3 Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Product Information Management (PIM) Platform
The right product information management technology can empower distributors and enhance ecommerce capabilities. Shashin Shah, the CEO of Pimcore Global Services describes the best three ways to ensure you get the most out of your PIM platform.
1. Improve Customer Engagement
It is not enough for the product you sell to be great by itself. As a distributor, placing the right product content at the right time will increase the chances of drawing engagement from resellers. A PIM platform can help with creating high-quality content for your product catalog, centralizing and collating marketing, sales, and technical product information. When your product catalog data is organized, it improves coordination and communication among supplier partners, thus making the job much easier for buyers, which leads to engaging customer experience.
2. Automate Operational Processes
A PIM solution can introduce collaboration both internally as well as among other stakeholders, enabling easy and quick access to product data. It can also eliminate data silos, so you can do away with extensive spreadsheets. Through an API-based PIM platform, you can acquire data from various channels, such as online sales, ERP, invoices, etc., and this translates to optimized productivity. In the context of a technology partner ecosystem, a distributor is the dedicated reseller for a solution and handles a variety of activities for the brand. You can use a PIM solution to keep the partner network up to date on the product updates every time there is a new item or feature rollout. What’s more, you can also manage the entire partner lifecycle from partner recruitment to partner technical support, and sales and marketing services to training and certification all from a single pane of glass.
3. Swiftly Execute New Value Chain
Given that all data is in one place, you can always explore newer opportunities and amplify sales across multiple channels. A PIM platform paves the way for fostering an innovative culture and experimenting with captivating campaigns, something that is either a complex process or impossible with decentralized product information. With the right PIM platform, you can establish stronger data governance policies, such as building data hierarchies for catalog data and defining a streamlined workflow, thus making the system more intuitive and interactive for your customers to use. With more millennials stepping into the C-suite, buying decisions are made based on how easily they can extract value from a distributor’s website and make their transition process hassle-free. A well-organized product catalog helps them research product specifications, buy it, and resell/consume with efficiency.
Embrace the Future of Rich Product Information Delivery
With the flurry of activities surrounding distributors, and competition cropping up from unconventional businesses, you should consider capitalizing on best-of-breed technologies, such as adopting a PIM platform. Trends like infusing visually appealing product unboxing and walkthrough videos have already made inroads in the PIM landscape. It is just a matter of time before technologies such as artificial intelligence and AR/VR become the norm. When it comes to that, be open for changes, including those that come from a feature-rich PIM solution.
Source: The post originally published in Modern Distribution Management (MDM).