As the business world faces a difficult period, finding ways to optimize operations and reduce costs is becoming more and more crucial. In this difficult period, being savvy with your budget can be the deciding factor in maintaining a competitive edge.
One powerful way to cut down on your operating costs is by introducing a robust product information management (PIM) system, such as Pimcore. This software centralizes and streamlines various aspects of a company’s operations, which can have a big impact on making your internal processes run efficiently. Correspondingly, it can translate into significant savings in the long run.
Here are a few key areas where implementing Pimcore can have the biggest impact on your business’s bottom line.
A single source of truth with rapid search
As Pimore’s name suggests, its PIM functionality is the centerpiece that brings all of the other extra systems together. On its most basic level, a PIM system means having a single, easily accessible source of truth for all of your product information and related assets.
This streamlined approach lets you and your team save a large amount of time that you’d otherwise spend searching through various systems and file versions to find the correct information. We’ve all experienced having to manually tear through thousands of pictures and inconsistent data on the company's drive and comparing files to make sure they’re up-to-date. This process repeats with every request for data, tying users up in a never-ending process.
With PIM software, all the data is in one centralized repository. It’s easy to navigate through, and you get the added value of various built-in systems that support you in making sure the data is complete and up-to-date. This is particularly important for larger teams and cross-department collaboration. The more people that are involved in a given project, the higher the chance that something goes wrong with the data they’re working on. They might end up working on different versions of a file, save their work on top of one another, and so on.
A PIM system eliminates this risk by making collaborative work more efficient. For instance, one of our clients implemented a PIM system for their 12-person sales team. This allowed them to save as much as 80 hours a month looking up and correcting crucial information that was previously scattered across many different sources that often contradicted one another. Considering the average sales representative’s salary in the U.S., this improvement alone amounts to yearly savings of over $73,500 in salary on top of improved sales opportunities.
Rapid changes to product parameters
Seamless support of multiple channels is another huge advantage of a dedicated PIM system over generic content and data solutions. Imagine you’re either expanding your business into a whole new channel, such as a marketplace, or the one you’re using has changed its requirements when it comes to product specifications. Either way, this means that you need to make adjustments to your entire product catalog.
Without a PIM system, it can come down to a long, grueling process of manually updating each product one by one, leading to delays in publishing and revenue lost as a consequence. For larger businesses, losses caused by this may well reach millions of dollars each year. Before our client implemented a PIM system, the process of updating their product info went on for a staggering three to six months that instead could have been spent selling their products over the new channels.
With Pimcore, however, it’s not a problem; the system supports bulk updates to as many products as you need, making such a matter a relatively quick and easy process. You can have all your products updated and published in no time and take full advantage of multiple channels. What’s more, it’s possible that you’ll be able to automate the process altogether thanks to channel-specific rules and data formats that you can set up.
Image source: Pimcore
Workflows, approval constraints, and automated data syndication
One of the biggest challenges in data management is the risk of human error. A lot can go wrong when creating product information, updating it, and moving it between various systems. The danger increases exponentially with each variable and complication that you add to the process. Each error in product data can potentially mean tangible losses for the business. For instance, when it comes to prices, publishing a lower amount than intended means reduced profit while publishing a higher one might lead to the product not selling at all.
Implementing a PIM system addresses this concern in three main ways:
- Centralized data control means that all the work on your product info gets done in one place without the risk of accidents in between.
- Many processes can now happen automatically. This limits the number of human touchpoints where mistakes can happen.
- Pimcore also lets you set up detailed user and group permissions for various activities to give you complete control over user access to sensitive data at each stage.
All of those features come together to improve the quality of your product data. While its impact on your bottom line might be difficult to measure precisely, one thing you should definitely consider is the reduction of product returns caused by issues with product descriptions and attributes.
Image source: Pimcore
Supplier data entry
Entering product data that you receive from suppliers into your own system is another time-consuming and error-prone process in eCommerce. The scope of the issue, of course, can fluctuate depending on the kind of store you’re running and the market situation.
For instance, if you’re in the clothing business and the season is changing, you might need to quickly enter the new collections of all your suppliers. There could be hundreds, if not thousands, of products to enter into your system at once. During those peak periods, this could result in a full-time job for several people on your end.
Luckily, Pimcore offers a better way to manage the process. It comes with a powerful vendor portal that, among other features, allows suppliers to enter and update their products on their own directly in your PIM system. With your responsibilities reduced to accepting and verifying the data entered by suppliers, this could mean reducing the amount of work needed on your end by as much as 75%.
You’re not necessarily asking your suppliers to do any extra work either. In a traditional eCommerce infrastructure without a supplier-facing module, they regularly prepare the product info for you anyway, so it might come down to simply switching one method of delivering the product data for another.
A unified platform for content and assets
On our journey through Pimcore’s cost-saving features, we’ve reached the point where we venture beyond the purely PIM-related functions. As you might already know, Pimcore is much more than just PIM software. It’s an entire master data management (MDM) ecosystem with many interconnected systems that respond to the needs of various teams and roles within your business.
One of those systems is a digital asset management (DAM) tool. It streamlines the way you work with files such as product images, videos, and other types of files that go beyond simple descriptions and attributes. A dedicated DAM system brings many functionalities missing from generic content management systems (CMS) or a solution like Google Drive. For instance, you get access to advanced features that regulate user permissions and use cases for specific files and types of media as well as useful collaboration and editing tools.
Image source: Pimcore
This, once again, brings tangible benefits in terms of cost reduction. By taking advantage of DAM tools, you optimize the workflows of sharing and working on marketing collateral. This can impact not only collaboration between various departments within your company but also with external agencies. With a DAM system, it takes less time to find the correct files and their specific versions, and to import them into tools like InDesign and Photoshop thanks to built-in integrations. In effect, you’ll start noticing increased efficiency in preparing marketing materials. You’ll also be able to accomplish more on your own, in-house, rather than rely on costly external agencies.
BI-powered product data optimization
The integrations with external systems made possible by Pimcore go well beyond image editing software. Another very promising synergy that you can accomplish is by leveraging your business intelligence (BI) systems to enhance product information.
As an example, picture this situation: your customer service regularly receives questions about the products you offer. They’re monitored by a BI solution that picks up on certain specific questions or broader themes that come up more often than others. Because of the easy integration with Pimcore, the BI solution can verify whether the information that your customers are often looking for is indeed missing from your product info and suggest improvements.
Depending on the scale of your business, this simple fix can result in a large number of customer inquiries being avoided. This, in turn, translates into time and money savings for your customer service department.
Investing in Pimcore pays off
Implementing Pimcore in your company can be a transformative strategy for reducing operating costs. Its benefits are extensive: from optimizing data management processes, through improving workflows when collaborating between departments and with suppliers, to responding to customer feedback in a smart way.
If you’re looking to keep your business competitive, every dollar that you can save counts. Embracing technology that streamlines operations is a step toward staying competitive without sacrificing any key aspects of your eCommerce business in the process. A robust PIM system, such as Pimcore, is an investment that will start to pay off almost instantly, so make sure to get in touch with us, and let’s analyze what it can accomplish for your company.
Published September 12, 2023
