Product information management (PIM) is the process of managing and enriching product information and related digital assets across different teams to provide an engaging product experience and successfully sell the product across multiple sales and marketing channels. A PIM solution is a master-data fueled, process-driven application for collaborating on product content. It serves as a single, central platform to collect, manage, govern and enrich product information and content and distribute it to marketing, sales, and eCommerce channels.
A PIM solution is a master-data fueled, process-driven application for collaborating on product content. It serves as a single, central platform to collect, manage, govern and enrich product information and content and distribute it to marketing, sales, and eCommerce channels.
Why Do I Need Product Information Management (PIM)?
Whether you are selling B2B or B2C, delivering engaging product experiences is a key success factor for your business. Your customers expect to have rich, relevant, and trusted product information across channels and digital touchpoints so they can make an informed purchase decision.
But quite often, product information is incomplete, fragmented, and inconsistent across different applications, siloed systems, business units, and channels. Teams like digital marketing, merchandising, product management, or eCommerce cannot get a complete view of all product information. They spend too much time manually managing product data or exchanging emails about product content, both internally and with external groups like suppliers or creative agencies.
Companies that are not able to manage and collaborate on their product information effectively miss opportunities, lose revenue and market share, but more importantly, they struggle to deliver engaging product experiences that are required to build brand loyalty.
PIM helps standardize the increasingly complex demands of product content. It allows you to easily syndicates trusted, enriched and high-quality product information to sales and marketing channels. With the right PIM strategy and a consistent, accessible source for product information, you can speed up workflows and time to market; quickly identify and assess product data quality issues; capitalization on emerging market opportunities; and ultimately deliver a positive product experience to customers.
In the context of product information management, software vendors and industry analyst use more frequently the term “Product Experience Management (PxM)”. PxM centralizes management of customer, product, supplier, and other data, applies machine learning and other AI techniques to that data so you can link transaction and interaction data, and provides relevant, contextual, engaging content to the right audience at the right time and in the right place. The Ventana Report Value Index for Product Experience Management in 2023 evaluates PIM vendors in different PIM/PxM categories relevant to the product and customer experience.
How Does a PIM Strategy Set Up an Organization for Success?
The outbreak of the global COVID-19 pandemic had significantly accelerated the existing shift in customer buying behavior toward digital marketplaces and more convenient home delivery options. This trend has continued since then as consumersare pivoting to online shopping at a much faster pace than before. Retailers, manufacturers, brands and distributors that are late to adapt may miss out.
The shift to eCommerce ultimately leads to an increasing demand for PIM solutions because companies need a PIM strategy in place to enable digital commerce. For more on digital commerce strategies, check out this interview from Informatica World 2023 on how Super Retail Group is driving successful digital commerce initiatives.
A PIM solution better positions organizations to effectively feed digital channels with trusted, rich, and relevant product data and create market resilience by equalizing declining in-store sales. For example, major apparel company PVH is supercharging e-commerce and grew e-commerce sales by 50% overall, including an 87% jump in sales on their own websites, compared with a year ago.
How Does PIM Relate to MDM and PxM?
PIM vs. MDM
Master data management (MDM) is the glue that binds together an organization’s systems and information. Mastering product data with MDM (Product MDM) provides a single source of truth based on trusted, accurate, complete product data. The primary purpose of Product MDM is to create relationships between data domains and fuel internal analytical and operational business applications with trusted data. The primary use case for PIM is to author product data in order to publish it to sales channels, like eCommerce web sites or print publishing systems.
PIM vs. PxM
Product experience management (PxM) is the action or insight that improves or contributes to an engaging and personalized customer experience. It involves using a PIM solution along with analytical and actionable insights (e.g., coming from channels or Informatica Customer 360 insights), machine learning (ML), and artificial intelligence (AI) techniques. PxM is especially relevant to help market products more effectively across digital touchpoints. Successful PxM is impossible without a PIM solution to feed the product experience. Therefore, it’s fair to say that PxM is a result or subset of a broader PIM solution that usually covers more comprehensive use cases and functionalities.
Product Information Management Benefits
The main benefits of PIM include:
Faster time to market
Increased brand loyalty
Ability to sell more products faster, including cross-sell and upsell opportunities
Improved operational efficiencies by streamlining critical workflows and cross-functional collaborative data enrichment
Better product data quality and compliance with industry standards
A more engaging, omnichannel product experience.
Learn more about the business value of product information management in our blog, featuring insights from real PIM practitioners.
Informatica’s Product Information Management (PIM) Solution
Master Data Management (MDM) - Product 360 is Informatica’s product information management (PIM) solution. It empowers your digital commerce and business transformation with innovative and intelligent product experience management.
Based on a trusted 360-degree view of all product content and with automated workflows, business users can manage product information much more efficiently. The intuitive task- and role-based user interface makes collaboration on product data smarter and more agile, both internally and in collaboration with business partners.
Organizations like BMW Group, Unilever or Saint-Gobain select MDM – Product 360, because Informatica is a trusted and strong strategic partner with proven long-term PIM customer success, a clear market commitment, the broadest global PIM and MDM partner ecosystem, as well as the deepest innovation-driven PIM product functionality with enterprise scalability.
Customer Success Stories: Product Information Management in Action
Australian retailer Kmart can introduce products much faster across all channels using a PIM solution incorporating Informatica MDM - Product 360 and Informatica Data Quality. Automated data checks and three levels of quality assurance processes yield accurate, high-quality content. Images are now automatically assigned to apparel SKUs, with no manual intervention required. Kmart Australia has also moved further into B2B sales opportunities, driving more revenue and helping the business grow 60 percent within two years. Read the full customer success story.
Thanks to their PIM solution, online retailer KLiNGEL, one of Europe’s leading online fashion retailers, can publish product information online without delays or errors resulting in increased omnichannel sales, including digital marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, and OTTO. It’s also improving the customer shopping experience. With more complete and detailed descriptions of styles and materials and more images of products, customers can find what they want faster and be more confident in their shopping. Read the full customer success story.
Additional Product Information Management Resources
Learn more about PIM and how to apply it in your organization with these free and downloadable resources.
Ebook: 5 Ways to Enhance Product Experience
White Paper: Product Information Management? Product MDM? Or Both?
Blog: Increasing Agility and Efficiency with Product Information Management
