Categories: Customer Service
By Catherine Sulskis
Partner Manager, DCKAP
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Wholesaler-distributors ("distributors") handle large sums of data on a daily basis, more than any other commodity. In many ways, data is the essence of a distributor's business. To thrive in the increasingly competitive e-commerce space, distributors need to understand how to solve their most compelling pain points, such as data management. For this reason, a sturdy and dependable process is needed to handle all information with product content and other business materials to market, sell, and track efficiently. This process is called "PIM", which stands for "Product Information Management", and it ensures data in all forms are effortlessly consolidated and secured for internal and multichannel distribution.
Product Information Management is a system meant to manage the information required to market and sell products through multiple sales channels. It uses a central set of product data to share and receive information from websites, catalogs, ERP systems, and more. The main advantage of Product Information Management is that it ensures a single, accurate view of product data. It creates a centralized platform where users can extract, prioritize and manage data from various sources and efficiently transmit that information. There are many benefits to having a PIM in place; any changes made are reflected in real-time and errors are minimized.
Distributors need an efficient system for handling and manipulating large amounts of data such as product attributes, multimedia files, documents, etc. In the past, information kept by a distributor could easily be scattered throughout departments with different employees or individual systems, instead of being available centrally. Thankfully, the evolution of the digital age has made the centralization of all product data easier than ever before.
What an integrated PIM system can do for distributors:
With the emerging demand to maximize value from centralized and consolidated data, the need for a PIM solution is becoming increasingly important to distributors wanting to provide product information electronically and to those building and managing e-commerce platforms. An integrated PIM system saves distributors time, money and resources, allowing the focus to remain on growth and the distributor’s bottom line. Overall, PIM systems enable better data service, performance quality and increased capacity to help distributors increase both productivity and sales.
Being a connected distributor is essential in today’s digital economy. This means having the ability to manage information anywhere at any time, and across all channels. With a PIM tool, a distributor can have the key to a secure and centralized data refinery, to easily collect, manage, and share information as needed. A PIM system supports different geographic locations, different languages, and it maintains and organizes all data within a highly secure centralized catalog.
Today distributors can take advantage of having a powerful PIM system in place by reaching out to industry experts in this field, to consolidate and manage catalogs of data in one place through bespoke, on-premise or cloud solutions. With the power and security of PIM, distributors can easily collect, manage, and share product information more efficiently than ever before.
About the Author
With a diverse background in account management, information technology, and creative writing, Catherine works closely with the marketing team and manages partnerships at DCKAP. She also regularly publishes articles about partnerships, events, products, and current e-commerce trends on the DCKAP website. Click here to learn more about DCKAP.