inaccurate data stalls out productivity and pours sand into the corporate engine.

And customer decisions to buy products are simpler to make with fuller, complete product information.

Filed under MDM, Product Information Management

What is Master Data Management?

August 11, 2011 Leave a comment

Master Data Management or MDM is a software toolset. Data, with the MDM toolset, is consistent, and accurate. Data can define Vendors, Customers, corporate assets, and more. And best of all, data is usable. Usable to other systems, and to employees needing clean, accurate informtion to do work.

Work can be product management, customer relationship management, merchandizing, marketing, sales and executive management. External data consumers like sales partners, and operations partners can be administered to receive and update data, if an enterprise wishes. Customers, interfacing with catalogs and e-commerce applications, can make decisions with clean, and rich information at their finger tips.

When data is clean and accurate, it is like an enterprise is on automatic. Work which effects profits can be done faster and easier. Human resources are not wasted doing administration tasks like finding and cleaning data. Processes like data governance, and new product introductions, are simplified.

The problem is information or data is silo’ed. Data resides in several different systems, laptops or even outside the enterprise. Finding this data is akin to going on safari and hunting for big game. Digital assets, a component of product information, live, in many cases, all over the business; on desktops, in design software, on network servers, etc.

Data which resides all over the place, and even in multiple places, makes ordering harder, invoices inaccurate, customer service more difficult and just throws mud on the rails of an operating business. Compliance reporting that relies on inaccurate, hard to find data invites penalties. Human efforts to find, clean, and enrich data are a silly cost, considering MDM solutions are available.

Filed under MDM, Product Information Management

Data Governance and Marketing Applications

August 3, 2011 Leave a comment

Data governance and marketing applications: it’s time to get started.
“The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second-best time is now.”

http://enterworks.wordpress.com/2011/07/29/data-governance-and-marketing/

[A good post for companies anxious to get started on developing their application, esp. a marketing application, without vetting and cleansing their data and content first.]

Filed under MDM

Product Information Management Free e-Book

May 20, 2011 Leave a comment

Getting PIM project buy-in is never easy. PIM leaders must possess a maverick attitude. Often, I see men and women running project management, marketing and merchandising departments, winning this battle based on eye opening business cases. PIM ROI is real and I have earnings reports from customers proving this. Now for the mavericks out there thinking about PIM a new ebook has arrived. This ebook called “Preparing for PIM,” was published by a leading MDM for Product Information Solution provider, Enterworks. This guide is for folks that need product information management tools; The business people that gather, manage and publish their company’s product information. This PIM e-book lights the path to MDM for Product success. Get yours here:

Filed under manufacturing, MDM, Multi Channel Sales, PIM, print publishing, Product Information Management Tagged with , , ,

Product Information Management Software RFI Template

May 19, 2011 Leave a comment

Get a Free Product Information Management RFI Guide Loaded with Best Practice PIM Functionality.

Enterprises that can quickly transform product data into rich, selling product information have competitive advantage over enterprises fighting product data each day.

Transforming product data to rich, selling product information is key to delighting customers and to keeping sales healthy.  Often, gathering product data from suppliers and internal systems to publish to e commerce sites and to print is a slow, painful process.

Retailers and etailers have many suppliers. And the market may change each day. Product attributes like price, color, size, availability, fit, capability, may change daily. And getting e commerce changes done, can eat time and cost sales.

If an Enterprise sells thousands of products into a fast moving marketing like apparel, electronics, and consumer goods, and if the product management process is slow and painful, a Product Information Management solution will offer high return on investment. 

Product information management smooths business processes like product edits, new product introductions, data governance and data enrichment Best of breed product information management solutions contain workflow engines that power and improve business processes like product lifecycle management.

Integrated workflow pushes work to designated users, using alerts and notifications, to speed business processes, to increase efficiency and to increase sales.

Now you can speed up the vendor selection process. Base lining your product data requirements is done for you.

PIM-Data.com is offering a FREE RFI/RFP guide to all enterprises seeking a product information management solution. This guide is full of rich functionality detail describing best of breed product information features. This guide is built to serve as a starting point. Project teams can use this road map to save time and kick start the PIM selection process.  

Much information is given to you. General Instructions, PIM and Multichannel Publishing overview and all these chapters:

Product Information Management

Search

Digital Asset Management (DAM)

Multichannel Publishing and Syndication

Product data system integration

Web-to-Print Portal

Work flow Management

Web Content Management

E-Commerce

Portal Framework for marketers, sales teams and more…

Support questions, training questions and technology questions are covered with intelligent questions all seeking a PIM solution can use. Important vendor questions are also supplied plus a reference section. All a Project Information team needs is to apply this template to their business. Please get your FREE copy right here:

Filed under catalog, data quality, ecommerce, ecommerce software, MDM, Multi Channel Sales, PIM, product catalog, Product Information Management Tagged with , , , , ,

7 Must Knows before Investing in Product Information Management

May 3, 2011 Leave a comment

Implementing product information management or PIM for short, offers choices. Some are confusing. Focus on low hanging fruit is my advice. Here are 7 things to know:

  1. Find Vendor Expertise:  Vendors are good at demo gymnastics. When given a short time to demo, vendors can come up w/ stuff that looks good. Focus on references. Talk to companies that use and have been using the vendor tool to make sure. Trust but verify vendor speak and credentials.
  2. Seek and find Flexibility: Scalability extensibility are key. Map the vendor solution to existing business process and see how it shapes up. Avoid big bang deployments, Vendors’ speak “Holy Grail,” yet find a tool which can be phased, eating low hanging fruit first. Shed a brite lite on the data model. How flexible? Can hierarchies be built and edited? Can your existing data model be used?
  3. How Open is the PIM solution? : Old news. Proprietary vs. Open technology. Put straight, open is easier to adapt and integrated to apps being used now. Does PIM application use proprietary database? Is routes of PIM in catalog management vs. ecommerce? Find out.
  4. Data Sources and Where are they? : The biggest challenge to a PIM deployment are data migration and data integration. Learn all data sources. Map out flows, in and out. where are images? How is product data received and enriched to product information? Do this first or find a vendor that knows this stuff and will help map, on their dime.
  5. Detailed Statement of Work: Get details on precise PIM implementation steps and time frames. Important. Through reference details, learn what was promised by the PIM vendor and what was delivered. Beware low ball services estimates. Dirty trick is to low ball for favorable position and then to come back to well.
  6. Prove Value: Is vendor willing to contractually baseline delivery?
  7. Risk Mitigation: Is vendor willing to work on a pricing model to mitigate risk and to find ROI faster?

    Filed under MDM, Multi Channel Sales, PIM, print publishing, Product Information Management Tagged with , , ,

    How to Improve Retail Sales

    March 8, 2010 Leave a comment

    In a recent analyst insight published on SupplyChainBrain.com, “there are three important areas in which retailers can improve their supply chains and reach future success as consumer confidence returns”: reducing costs, reducing inventories, and reviewing and realigning logistics networks.  A master data management platform can help achieve all three of these goals:

    For more Retailer MDM information >>

    Filed under MDM Tagged with , ,

    Fixing Problems w/ Supplier Data

    March 5, 2010 Leave a comment

    I assume you’re growing frustrated with the cost and hassles of getting and managing product data from your suppliers.  And I’m sure you aren’t happy about missing out on sales and marketing opportunities as a result.

    Product information management or PIM is designed to fix those problems and more. Specifically designed for the complex product data requirements of distributors, a Supplier Portal can save you time and money in dealing with your vendors’ data and can help you get your products to market faster, publish your catalogs more efficiently and with fewer errors, and keep your e-commerce Web sites dynamically up to date.

    A fine  Supplier Portal is a secure Web-based application that lets your vendors easily post their product content for your use in sales and marketing channels.  Here’s how it works:

    • Your suppliers upload their data using a variety of convenient methods
    • Business rules and workflow ensure the data conforms to your requirements
    • The data is housed and managed in a central repository that all authorized users can access
    • You enrich the basic product data with detailed, search-friendly marketing content and attributes
    • And, you dynamically connect the data to your catalog software, Web content management system, and other channels for product content

    Think how much faster you could roll out new products, publish catalogs, update your Web site, and jump on new business opportunities with this secure, browser-based system.  Even better, the Enable Supplier Portal gives you a channel to collaborate and communicate with your suppliers, too.  It’s like a social network for your supply chain.

    Now compare that with what you have to go through now to get product data from your suppliers.  Chances are you have to scrape content from PDFs and spreadsheets and carefully post it into your internal systems.  Then you have to comb through every bit and byte to make sure it conforms to your naming conventions and other parameters.   And, there’s a good chance a lot of it will be out of date by the time it’s published to your catalogs and Web pages.

    If that sounds all too familiar, then it’s no surprise to you that companies spend an average of 25 minutes per item per year manually fixing and cleansing out-of-sync product information – that’s more than $3 million in annualized operational costs for a company with 250,000 items.

    On the other hand, getting a better handle on your suppliers’ data means…

    …thousands of hours saved in data entry and merchandising time

    …a two-week average reduction in speed to market for new items

    …a 3 to 5 percent reduction in stock-outs

    …and many other benefits, too.

    Our company, PIM-data.com has written a report on how to set up a Supplier portal. Please send a request to info@pim-data.com and your copy will be sent to you.

    Thank you, Peter Fuller, http://www.pim-data.com

    Filed under MDM Tagged with

    Product Information Management RFI Template

    July 15, 2009 Leave a comment

    Simplify Enterprise Product Information Management

    Retailers and e-tailers can boost sales and cut costs by deploying a product information solution. Product information management or PIM tools, when deployed, inject new life into merchandising and marketing departments in retailer and e-tailer enterprises. Supplier catalogs can be uploaded fast. New product introductions are real-time and best of all product edits are simple to do.

    Richer Customer Experience

    And the customer experience is richer. Item searches never miss. The product catalog can be greatly enhanced with richer many more products and richer descriptions and item offerings. Cross sells, substitutes and up-sells are easy. Catalogs can be created quickly and product data sheets are on-demand. And all item data is accurate; descriptions, pricing, images and more. This cuts way down on order errors which cost money to fix.

    PIM Technology Features

    A good PIM solution will get product data, cleanse, and enrich product data in a snap. Putting new products on an e-commerce site is immediate. This boosts sales and competitiveness. Product classifications and taxonomies are organized to enhance search-ability. The best PIM solutions have advanced work-flow streamlines the product management business process easier and will alert product managers to anomalies. The benefits of PIM are high, if done right.

    PIM Request for Information Template is Provided to all Professionals

    PIM-Data.com, a MDM/PIM think tank, has put together PIM questions which should be part of a request for information process. This paper will help the retail and e-tailer put together a full RFI document. The questions provide by PIM-data.com are a baseline and specific business need questions are added. This is a must have for retailers and e-tailers that are thinking about starting a PIM solution evaluation. Just some of the detailed RFI questions are:

    >> Attribute Management: Questions about attributes, change management, and complexity of attributes.
    >> Classification and Hierarchies: How are products classified?
    >> Catalog Management: Capabilities for managing catalogs…. And much more…

    How to Get this Free RFI Template

    This RFI template is simple to get; email to info@pim-data.com w/ RFI in subject, or call us at 214-432-6189 or fastest way, use our easy web form right here:

    http://www.pim-data.com/?q=rfi_template

    When the form is submitted a re-direct goes right to the RFI template.

    This RFI template is offered free and with zero obligation.

    About PIM-Data.com

    http://www.PIM-data.com is a master data management and product information management website offering MDM and PIM best practice strategies and solutions. The company is made up of master data professionals from industry and the solution community. Located in Dallas, TX. The web site http://www.pim-data.com provides a forum for Business and IT professionals to post MDM queries. The queries are answered by our team of MDM professionals.

    Filed under MDM Tagged with , ,

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