What Are the Benefits of PIM? | Salsify

Today’s consumers use different platforms to discover new brands and find information about products. They expect to understand how a product helps solve their problem and fits their lifestyle before purchasing.

If you don’t give them the information they’re looking for, they’ll leave your store and switch to your competitor.

With customer expectations at record highs, brands need to make their product information understandable and easily accessible.

The best way to do that is to implement product information management (PIM), which allows you to create a single source of truth for product data, create better customer experiences, improve internal processes, and more.

In this article, let’s take a closer look at how PIM can become a game-changer for your business.

1. PIM Helps Increase Your Revenue

For modern consumers, product information like size, color, and standard product images aren’t enough to make a buying decision.

According to Nielsen Brandbank, 76% of shoppers prefer additional content on product pages or enhanced product content available when purchasing online.

Enhanced Content Plays a Big Role

Enhanced product content refers to strong visuals like:

High-quality images;
Videos;
360 spins;
Product tours; and
Comparison charts.

Enhanced content helps:

Showcase products from different angles;
Tell your brand story; and
Provide shoppers with all the information required to make an informed purchase decision.

Nielsen Brandbank confirms that enhanced content can increase conversions by 86%, and products using 360 spins have shown a 30% higher conversion rate than those without.

When you give customers enhanced content they expect, you increase their buying confidence and brand loyalty, which is a driving force of your sales.

2. PIM Helps Increase Your Teams’ Performance

The digital shelf requires more information to sell products and fulfill consumers’ expectations.

In addition to product specs, SKU numbers, and shipping weights, you must supply:

Compelling copy;
Unique value propositions;
Images;
Videos;
Post-purchase materials; and more.

Gathering all of these from stakeholders across your company or from partners outside your organization takes time and extensive collaboration.

Spreadsheets aren’t a good strategy because they create more challenges for your teams to access and manage data effectively and efficiently.

Not to mention that using spreadsheets can lead to inaccuracies and inconsistencies in product data. Your teams could end up wasting time fixing things and doing repetitive tasks, which decreases their productivity dramatically.

How Does a PIM Solution Help?

With a PIM solution, you can:

Centralize product data into a single place. Hence, your teams can save a lot of time and effort in adding, updating, publishing, and searching information.
Increase collaboration across departments and breaks up silos. A PIM solution will give your company a central data hub where everyone can access, manage, and contribute easily.
Provides rules that you can use to automate tasks like:
- Populating attribute values across products;
- Managing product data in bulk; and
- Transferring information between channels. This helps free up your team’s time and remove human error.

3. PIM Can Supercharge Your Growth

We’ve seen how PIM can improve your business efficiency and meet customers’ needs. But it’s not just a system to do that. PIM can even accelerate your business’ growth because it makes it easier for you to increase your product portfolios or expand to other markets.

When your product catalogs grow, relying on manual manipulation of product data can lead to inefficiencies and risks further down the line.

Product descriptions need updating, specifications need changing, and greater numbers of SKUs need publishing. A lot of new information can prevent you from any thoughts of expanding as the process can be so complicated and time-consuming when done manually.

Why a PIM System Is Essential

With a PIM in place, all information is kept under one roof. You can also need one update, and the data is then changed automatically in your downstream systems.

You’ll be in a stronger position to take products to market at speed. Your business will also become more agile, proactive, and ready to offer greater numbers of products, maximizing your growth potential.