Estrix

The PIM suite is the central repository for product information in your organisation. But that doesn't solve the question who is responsible for the information or who owns it.

To answer that question about ownership or which department benefits from the PIM suite solution, it is important to know what publication channels will be used. The PIM suite can handle most publication channels, digital and/or hardcopy, depending on organizational need. Therefore in most PIM suite projects we encounter the marketing department, due to the fact that they are responsible for communicating about the products.

But why not benefit from the mutual interest between departments in an organization to work together in one workflow, without any double work or redundant information. In most cases the product development is the first feed for a product life cycle. After that the sales and marketing enrich the product information to put the product into the market. See the image below for the ideal workflow for product management.

The product life cycle is the process that is supported by the PIM suite as a constant available repository to store product information, like the first sketch and product name. After that a product description is created and the picture process (photography) and translations starts. All the way up to the publication in a print (catalogue, brochure, leaflet, PDF) or finally on a website or service portal (image bank, product sheets, manuals) the product information changes.

Look at the PIM suite as one repository that is the one truth for product information within your organization that exists parallel to the central ERP solution. Without flooding the central ERP system with huge amounts of data storage (pictures, PDF, sketches, movies, translations) you can save this, mostly marketing oriented material, in the PIM suite. Then for each channel you create modular the desired functionality. In that case you only have to develop this connection once, because all information and targeting is done from a product level in the PIM suite. All changes, via meta data, from the PIM suite are dynamic connected and change automatically in each pre-defined channel.

How to define the channels is depending on your organizations' strategy. If you contact us, we can make an appointment to help you determine the perfect fit for your organization and create a blue print for the ideal workflow during the product information enrichment.