What Is the Purpose of a PIM?

Your customers should feel an emotional connection to your products. When they do, they buy more and more often. They also share their product recommendations with others.

But this only happens when your team delivers a unified product experience. Juggling product data across spreadsheets and people just doesn't cut it. What is the purpose of a PIM? Product information management (PIM) eliminates outdated and inadequate product data management strategies. It helps the team deliver consistent product experiences that generate revenues.

What Is Product Information Management?

Product Information Management (PIM) is an organizational process by which all product information is stored, managed, accessed, and used from a centralized location. This allows multiple, authorized employees across departments and teams to see and work with the information, making a consistent product experience possible.

Product information goes beyond what you might see on a sales slick—benefits, features, colors, etc. Managing a product is much broader. It involves everything from explainer videos that showcase the benefits of sales enablement content the sales pros use to close the deal to troubleshooting content on the service side of things.

Robust product information management makes a product the nucleus around which your brand's customer experience revolves. Are you treating your products like the star of the show that they should be?

According to Gartner research, 74 percent of CX leaders say we must improve the quality of our content to deliver the right experience.

Eighty-eight percent of customers say experience matters at least as much as the product itself. And 66 percent say they'll ditch a brand after just one bad experience.

What Is the Purpose of a PIM?

PIM software (Product Information Management) is responsible for storing and securing ALL product data—with some software more all-encompassing than others. At the very least, a PIM solution should store fundamentals that marketing, sales, and service need to keep straight, like:

• SKUs

• Pricing and Packages

• Dimensions

• Features

• Functions

• Benefits

But a product is more than its benefits and features. A product is the feeling people get when they use or anticipate using it. It's learning how to get the most out of the product. It's browsing inspiring visuals. It's seeing how other people—including influencers—appreciate and recommend the product to others.

In other words, a product is the digital experience you build around it. Experience sells more than a list of features ever will.

So, PIM software can also store digital assets like photos, how-to videos, troubleshooting guides, spec sheets, blog posts, campaigns, emails, and more. Everything you use to build a product experience belongs in this centralized location.

But here's the truth.

Most PIM software can't do this. Teams trying to do this manually on a spreadsheet would quickly become an information overload nightmare. If you recognize how vital the whole product experience is, your PIM should have built-in Digital Asset Management (DAM) functionality to manage all product information in real-time.

You now have a single source of truth for this product. Next steps: Build an experience directly from your PIM solution.

Why Do Brands Need a PIM?

As a manufacturer, you're trying to manage a boatload of products. And a lot of companies are still trying to store data on spreadsheets on shared drives that multiple people access. Worse yet, some may reside on individual hard drives, one termination away from being gone forever.

Team members must go to one location to get product photos and another to find the product manual.

Transferring information between spreadsheets is a manual process, filled with all the errors and outdated information you'd expect. Miscommunication about the product results. Time is wasted searching for information that's on another sheet. But fewer spreadsheets isn't a viable solution. They get bloated and hard to load fast.

Product information management software eliminates the pitfalls of spreadsheets by organizing ALL product information on one easy-to-use platform. Multiple users can now access and manage the same information. You know who's accessed what and can choose who can change product information through access levels. Product information management software helps teams work together more effectively with one source of truth.

But PIM benefits go beyond helping your teams more effectively manage products. They enable a consistent product experience for customers.

Each product has unique benefits and a slightly different target audience. It meets different goals, challenges, and hopes. It may tap into different emotions or needs. So, creating products people connect with is challenging.

At the end of the day, you're not trying to connect with your audience. Your audience should connect with the product. It must speak to them directly: "Here's how I help you". The more consistent this experience is, the more customers you'll have latching onto and loving a product.

The right PIM software helps you do this.

What Is an Example of a PIM?

Many PIM software examples exist:

• Plytix PIM

• Pimcore

• Salsify PIM

• Catsy

• Acquia PIM

• Lumavate

• InRiver PIM

Every one of these PIM software companies can help manufacturers centralize and manage product data. But, the best PIM software 2023 does more. It offers additional functionality that helps teams get more out of the PIM to elevate their product experience.

Lumavate is more than a PIM solution. It's an all-in-one Product Experience Management (PXM) Platform. Lumavate's Digital Asset Management (DAM) functionality manages all of the digital assets that revolve around a product. From audio to images to video, the same information is accessible to all team members when building content and campaigns.

But your PIM can do even more. Lumavate’s Digital Experience Platform (DXP) function helps you build product content directly from the product data in the PIM. Quickly create variations for testing and generate consistent and amazing branded experiences for your website, email, social media, packaging, events, and more with a few clicks.

Start creating outstanding product experiences for your audience with Lumavate. Ready to see Lumavate for yourself? Schedule a demo.