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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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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:

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.

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.

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…..

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.