Why you should invest in PIM solutions in remote-working era
In March 2020, almost the whole world had to adapt quickly to the remote working model. Until now, practiced in a small percentage in the IT industry, it suddenly became a real requirement on a large scale. Manufacturers and retailers have also been forced to make even faster digital transition decisions, and digitisation and product catalogue management is the first and one of the most important areas of this process. But how to effectively manage product information by working remotely? The answer is simple — workflow.
What is the primary role of Product Information Management system?
With PIM system, you can effectively manage the distribution of product information to many channels (e-commerce site, mobile application or printed catalog) from one place. Thanks to PIM in each of these channels, product data will be automatically updated based on specific needs.
What will you gain by using the PIM system?
- control over a large amount of product data and the ability to share product information consistently across all sales channels (e-commerce, catalogs, SEO, mobile, marketplace), which will help to eliminate errors,
- customer service improvement — reliable product information reduces the number of customer inquiries. With a central system for managing product information, customer service can respond more quickly to customer requests.
- improving customer experience by providing consistent product information at every stage of the purchasing path and in every sales channel (omnichannel),
- competitive advantage through faster product launch increased cross-sell and up-sell sales potential,
- save time and energy for a team that can perform more cost-effective
activities, e.g. instead of spending one day checking the correctness of data, the team can prepare effective SEO descriptions that have a real impact on visibility in the search engine, and thus, increasing conversions. - data security and streamlining the flow of product information within the organization and between business partners.
What does it mean to effective manage workflow in PIM?
PIM systems are mainly dedicated to improve work with the product catalogue. When we are working with a person who creates product content on their own, the possibilities of work improvement are mainly limited to automation of activities. However, when we deal with a larger number of people working in a given system, not only the automation itself, but most of all the workflow is crucial. By defining appropriate statuses and roles of users in the organization, the whole process can be improved.
For example, in the Ergonode PIM, you can easily design the statuses that define individual milestones when enriching content during the workflow for a single index. This allows the process manager to quickly diagnose bottlenecks in the entire process.
The example below illustrates how a workflow can look like when dealing with several actors involved in a process.
How to set first steps in enrichment flow?
For illustration, in the Ergonode PIM system we can approach the design of workflow in this way:
Step 1 — create structure of user roles in your organisation
At the start, it is important to define the roles in the organizational structures. It is best to draw the whole process on a blackboard (e.g. using a sticky notes or even remotely via Google Jamboard), where on the one hand we will have named roles and on the other hand we will assign specific people who play a given role in the organization.
In Ergonode, we specify for each role the privileges to which application areas the role has access. Then, we create users and assign them specific roles.
Step 2 — set a flow of your product data enrichment
Statuses are cornerstones in the workflow for content enhancement. The better we define them within the internal process, the clearer the whole process will become and will allow for a better optimization of future activities in terms of eliminating bottlenecks and wastes.
When determining statuses, it is necessary to diagnose which users and which roles are responsible for working on individual milestones throughout the process. Then it is important to design rules and conditions that define the possibilities of transition between individual statuses.
In Ergonode PIM the whole system of managing statuses and transitions between two statuses was created. In transitions, condition rules are defined, based on which the system allows or disallows the user to set a given status.
Step 3 — create product sets and assign it to users
In Ergonode PIM, if the process of content enrichment requires a lot of people, you can create groups of products that will be, in a way, tasks for individual team members. The created product collection can be based on manual product addition, but also as an automaton based on specific condition rules. Thanks to this, you can easily diagnose which user is effectively working on adding content to your product collection.
It doesn’t matter whether the users work on site or remotely — thanks to the collections and statuses you know exactly what a team member should do and what is the real efficiency of their work.
Step 4 — analyze and make improvements to the flow
A well-prepared workflow and products divided into collections with tasks allow you to quickly find bottlenecks in the content enhancement process and react even faster. System activity logs and working time in the individual stages (i.e. between the transition from X status to Y status) allow you to react in advance and even calculate the real time needed to enrich the entire assortment in the system.
If you are looking for tools that will help you work with the digitalization of your product catalogue, let us know.
Ergonode is a new open-source PIM system on the market, which focuses mainly on the efficiency of teamwork with product catalogues.
Check us out at www.ergonode.com or contact team@ergonode.com
You can download and install the system by yourself on www.github.com/ergonode
