The rising adoption of product information management (PIM) software in business-to-business (B2B) industries stems from a desire to deliver better customer and omnichannel experiences by streamlining an organization's internal and external marketing processes. With an expected compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 20% through 2032 (Fortune Business Insights, 2024), it is no surprise that multiple PIM options are appearing in the market.
Not All PIMs are Created Equal
A fully functioning PIM should allow a B2B organization to use its product data to seamlessly bridge the gap between engineering, product management, and marketing teams. Many of the PIM systems available in today's market fail to offer features that allow for the efficient and effective management of product data across various teams and sources. We heard from our B2B customers and looked at various market reports and consumer surveys to identify common pain points that various consumers share. Here are some examples:
- Many PIM software solutions don't support a data factory approach, which typically refers to overseeing the people, processes, and systems involved in collecting, organizing, and distributing product data. This makes it difficult to work at scale to onboard a business to PIM, migrate to a new PIM, or process large datasets from acquisitions. Convergence Data prides itself on managing your data factory by:
- Building best-in-class taxonomies to ensure a foundation of good data modeling
- Workflows supporting enriching data at scale via our team of 200+ technical experts, mitigating spreadsheets
- Providing data quality management controls from product launch to steady-state management
- Including reporting and analytics options to allow for data-driven decision-making and tracking progress
- Standing up governance programming to keep data great over time
- Other PIMs don't ingest upstream content through data connectors. Our PIM allows the capturing of data from suppliers, manufacturers, or other external sources before it is processed and managed within the system. Our technical experts work diligently behind the scenes to ensure our PIM system has accurate, complete, and up-to-date information for effective product management and distribution by:
- Collecting data to include product specifications, descriptions, images, pricing, and other relevant details provided by suppliers or manufacturers
- Integrating and transforming the data through automation to match your enterprise's product data model
- Validating, enriching, and governing your data
- Most popular PIMs can't normalize data or validate in bulk/at scale. Convergence Data prioritizes these essential processes to ensure that large volumes of product information and other business-critical attributes are accurate, consistent, and ready for use across various channels.
- Other PIMs struggle with flexibility in the data model. Our custom-built SaaS solution allows you to flex with the needs of your business as you grow and adapt to the market. As product lines get added, businesses get acquired, and product regulations change, our PIM allows you to manage your data easily and without the help of a dedicated IT team or external systems integrator to restructure your taxonomy and other data model shifts.
- Standard PIMs don't integrate directly with Engineering data in PLM systems. Too often, businesses take a "PLM vs. PIM" approach and choose one or the other as the source of truth for product data. However, an integrated approach pairing PLM and PIM together is key to achieving success with the digital thread. As an agnostic system that partners readily with Windchill, Teamcenter, and other market-leading PLMs, our PIM allows direct integration with your engineering data to allow for better collaboration, efficient workflows, and easy access to technical attributes.
When you work with Convergence Data, you're not only getting access to an industry-leading PIM, but to our team of taxonomy and technical experts, as well. Our processes are integral to maintaining the integrity and reliability of product data within a PIM system.✍️ Contact us to learn more and request a free no-obligation demo today.