25 Situations That Indicate the Need for a PIM System
Christophe Cabarry,
Dec 12, 2023
Product Information Management (PIM) systems are essential tools that allow businesses to gather, centralize, enhance, and manage the dissemination of up-to-date product information—encompassing data, documents, and knowledge—across their organizations, applications, and digital platforms.
If your organization is already equipped with a PIM, you're likely aware of its advantages. But how can you tell when it's time to implement such a system in your company? Below are 25 scenarios that suggest your organization could benefit from a PIM.
You Might Need a PIM If:
- You're struggling to keep up with the increasing complexity of product information within your company.
- Finding all relevant product literature in every language takes you more than 15 seconds.
- You're uncertain if you're providing customers with the most current version of your Technical Data Sheets (TDS), or if those documents are available in Spanish.
- Your website lacks an online catalog, featuring only a basic product list or brief descriptions.
- Your online catalog cannot be searched using filters or by specific attributes.
- Your website doesn't feature individual product pages in HTML format.
- You're unable to provide a self-serve product experience on your website, forcing customers to contact you directly.
- Your website analytics indicate a high bounce rate on your product pages.
- Updating product information on your website requires manual intervention.
- You need to consult with regulatory department colleagues to determine whether a product is vegan, kosher, or to obtain corresponding certifications.
- You discover that your distributors' sales representatives aren't familiar with all your products.
- Your own sales representatives lack comprehensive knowledge of your product range.
- Customers receive inconsistent product information between online channels and from your sales team.
- You manually send document updates to existing customers.
- You're unable to monitor changes to your Data Sheets, including when and by whom these changes were made.
- Your distributors are using outdated documents or unauthorized images to sell your products.
- You frequently need to distribute new PDF versions of documents to all your distributors due to updates.
- Your TDS are manually created in MS Word, requiring a new document each time product information changes.
- Valuable product knowledge is lost when experienced employees retire, taking decades of informal product expertise with them.
- Essential product knowledge, such as formulation tips, sales advice, competitor information, upselling opportunities, and compatibility data, isn't readily accessible to your sales representatives, leaving them no other option than acquiring it on the field over the years.
- Your starting point formulations are scattered across numerous PDFs without links to your products’ documentation.
- Two of your products data sheets refer to the same market with two different names, or to the same name with two different spellings.
- Manual checks and periodic updates are required for product listings on platforms like SpecialChem or UL, leading to discrepancies across different channels.
- Displaying a new product on your website takes more than a week.
- You're concerned about the reliability of your product-compliance documentation.
