Building the PIM (and PXM) Dream Team

I remember being so happy the first time one of our customers asked me to help write a job description to find his/her PXM Product Owner to support the company’s vision. 

The scope of the PIM has evolved so much since we started the journey, back in 2014. The first key success we had to insist on (and we’ll never stop) is that PIM is a Business tool that helps empower Business people!

Bringing together the right people to create a PIM team is the first step toward a successful PIM implementation. And yes, you have to identify the people that are contributors (creating and enriching product data, meaning information, and assets) and people that are consumers (benefiting immediately from high-quality and always up-to-date product data). 

And oh, it happens that these two groups are not necessarily always internal people, working for your own organization. 

If you are a distributor (no matter B2C, B2B2C, or B2B), all the suppliers you work with are direct contributors as they provide the first level of product information. And if you are a brand, you probably sell your products wholesale, on other distributors’ websites, or on marketplaces. All these business partners need to get empowered and be part of the Product Experience Management you set up.

Use the PXM Maturity Model to scale the PIM Dream Team

To know where to start and define a clear PXM roadmap, it is important to have the PXM Maturity Model in mind:

PXM Adopter

A PXM Adopter establishes a single source of truth as a strong foundation for using product information consistently across channels and markets. This means your team is aware of the complexity of scaling, but are still dealing with outdated processes and a manual way of working (hello, dozens of Excel sheets, but goodbye!). 

PXM Innovator

A PXM Innovator starts to unlock growth with a collaborative model between teams and formalizes a process to make sure attributes and assets are defined to match the product experience that customers expect along the entire buying journey.

PXM Champion

A PXM Champion unlocks growth at scale thanks to a scalable and well-designed platform that involves internal and external stakeholders and aligns with the business strategy.

Whenever you’d like to know more about where you are today, just take our free PXM Maturity Assessment, which will guide you through the People, the Process, and the Technology actions you should take as the next steps. 

Follow the Leaders

Forming your PIM Dream Team, identifying stakeholders, and earning their buy-in is a crucial step in the success of a PXM program.

And the global vision, the “why we must achieve it”, must be shared very early with every stakeholder, even if they won’t all be involved simultaneously in the project. They will share and thus embodies this vision, knowing perfectly why this matters and what is at stake. 

Here are the Fantastic Four that will make your project a success: 

1. It is mandatory to get Executive Sponsorship – sponsors will be responsible for keeping the projects aligned with the organization’s strategy. They evangelize the PXM vision, own the business cases, focus on realization of benefits, and provide dedicated guidance, resources, and oversight.We consider their implication on the overall project from 5 to 10%. 
2. Dedicate a (PXM) Project Manager or Product Owner – (s)he will be responsible for a myriad of things, including:
   • Planning, organizing, and directing the completion of the project 
   • Building and managing project plan 
   • Delegating team responsibilities, tracking day-to-day project action items, and escalating project risks or blockers when needed
   • Embodying the PXM visionAs nothing is better than listening to someone nailing it, here is a sneak peek from our annual summit Unlock, interviewing Royal Canin’s PXM Owner, Sylvain Cavaillé.We consider their implication on the overall project from 25 to 40%. 
3. As  we introduced earlier, the PXM project is firstly a business project made for supporting business people to achieve business goals aligned with the company’s strategy. So, the Functional Administrator is the core of such a project. (S)he is the business owner of the applications and helps optimize and adopt a new way of working, the voice of business users.(S)he typically receives design input from a variety of other business users with product knowledge like Product and Brand Managers, Purchasing teams, Sales Channel Managers, Marketing, eCom, Marketplace, Media, etc.We consider her/his implication on the overall project from 50 to 100%, depending on the project scope.
4. Last but not least, you always need a business-oriented  Technical Administrator who can manage and define the governance of the system architecture. They define and validate the architecture and integrations with other IT systems (e.g., ERP, PLM, E-commerce, DAM, etc.) and maintain integrations post-implementation. We consider their implication over time from 10 to 25%. 

Obviously, this list is not one-size-fits-all. Every organization is different, and you’ll likely have to adapt these practices based on the internal organization of your company, or whether your PIM tool is utilized for only one brand or multiple brands/subsidaries. But this should work as a great starting point for your team.

Empowering teams with Akeneo PXM Studio is our mission, and we follow our customers closely on their path to PXM Maturity. 

We have dedicated one of our annual awards to that topic. The Leadership Award category aims at rewarding organizations that have been able to grow with their teams. 

You can discover this year’s winner’s history, Azelis, a 20 year old group that elaborates and markets specialty chemicals in animal nutrition, food & health, personal and home care, and pharma market segments. 

I’m looking forward to hearing from new positions created in the PXM world!

If you have any questions about building your own PIM Dream Team, our team of in-house PXM advisors is here and happy to help!