Companies operating in the manufacturing, retail or distribution industries face the ne to manage multiple types of product data. The diversity of sales channels, platforms and partners requires an effective system for managing this data. To take control, you ne to combine three systems: site management, accounting and PIM.
Purpose of PIM systems
Each product can have a large number of attributes: descriptions, photos, sizes, colors, prices, seasonality, material composition, group membership, standard compliance, replaceability, compatibility, etc. These attributes ne to recent mobile phone number data be periodically assign, adjust, request, transferr to sales channels and internal systems, updat, and transferr again.
A correctly select set of attributes for a specific trading platform or a change in the current connectivity can improve the position (sales) of a product among competitors. Therefore, working with attributes and their values is a separate business process that must be support by some automation tools.
While the company has less than 100 SKUs, the costs of keeping them up to date can be neglect. With 1000 SKUs and more than one sales channel, the labor costs become sensitive. Further expansion of the range without changing the methods of working with product content begins to hit the costs hard.
If a company does not have a PIM system, then collecting and updating data on each SKU takes about 25 minutes per year. Automation helps ruce this time to 4 minutes.
- Abraham, “Product Data Management: Theory and Practice”
PIM class systems are design for centraliz marketing list storage, standardization, enrichment and distribution of data on the enterprise’s product range.
In addition to saving time, a PIM system helps:
- control the completeness of information about products;
- standardize, unify and enrich information obtain from different sources (manufacturers, suppliers, specializ databases);
- return data to external systems (CRM, LMS, WMS, etc.);
- transform and send information to different sales channels in the requir form (language, composition of attributes, format of mia content, sales offers, etc.);
- recalculate individual fields according to positive workplace relations means specifi rules, for example, convert supplier prices into retail prices;
- record and store the history of changes;
- Grant employees different rights to it data depending on their privilege level.
How to understand that you ne to switch to PIM
To assess the prerequisites for switching to a specializ solution, we suggest going through the checklist:
Have you tick several boxes? It makes sense to think about a better solution than you have now. Leave your contacts. We will call you back and discuss options.
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Why a CMS or accounting system is not an analogue of PIM
It is worth mentioning that in small companies with a narrow range of PIM tasks, any site management system will cover them, for example, the box version of “1C: Bitrix Site Management”. For mium-siz businesses with a range of 1000 items and omnichannel sales, the functionality of a CMS will be sorely lacking. Neither a CMS nor an accounting system will be able to cope with the task of building complex catalogs, creating mass transactions, linking products for up- or cross-sales without modifications.
To avoid being unfound, let’s compare the capabilities of managing product information in PIM and an accounting system, such as 1C.
Setting up product cards:
- In 1C, it is difficult to reuse already creat attributes. It will not be possible to create a series of white sneakers bas on the size range of a series of green sneakers by simply copying. And if you ne to add a new type of cards, you cannot do without programmers.
- PIM provides an interface for independent modeling of cards of any complexity, including sets and groups of attributes, without involving a 1C developer.
Working with digital content:
- 1C was not design as an application for storing and processing large volumes of mia files. They are usually stor in separate databases and load as ne. If everything is stor inside 1C, then at peak sales it may simply not cope with the load.
- PIM offers centraliz storage for working with mia files, ensuring high spe of content delivery.
Personal account for suppliers
- 1C is very close to the company’s money, so it does not include an interface for suppliers to upload information about their products and manage them.
- Most PIM solutions have a supplier’s personal account, through which you can upload a product fe in common formats (CSV, XML, XLSX, YML). The personal account can consolidate and transfer data to external systems.
Integration with online platforms
- There are no ready-made integrations or connectors for 1C to connect to external sales channels. Exchange between 1C and, for example, marketplaces requires programming and configuration.
- PIM provides ready-made solutions for automating data exchange via API.
There are many other differences between PIM and 1C, in particular, in matters of employee access management, automation at stages of the product life cycle, methods of control and moderation, and scalability.
Therefore, the systems often complement each other rather than being worthy alternatives in solving the problem of managing product content.
Examples of PIM implementation
To show how PIM systems are integrat into the processes of real companies, we will give several examples.
Motorsports Goods Store
The store offers its customers a wide range of products: helmets, glasses, gloves, shoes, overalls, sports steering wheels, chairs, safety equipment, special tires, exhaust and cooling systems, brake discs and pads, as well as many other tuning parts. The owners plann to develop new sales channels, including foreign ones. The expansion plans were hamper by the fragmentation of the product base: some data was stor in 1C, and the other – in the online store database. There were no means for automatic formation and uploading of product cards. This complicat the introduction of products to new sales channels and new markets, since trading platforms often require their own format and structure of the product fe.
To consolidate the product base, the PIMCORE solution was implement. After setting it up:
- it became possible to add descriptions and characteristics of products in several languages and in the future expand multilingualism;
- categories of goods with their own sets of properties and value ranges were creat. The goods immiately appear in the store in their category;
- a database of manufacturers and suppliers (with access rights settings) appear, which allow them to be launch into the system without risks to the business. Partners can upload new products, it balances and prices.
- the introduction of formulas help the company automatically calculate retail prices depending on changes in supplier prices;
- Setting up logical connections help to create a link between products and several categories for cross- and upselling.
In addition, the problems of errors when transferring data between systems and overloading the development team were remov.
Optical equipment store
The company produces and sells optical equipment and measuring devices: microscopes, telescopes, binoculars, night vision devices, laser levels, endoscopes, electrical measuring devices, various sensors, etc. In total, more than 10 thousand SKUs. We have already written about how the storage of product data was organiz and how it has chang over time. The current version of the custom PIM system is an analogue of PostgreSQL on Bitrix, which stores products, their descriptions in different languages, descriptions for different sites (B2B and B2C, mono- and multi-brand stores), instructions, certificates, images, product properties, warehouse/salon addresses and other information. The administrative panel is us to manage this array.
Construction marketplace
The company is an omnichannel retailer. Buyers can make a purchase in any way convenient for them: through a contact center, website, mobile app or store. The company has creat a system of free user services that help customers solve problems at any stage of repair, as well as a knowlge base with advice, instructions and materials from experts.
As is often the case, much of the work involv in managing mia and product information was done manually. It was slow, labor-intensive, and error-prone.
The implementation of the PIM system allow us to consolidate data in one place, get rid of a significant amount of routine manual work and errors. But most importantly, partners receiv convenient personal accounts for working with the suppli product range. Automation and ruction of time for data processing allow us to expand the range. Turnover for individual categories increas 3-5 times.
What to choose from
Russian Pim-systems
Ensi is a comprehensive solution that, in addition to PIM, includes: a product description and characteristics generator bas on photos, functionality for generating product offers with dynamic parameters, connectors to popular marketplaces, and the ability to configure access rights to system components. The platform is free.
Tochka is a service for managing products on marketplaces. Features: transferring cards between marketplaces, generating barcodes, making changes simultaneously on all platforms, analyzing the completeness of information, bulk loading, product analytics, etc. The cost of the license depends on the number of orders, 5 days are given for testing.
OpenPIM is a PIM system design specifically for small and mium businesses with typical functionality, except for workflow and supplier account. Features include setting up restrictions when creating hierarchy levels and assigning attributes to dependencies. There is no built-in support for trade offers (product options), they ne to be implement through a data model. You cannot generate files deriv from existing ones (for example, images with a different resolution or format). Data completeness analysis is not a feature out of the box and nes to be configur. The source code is open, there is a demo version.
There is also Brandquad, catalog.app, Compo Pim. The last one has an online calculation of the implementation profitability.
Foreign Pim-systems
The most famous players in the PIM systems market are: Pimcore, Akeneo, Marketprovider, Catsy, inRiver, PIMworks, Syndigo, etc. The most popular is Pimcore.
The product has been develop since 2010 and is a combination of PIM/MDM/DAM subsystems, i.e. it was creat not only for managing product data. It covers most of the necessary business functions out of the box, but requires some improvements to match a specific business model and Russian realities. In particular, it does not have ready-made connectors to popular Russian marketplaces. They can be found in the community, but Pimcore does not control the quality of the code of such extensions.