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
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:
November 16, 2011 Leave a Comment
Manufacturers must manage a tremendous amount of product data for a wide range of processes and activities. Processes range from new product introductions, product catalog edits and promotions, to outsourcing, to regulatory compliance and customer and supplier relations. Manufacturers can now leverage product data by transforming into rich, customer friendly product information using a PIM solution.
Learn best practices strategies to manage product data with this Free eBook, “Master Data Management for Manufacturers.”
This eBook details the usage and the high potential payback of a Product Information Management solution.
September 22, 2011 Leave a Comment
I am working a PIM project now. This business is ecommerce, selling products, provided by many suppliers, on the internet. At this point, product data is published to over 30 selling partners like ebay, google, amazon, and others. One additional point, this business works in a fast moving market. New products and product edits move fast. Plus promotions and specials are rampant.
And not to bore with too much detail, but this market being served by this etailer seeks a lifestyle. The customers seek not only a hard good but matching products to fulfill the look and feel of this lifestyle. Offering a hierarchy of products, a subset of the catalog is an objective. And the business does this now, yet with much manual effort and much time being consumed.
Now getting back to the issue of publishing. I will leave getting data, storing, cleansing, enriching for another post. But publishing data to selling partners and to the company websites is slow, and painful. Of the thirty or so selling partners, each has different requirements. Each presents product data in a different way on the ecommerce platform. This can be color, or size, or image, or videos, or many other attributes. One example, may be men’s shoe size. One site needs Euro others need US sizes, many need both. And the variance on images, size, colors adds to this complexity. Items that sound simple, like header name requirements cause pain. I do not mean physical pain, although headaches may start to pound as products are worked on.
Publishing to the partner sites is in several different formats. TXT or csv, xml, and excel among the crowd. And each format has many structural and attribute variances. Today, this business, has a very smart person, transforming data for publishing. Extracting, concatenating, or cleansing to make the feeds work.
A PIM solution, or product information management tool solves this issue simply. But not all solutions do this well. The vendor speak says “sure we do this.” Meaning services dollars will create the template or data feed format for publishing to a selling partner. And on day one of a product information management solution solves the immediate problem. Day two is different.
Day two brings new selling partners on board. On boarding the new partner consists of the same publishing problem solved on day one. Yet creating the new selling partner template is not easy. Often the ill equipped PIM vendor charges service fees to create the new product publishing template. And then day 3 comes and more cost. The ecommerce business becomes addicted to the vendor for over and over costs for what should be a simple task; on boarding a new selling partner or channel.
The simple task, in best of breed PIM solutions, is for a business person, not an IT resource. This business person, a product manager, or marketer, or merchandiser, which ever title, can use a clean UI with choices and drop downs for easy, standard entry of data formats for publishing. Standard entry is important. Data quality must be maintained. Workflow can alert and notify if nudges in data pop up. Perhaps a color is not in a drop down, this is fixed fast and work continues.
I have a paper on multi channel publishing. This paper details how a world class PIM or product information management software solution solves multi channel publishing pain. Please request your copy here. And your email will not be used for another purpose.
September 21, 2011 Leave a Comment
Product data; digital images and related product product content, originates in ERPs, PLMs, graphics programs and similar applications including spreadsheets, and databases. Product data is used by wide range of professionals; product engineers, product managers, graphic designers, marketers, merchandisers, customer support, e-commerce managers, and compliance professionals.
Product data is needed by a range of users inside and outside the enterprise. There is often no central authority to ensure product information completeness, or to ensure product information accuracy. Or no central authority which makes product information available to users, or to distribute or publish to applications where and when it is needed.
The lack of no central product information authority causes pain.
September 8, 2011 Leave a Comment
The seeds of eCommerce site search problems were sown well before the internet era. Catalog print publishing needs drove how product data was stored and manged. Blocks of data containing artwork for catalogs and circulars, prices, size and weight, color, features, marketing copy were pasted into page layouts as huge strings of data. Minimizing granularity of data was the goal. This simplified the print publishing process.
Now, the web era is here. Recreating print materials for web and eCommerce sites is the task and it is not easy. How to get product information eCommerce ready and friendly from disparate islands of data across the enterprise takes time and costs sales.
I speak to manufacturing and distribution prospects each day about this specific problem. The problem is magnified too. Product information needs to be published to many sites. Sites include specialty sites or micro sites offering a subset of products, or perhaps a single category of products. Partner sites need accurate data too. Take ebay or google or any number of selling partners that rely on accurate, up to date product information.
I tell the story, sometimes, of a large, successful, eCommerce business that was brought to it’s knees upon Michael Jackson’s death. All Michael Jackson offers, music, posters, books, etc, needed to be aggregated, cleansed, enriched and published to the website. This took hours and large staff requirements to do.
PIM solutions or sometimes called MDM for products solve all the above headaches. That is good PIM solutions. A Product information management solution gets, cleanses, stores, enriches and publishes product information to all sources, NOW!. Not in a week, or month or several hours from now, but now.
If your business seeks a solid PIM or Product Information Management solution, please request this eBook Preparing for PIM. This eBook offers solid advice and strategies to fix product data management headaches.
September 7, 2011 Leave a Comment
Success in Multichannel marketing takes lots of effort. Research, pricing strategies, competitive intelligence, product development, supplier partnerships, and even more behind the scenes work must be done.
Websites, catalogs, datasheets and other marketing materials must always shed the best light on your company. And your product catalog is more than a collection of product photos, descriptions and prices. It is the visible representation of your company.
This booklet offers 6 milestones for guiding your company through familiar minefields inherent to multichannel marketing. Intended for marketing and sales executives, eCommerce managers, catalog designers, IT personnel, and others responsible for building and working on building marketing assets for multichannel sales.
This information can kick start conversations in your company. Can aid you in building a sales pulling, profit generating multichannel sales process.
Please get your FREE booklet right here:
September 6, 2011 Leave a Comment
Accurate, up to date product information for all applications, business processes, and all marketing channels and media.
All manufacturers would like to have that. And most do, yet this accurate product data state is attained with much manual labor and cost. Now, I am making a Master Data Management for Manufacturers Guide available to you for free. This MDM guide is for Manufacturers that seek to optimize product information management and product information management publishing to all marketing channels and media.
Better product information management benefits manufacturers in several ways:
20% increase reported in communications and collaboration in Supplier Relationships.
Products get to market faster.
Invoice disputes drop.
Stock outs drop.
Purchase order errors drop.
Faster new product introductions.
Fewer Returns.
And more… Request your FREE Master Data Management for Manufacturers Guide below:
September 6, 2011 Leave a Comment
Our Product Information Management Consultants compiled questions from over 100 Best Practice MDM for Product RFI documents. This document, loaded with PIM functionality details is perfect for a business starting out on a Product Information Management software evaluation journey. This template provides questions your company can use to begin evaluating PIM (product information management solutions.) All your PIM evaluation team needs to do is flag questions that fit your requirements and omit questions that do not. The guide covers a broad range of MDM for products functionality including:
General overview of Product Information Management.
Product Life Cycle Management
Digital Asset Management
Role Based Security
Partner and Customer Collaboration via a Portal Framework
Data Aggregation and Extraction
Data Quality and Data Governance
Classification/Hierarchies
Product Attributes
Merchandising and Promotions using Time Based Effectivity
Print Catalog Management and InDesign intergration
Electronic Catalog publication to Amazon, Google, Ebay and more….
ERP integration
Product Information Management Syndication to e commerce, sales partners, systems
Integration
The PIM guide also covers Search, Work flow, Portal Framework usage, Security and Auditing. Request your FREE guide today and get started on the MDM for Product path with a strong first step.
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
