Choosing the right PIM is critical to growing your business

Sometimes a problem is pretty straightforward. You’re managing product information through a combination of spreadsheets, syndication tools, eCommerce back-ends, and MDM customizations. As a result, no central product catalog exists. Time-to-market is slow and painful. Ability to expand to new channels is expensive and complicated. Product data is incorrect and incomplete. Information is conflicting from one channel to another. Brand tone is inconsistent across channels and markets. As a result you’re delivering product experiences that frustrate customers. This issue is limiting your growth.

In this case, it may seem obvious that you need a PIM.

Sometimes, however, there are some other challenges in your business in addition to the above that might be clouding decision-making to solve your primary PIM problem. Channel teams (marketplaces, eCommerce, print, local market channels, social, etc.) have unique needs and are asking for help, pulling product information needs into their overall proposals. Maybe your marketplace team bought a syndication engine that had a tack-on PIM but it’s really a PIM oriented to serve Amazon or other marketplaces (instead of your omnichannel strategy). Perhaps an internal team is pursuing a project to consolidate multi-domain data across the organization and thinks product information should be lumped into this massive project. Assets from different teams are scattered across the organization and someone thinks that by centralizing them, it will solve the product catalog problem. Or even more complicated, your company has a ‘build’ mentality where the typical answer to solving internal challenges like yours is to custom create a solution.

We hear you. These challenges are common. What’s universally true about them all is that if you can help provide clarity of needs among the groups and collaborate on a roadmap and vision for success, then you will hold the keys to unlocking growth.

When searching for the right PIM for your business needs, it’s best to start by building a foundation for scale. Here’s what to look for:

• Product information collection: Product information comes from your ERP, PLM, spreadsheets, data pools, agencies, suppliers, manufacturers, marketing team, and the list goes on. Your PIM should automatically map this information into an organized and flexible product catalog structure.
• Flexible catalog data model: An actual test of whether a PIM can manage your current and future catalog needs is to ensure it will manage relational data. Make sure you’ll be able to design the perfect catalog structure so your teams know exactly what they have to do each time they connect, with the most useful information for them and enhance their way of working. Your ultimate goal is to reflect your internal organization into your PIM to support all your business growth strategies.
• Flexible & non-linear team workflows: Consider all of the teams who have a part to play in crafting product experiences. Marketing. SEO. Channel. Creative. Compliance. Finance. Temp workers. External partners. Curating unique experiences for channels and markets is a team effort. In order to facilitate the highest quality inputs in the fastest amount of time, the PIM should have an easy-to-use interface with granular governance controls.
• Design for all product experiences: Requirements for your eCommerce site vs. Twitter vs. Instagram vs. a print catalog vs. the needs of your in-store representatives or customer services agents are all slightly different. Your PIM should have a centralized place for each product to be adapted to each channel experience (static and dynamic images, videos, text, VR, etc.).
• Distribution to all relevant channels: Your PIM should always publish accurate, complete, and enriched product data to marketing and sales channels (owned/unowned/digital/traditional), as well as to internal and external stakeholders.
• Ability to gain control of product data quality & take action on insights: Your PIM should make it easy to identify which products are ready to publish and which still need work.
• Automate for productivity: Identifying the work to be done is not enough, your PIM must allow you to build customized automations to suit your unique workflow needs.
• Scale to meet future growth needs: Scale comes in many flavors, and your PIM should be ready to accommodate it. New channels and routes to market, new products, new markets, new languages, new teams contributing, and new teams consuming.

The above functionality is best served by a technology that is built uniquely for product information for any and all types of channels (digital or physical), markets and distribution models.

Product Experience Management (PXM) is the art and science of quickly and efficiently delivering high-quality product information in the right context, adapted to channel and locale.

At the core of a PXM offering should be a PIM. Much like at the core of any customer experience offering, should be a CDP or CRM. The PIM enables you to create and organize product catalogs and to store static and dynamic product information. It improves the display and consumption of product information on any of the channels where your products are showcased. It allows you to easily distribute product information and get feedback on the performance of those displays, all in one central location. Finally, it makes information about every product interaction available to anyone at your company who might need it.

PXM gives everyone — from marketing, sales, customer service, business development, customer support, legal, compliance, or any other line of business — a better way to manage the internal and external facing components of product information and measure the performance of each of those external interactions.

With visibility and easy access to this complete, single source of truth for product information, it’s easier to collaborate, increase productivity, and unlock growth. Everyone in your company can see how and where product information is displayed, what the impact of the experience is on conversions and returns, accelerate time-to-market for new products, new channels, new markets and so much more. PXM helps companies of all sizes drive business growth.

Technology

• Omnichannel: Not just the digital shelf
• Scale: In any given customer you might find 60M+ products, 10M+ API calls per week, 1TB+ digital assets stored, 300+ active users
• Open SaaS: Transparent, extensible, tested
• Ease-of-use: Even your legal team will love logging in
• Global: UI in 35+ languages
• Future-proof: D2C, B2C, B2B2C, B2B; brands, manufacturers, distributors all use Akeneo
• Purposeful innovation: Roadmap informed by 80,000 users

Ecosystem/Community

• Happy customers: Don’t take our word for it
• Engaged community: 3,286 helping each other out
• Partners: Integration, services, consulting
• Developers: Contributing to your growth

Experience

• Consultative approach: We provide a framework and step-by-step guidance by knowledgeable experts
• Fast time to value: We get you up and running without compromising quality; no garbage in / garbage out here
• Unlock & PXM Pioneers: Join your peers for regular user meet-ups and conferences where you’ll have fun while learning
• Akeneo corporate values: Humility, Innovation, Benevolence, Openness, Beer
• Ziggy: She’s our Chief Experience Officer