How to Scale Your Online Retail Business with PIM

Imagine you’re the owner of an up-and-coming online boutique. Your business is flourishing, and your product catalogue is expanding quickly. However, you find yourself buried under a mountain of spreadsheets, struggling to keep products consistent across your website, social media, and various online marketplaces. Despite your best efforts, mistakes start to happen—customers receive incorrect product details, leading to returns and negative reviews. 

This scenario is all too common for online retailers navigating the challenges of selling without the right tools. Enter Product Information Management (PIM) technology—a solution designed to centralize the management and distribution of product information. In this blog, we'll explore how PIM technologies can transform the way online retailers operate. 

You’ll get answers to:

• What is Product Information Management (PIM)? 
• How PIM addresses common challenges for online retailers
• How to select the right PIM solution

What is Product Information Management (PIM)? 

If you’re an online retailer, efficiently managing product information can directly impact your bottom line. Without proper management, product information can become fragmented and outdated—leading to upset customers, increased return rates, and a tarnished reputation. PIM helps prevent this from happening. 

PIM refers to the process and technology used to collect and manage all product-related information in a single, centralized platform. This includes basic details like product names and prices, as well as enriched content like descriptions, ingredients (in the beauty and supplement categories) images, and videos. By serving as a single source of truth, PIM systems streamline workflows, reduce errors, and make it easier to sell across multiple channels.

Core Functions of PIM

1. Centralizing Product Data — PIM systems bring all your product information into one accessible repository, eliminating the need for multiple spreadsheets or redundant efforts in different databases. 
2. Enriching and Managing Data — Beyond basic data storage, PIM systems enable the enhancement of product information with detailed descriptions, specifications, high-quality images, and other multimedia content. 
3. Distributing Data Across Multiple Channels — PIM systems help efficiently distribute consistent product information across various channels, including websites, mobile apps, social media, and marketplaces. For example, if you’re selling your products across platforms like Amazon, Shopify, and Wayfair, your customers will receive the same information everywhere.

Essentially, implementing a PIM system allows you to handle the heavy lifting of managing complex product data more easily. This leads to smoother operations and a better customer experience.

How PIM Addresses Common Challenges for Online Retailers 

Between changing technologies, shifting consumer preferences, and supply chain challenges, online retailers have endless obstacles to overcome. But thankfully, PIM solutions can help address many of these. 

1) Managing Volumes of Product Information Manually

You may have an extensive catalogue of products—each with numerous attributes, specifications, and media assets. Managing this amount of data manually can be overwhelming, leading to inconsistencies in product information and ultimately harming productivity. Plus, it’s labour-intensive and slows down your ability to introduce new products, make quick changes, and stay competitive. 

How PIM Solves It: Centralized Data Management

• Single Source of Truth — PIM systems centralize all of  your product information into one accessible platform. This consolidation ensures that everyone in the organization works with the same accurate data.
• Ease of Access — Team members across departments can easily retrieve and update product information, improving collaboration and reducing delays caused by data silos.
• Automation — PIM technologies automate routine tasks such as data entry, updates, and content syndication, freeing up your staff to focus on strategic activities.
• Time-to-Market — With streamlined workflows, retailers can launch new products and update existing ones faster, keeping pace with market demands.
  

Say you own a furniture store, and you’re currently leveraging multiple sales channels to sell a kitchen table. On Amazon, the table is listed at $200—but on Wayfair, that same table is listed at $300. When a customer who purchased the table last week discovered it was listed lower on Amazon, they demanded a refund for the difference. This is an example of how discrepancies in product data across various sales channels can confuse customers, erode trust, and damage your brand's reputation. 

How PIM Solves It: Improved Data Quality Across Channels 

• Accuracy — PIM systems minimize product information errors by automating data validation processes and ensuring that all product information is up-to-date. By providing uniform product descriptions, images, and specifications across all channels, PIM systems can strengthen your brand identity and customer trust.
• Seamless Integration — PIM systems can sync product data automatically to all of your sales channels, ensuring consistency without additional manual effort.
• Global Reach — Your PIM solution may be able to support multiple languages and currencies, helping you to effortlessly expand into international markets.

When potential customers are browsing your products, having complete, accurate, and engaging product information can mean the difference between them purchasing or scrolling by. Even worse—if a customer takes a chance and purchases your product, and it ends up that inaccurate product data led them to purchase and the product didn’t measure up, you could be left with returns, lost sales, and upset customers. 

How PIM Solves It: Enhancing the Customer Experience 

• Rich Content: PIM systems enable retailers to provide detailed product descriptions, high-quality images, and engaging videos, improving the shopping experience.
• Personalization: By leveraging customer data, PIM systems help tailor product recommendations and content, increasing your customer engagement and conversion rates.

Selecting the Right PIM Solution

It’s important to choose a PIM system that’s aligned to your business needs. Start by seeking to understand your unique requirements as a retailer. Identify the challenges your business faces and the goals you aim to achieve with a PIM system. You’ll also want to consider whether the PIM can grow with your business, accommodating an expanding product catalogue and additional sales channels.

Ask yourself these questions when evaluating the core features of a PIM system: 

• Is the interface user-friendly, intuitive, and easy for your team to adopt and use effectively?
• Can it integrate with your existing systems, such as your ERP and e-commerce platforms?
• Can it be custom tailored to align with your specific workflows and processes? 

Could a PIM Solution Benefit Your Business?

If you’re ready to improve your speed to market, find better ways to merchandise, and become more efficient than ever at product management, a PIM solution may be right for you. Through DCGroup’s acquisition of Jasper and investment in Venzee, we’re now able to provide our customers with access to industry-leading PIM and content syndication platforms. 

Together, these AI-enabled platforms make it simple to organize inventory and launch your products across multiple eCommerce platforms, empowering you to syndicate to any selling channel—from Shopify to Amazon and beyond. Interested in learning more? Book a demo today.