Kinds and characteristics of a PIM to keep in mind in your strategy

When an e-commerce business reaches a certain point managing stock and determining which marketing channels are producing results becomes difficult. This is where a Product Information Management (PIM) system really helps.

In this post, we’ll look at how a good PIM solution can make your business more agile and productive.

What is a PIM?

Put simply PIM software helps you better manage every aspect of your e-commerce system. From tracking sales and stock accurately to determining which marketing channels are performing well, a good productive information management system will help you see the information you need faster and more accurately.

Access to the information and purchasing approvals can be controlled using a hierarchal system. This provides good management control systems, approval purchase tracking, and security.

Accounting

PIM systems allow for much better and faster accounting. Seeing your bottom line is easy, seeing your best selling items, successful marketing campaigns, and vice versa are made simple. You can keep track of the sales process from start to finish.  Every aspect of accounting is now visible to you.  This leads to better decisions from a financial view.

Business Intelligence

Once a PIM system is in place and configured correctly making faster and better business decisions become possible. Consider, no more data mining across various spreadsheets. Simply discover the information when needed. The better PIM systems such as Sales Layer can run reports based on your input. The information you need to make the big calls are at your fingertips.

Better Stock Management and Distribution

Stock management and distribution is vital to the success of an e-commerce based business. Aspects such as re-order levels can be set and configured to re-order when needed. No more losing sales because you have run out of stock. Distribution networks can be managed more effectively with stock levels at each of your plants made visible and easily accessible.

All of this adds up to the oh so important better customer service.

Better Marketing

A PIM system ensures that your marketing is brought into the hub. Images, social media updates, can all be brought together and published from the system itself. This makes the update process far easier to keep track off and makes tracking the success of your marketing channels far easier.

PIM Cloud

PIM systems can be cloud-based avoiding hefty infrastructure costs and allowing for better more agile and flexible working. This results in better productivity across your teams. Better productivity and workflow results in better profit and better business.

Having a cloud-based system also means there are less clash and conflicts. Under the older systems, a team can make changes which another team can’t see. This can result in chaos and lost time. Now, everyone works from the same data hub, making changes visible to all departments.

Your teams can now work remotely with PIM cloud and you can use the hierarchal controls to apply security measures to control who can access what.

Final Thoughts

Once a PIM system is in place you can manage your business more effectively, improving workflow and productivity. If you find you’re spending hours looking across spreadsheets to find answers, it is time to invest in a product information management system.