Top reasons for PIM investments

The cost of waiting to invest in PIM is too great. Please pause and repeat it to yourself. This is not a joke.
Let's face it. If you are a retailer (small or big makes little difference), what are your most painful challenges? Chances are that your answer will include a variation of the following:

• lost sales from out-of-stocks, 
• lost time haggling over return disputes, 
• squandering hours reconciling product promotion discrepancies across all channels.

Feel free to continue to experience wasted dollars from slowed time to market for new product introductions, time spent relaying basic product information to customers and partners, and brand erosion.

However, if you have embarked on the journey for redemption :-), I suggest to keep on reading. But let me firstly demystify what PIM is...just to lay good foundations (also check here, here, and here for further qualification of what PIM really is).

Now, my top reasons why you ought to consider transforming your business around PIM. Here they are (not in any particular order because this really depends on your current situation and the industry you are in):

Operational efficiency
This really boils down to reduction in the number of call center questions regarding basic item information, reduction in the number of instances when inventory levels are insufficient, reduction in the number of purchase order errors, resulting in incorrect shipments or adjustments.

New Product Introduction (NPI)
Introducing a new product also requires the coordinated efforts of dozens of internal and external staff. It can be a fairly complex task considering that even a simple product may require hundreds of attributes, all derived from multiple systems residing within and outside the organisation. 

Reduce the "Time to Market" 
This is really the outcome of having a streamlined process for creating new products and distribute them to ecommerce and other channels in the ecosystem. The faster, the better. Why? Well, you will have them before anyone else and secondly there will be more time to sell them.
Studies have shown that high-performing companies generate, on average, 61 percent of their sales from successful introductions of new products and services.

Business growth and improved customer satisfaction
The instantaneous nature of online retail impacts consistency and adds an additional layer of complexity to the management of product information. Customer satisfaction is (also) correlated to rich, contextual, and consistent product information across sales channels. Companies that lack this discipline, experience brand erosion with consequent detrimental impact on overall business performance.

Improve your supplier performance
How would you answer your CFO if she asked for the average cost to onboard a product from a supplier? All things considered, my bet is that it would be in the neighborhood of $500-$700. But even if it is $200 you are still in deep water. In fact, with a bit of math you'll figure out the incidence of this cost when considering the tens of thousands of SKUs that are introduced into the market every year.
Forward-thinking retailers are leveraging an integrated supplier portal to enhance supplier collaboration saving precious time and manpower. Often bringing down that cost to less than $5.

Omni-channel enablement 
A retail omni-channel strategy cannot not contemplate the management of product information. This is because retailers need  to collect information from multiple sources, optimizing content and facilitating timely distribution of content across multiple channels. Very often, though, information in stores, ecommerce site, mobile app, and print catalogue just don’t match up. Or it is just hard to connect products and customers resulting in poor customer experiences. This is a large topic that will be covered in upcoming posts.

Are you still scratching your head about how PIM can actually lay the foundations to deliver on these promises?

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