The Rise of Product Information Management in the Era of COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed life as we know it. How people work, shop, conduct business, socialize, and celebrate is no longer the same. Today in the world of commerce, the majority of interactions between customers and employees happen through digital. Digital has become a common currency in terms of how transactions and interactions are experienced. Buyers for these interactions expect a hassle-free and seamless experience in the new normal. Thus, for success in the digital economy, enterprises are recalibrating their strategy on delivering outcome-based experiences that drive customer value and employee empowerment.

For digital commerce businesses with a broad product portfolio, ensuring all their product-related information is accurate and up to date tops the list. A robust product information management (PIM) solution caters to all these needs, as it orchestrates a product data hub for better data syndication by eliminating inconsistencies across multiple data silos.

The Necessity of 360-Degree View of Product Data

PIM helps build links between product data, digital assets, master data, content, commerce, and customer data to mutually reinforce customer experience (CX) strategies. When digital product availability has been on the rise, PIM can reduce the time-to-market by providing real-time visibility into product data. A well-rounded PIM solution helps an organization grow its digital commerce strategy, but in doing so, it delivers superior customer experience and employee experience (business users). Product 360 can also increase new product/service launch speed, personalization, and omnichannel/cross-channel experiences.

Let us look at how PIM puts experience-driven outcomes at the forefront during the COVID-19 pandemic.

1. Help Bring Automation to Internal Operations

When remote working has become the norm, and teams have lesser in-person collaboration with each other, data integrity goes for a toss. In such cases, PIM helps reestablish control over product data. A single source of information simplifies tasks such as updating product information, adding new product data, modifying catalogs, and dispersing information. With PIM’s automatic data structuring capabilities, businesses can put their data integrity woes to rest. 

2. Strengthen Omnichannel Enablement for Improved Experience

Obsolete and manual product data management strategies may be an overtaxing experience for the minimally available workforce. Omnichannel has been around for a long time, yet most organizations have not delivered on its promise of a unified customer experience. Instead of chasing channels, enterprises should embrace multiexperience by addressing new digital touchpoints and interaction modalities.

Here, PIM can help businesses organize and distribute rich product information across different multichannel touchpoints with robust enrichment and right management capability, thereby boosting end-to-end interaction between products and customers.

3. Speed up Time-to-Market for Competitive Edge

Businesses need accurate and centralized information that can be accessed by all relevant teams to ensure adequate marketing and a smooth and timely product launch. PIM helps avoid erroneous, redundant, and scattered information, thereby equipping the business through regulatory approvals, marketing campaigns, and catalog distribution. PIM provides the required toolset to manage any digital data and deliver it across any channel and device. All this ultimately translates to significantly reduced time-to-market and enriched user experiences.

4. Support Product Proliferation for Growth

According to a recent study, 30% of American millennials reported an increase in their online purchases during the pandemic. With more time to research and explore options, these demographic factions demand descriptive details about a product before purchasing, and brands must offer the same. An integrated PIM covers this as it handles consumer data and supports product data proliferation from multiple sources. PIM helps deliver consistent, accurate, and engaging content across all touchpoints to suit customers’ diverse multi-channel behavior.

5. Streamline Data Governance Process

With business operations being conducted from the confines of homes in light of the COVID-19 situation, enterprises need better means of ensuring data governance. PIM promotes efficient management of both structured and non-structured data and enforces data governance policies every time a business user changes the master data.

While the benefits of adopting a PIM solution to handle product data has become more of a necessity than an add-on now, many may argue that this perspective towards data management was long overdue in the industry. Driving experiences rather than pushing products has always been the differentiator that sets leaders apart from the followers. Pandemic or not, successful digital commerce centers around the foundation of robust data management, and PIM is one of the key components to starting with. 

To Conclude

The COVID-19 pandemic has inadvertently marked the beginning of new-age user interactions, be it employee or customer. Interestingly, the new normal did not necessarily put brakes on business operations altogether, as was evident after the initial weeks of the coronavirus spread. “Business as usual” has now found a newer meaning, thanks to how digital technologies like PIM stepped up to bridge the gaps between what could still work, only in a better way. One good example is how existing warehouses and brick-and-mortar stores were converted into click-and-collect outlets quickly, thereby ensuring business continuity. To change the game overnight, organizations need to be at the top of their product data management game. In the times to come, PIM will become prominent for any forward-looking business that wishes to sell experiences and not products alone.

Author Bio:

Shashin Shah is CEO of Pimcore Global Services, an open-source platform for product information management (PIM/MDM), digital asset management (DAM), content management system (CMS), and eCommerce. In his over 20 years of experience, both globally and the US, he has managed large enterprise clients through strategizing, operating, consulting, and carrying out implementations worth USD 100M+ via global delivery models across several industries.