PIM and digital transformation are necessary for businesses around the globe to stay competitive. No matter what driving your digital transformation may look like, preparing extraordinary product experiences will always be a key to success.
Whether it is updating your catalog, expanding your business to new markets or pivoting your business, you will always require a solid PIM that supports your digital transformation. The ultimate aim is still the same – to deliver great product experiences that nurture great customer experiences.
What is Digital Transformation? How a PIM can Help in Digital Transformation?
Digital transformation simply refers to adopting digital technologies to optimize business processes. The primary objectives of digital transformation are to boost productivity, drive innovation and add value to your services. Streamlined business processes can make your business future-ready, which is essential in the fast-paced market, such as e-commerce.
Without using appropriate digital tools, the manual processes may hinder the growth, scalability and make the processes prone to errors. For instance, managing product information the traditional way in spreadsheets or in disparate systems is an extremely time-consuming and labor-intensive task.
It often leads to inaccuracy, inconsistency and human errors. This negatively impacts the user experience and may take away users to your competitors.
With a digitally-advanced PIM tool, you can easily streamline product information management processes and automate up to 80% of manual tasks. It also enables you to adopt omnichannel strategy, so you can deliver compelling product experiences across all channels and boost your revenue. Here are a few reasons why PIM is a vital element of your digital transformation journey.
Reasons to consider PIM for your Digital Transformation Journey
#1 Make managing of large product data volumes easy
Businesses today are experiencing an exponential increase in the product data. This data is coming from numerous sources. You need a single system that can manage all of your product data, coming from all channels, for all your teams with greater efficiency.
A proactive move towards transforming this process is the best way to manage this increase. Some companies are just unable to provide what savvy customers perceive as a very basic – the correct, enriched and relevant product information.
Deploying PIM as a part of your digital transformation strategy makes easier to manage a large volume of data by reducing the manual tasks related to product data management by up to 80%.
This is possible through powerful automation, streamlined processes and unifying disparate systems. As a result, customers can have access to complete, accurate and consistent product information no matter what platform they choose to use.
#2 Leverage data-driven integration and unification
Building connection between systems is a crucial step in achieving transformation in data. Using a PIM, businesses can facilitate communication between any number of applications, legacy systems (ERP) and third-party systems (order management system).
PIM act as a system that connects all other systems and makes sure that the foundation of data-driven digital transformation is laid appropriately.
PIM ensures that the data is collected, enriched and distributed from a single source by communicating with all the applications present in your business ecosystem and then syndicating product information to numerous channels. Regardless of the number of systems, PIM drives the needed collaboration.
#3 Improve operational efficiency and mitigate risk with automation
In any business, there are a lot of product data involved, and often this data is managed through traditional methods of spreadsheets, emails, transferred through hard drives or peer to peer. This results in creating multiple versions of the same data, residing in different systems and owned by various people. This not only hampers your productivity, but also make your data prone to errors.
A PIM system enables you to achieve operational efficiency that will truly transform your business by automating the entire process. From data accumulation to data dissemination, a PIM handles the entire handling process through powerful automation and makes sure the quality of data is not compromised.
As a result, every person in the department gets access to the latest and most update information, allowing all departments to work in a perfect harmony.
#4 Support scalability and expansion
One of the biggest problems faced by the enterprises with the systems they already have is whether those systems are capable of expanding when the amount of data increases, or support product information across multiple geographies. An approach to digital transformation with respect to product data is to make the systems as feasible to scale and expand as possible when required.
PIM solutions allow businesses to scale their product data by leaps and bounds along with achieving their business expansion goals. These systems are designed to scale when the volume of data increases as well as support product information syndication in multiple geographies. Digital transformation means capability to scale at a short notice and allowing you to expand at a rate you plan for, which is something only a PIM can provide.
#5 Enable ownership, governance and collaboration
Another important aspect of digitalization with respect to product data is encouraging collaboration between teams and bringing people together. Product information management without governance is like a country without a central government, where different states can make up their own law without being concerned about whether they align with the country’s welfare.
Governance in product data is necessary for defining and underpinning authority, processes, responsibilities and ownership of data, which is only possible through a PIM system. PIM ensures the security and quality of product data across the organization by clearly defining roles – who have access to the data, who can take action, in which situations and through which methods. Digital transformation in PIM is about ensuring that all the teams and members are on the same page.
#6 Enhancing the customer experience
When we talk about digital transformation, it cannot be completed without taking into account the experience of the customer. Delivering a pleasant digital commerce experience is the ultimate goal of any transformation.
Since omnichannel selling has become a new norm in the present digital world, sending up to the date and correct product information is of the utmost importance in order to win your customers.
A PIM provides the ease with which users can pick up the product information from where they left on a different platform or device. How you leverage the power of digital transformation decides your customer engagement with the brand, and a PIM never fails to deliver an exceptional customer experience.
Start off your journey towards digital transformation with a PIM
Digital transformation can be a complex process, but it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. The ultimate goal of any digital transformation is to streamline the processes that work in favor of online retailers, organizations, employees and customers.
The businesses that have adopted product information management systems as an integral part of their business process will definitely get a competitive advantage. The ROIs will come quickly, operational efficiency will be improved greatly and product experience can be delivered consistently.
