Mens Et Opera - Reloaded

In a recent post  (one of my most popular), I gave a very short answer to the question of whether PDM and PIM are the same thing. The answer was a resounding "NO". Let's elaborate on this a bit further. Historically, product management (PM) meant mostly engineering data. In fact, PM was seen as a common layer shared across engineers and manufacturers to translate data from one domain to another. Engineers would provide classifications and attributes for components and materials to support the growing need of manufacturers to standardization by identifying similar components/materials, eliminating redundancy, and establishing a preferred parts list. The data would also be available to R&D and QA, for example. These particular processes along with version control are part of Product Life-cycle Management (PLM) discipline which includes PDM. More specifically, PDM is a capability to "reliably capture and maintain the definition of a product and related data throu...

I recently came across an interesting executive summary of a report conducted by Capgemini involving 62 global leading online retail and consumer products (CP) companies in the grocery category (it’s a bit dated but I think still pertinent). The aim of the research was to “evaluate how visible and consumer driven the product data is in retailers’ and CP companies’ digital channels.” The research finds that in many cases the “digital product information provided to shoppers is inaccurate, incomplete or missing entirely” which doesn’t perfectly square with the need for rich consumer-oriented product data, driven by the explosion of digital channels. According to the report, the key step to provide better information and enhance the dialogue with shoppers is to “improve the visibility of product data in digital channels.” This resonates with me greatly. However, the question is “how?” That is: How to make product content relevant and consistent* across all channels?   The fol...