Can PIM unlock hidden revenue?

According to recent research, just over 53% of online retailers admit that they are working harder than ever to optimize their e-commerce performance.

What’s the main challenge for these businesses?

The daily management of thousands and thousands of product data entries across many different websites, marketplaces, and internal systems — a task that presents a time and manpower conundrum — and one which, depending on how it’s handled, will impact that business’s bottom line.

A Product Information Management (PIM) system is a purpose-built piece of technology that, amongst other things, can streamline and fully-centralize the whole product data storage and management process. Like most things in business, it requires some financial investment — but the long-term financial benefits are hard to overlook.

In this blog, we’ll examine five key ways that a PIM platform can deliver a measurable financial return on investment (ROI), and how each of these help the bottom line.

How a PIM platform saves money and boosts revenue

1. Lower operational costs = more savings
   Manual data entry and maintenance aren’t just tedious — they’re expensive — and without a centralized system in place, teams will spend countless hours updating spreadsheets, correcting mistakes, and generally duplicating effort just to ensure that the product information across all sales channels is synchronised.
   Implementing PIM at your organization instantly decreases the amount of manual work that needs to be done week-to-week, and while this helps to speed processes up and minimize human error, this approach can also dramatically reduce the financial costs associated with product data management.
   In a nutshell? Less labor and fewer errors mean lower operational expenses.
   
2. Quicker product time-to-market = more revenue
   The e-commerce marketplace is a fiercely competitive one, and that means that speed and agility really matter — so, the sooner you’re able to launch a new product, the sooner your business can start generating revenue from that product.
   A PIM platform facilitates exactly that scenario by helping your business to streamline its data management and distribution processes and unify your internal departments. All of this enables launch campaigns to happen faster and prevents unnecessary project bottlenecks and delays.
   In a nutshell? Faster product launches equal faster revenue realization.
   
3. Higher conversion rates = more revenue
   Poor product content, missing images, or inconsistent specification information leads to shorter visits, abandoned carts, and lost sales. In fact, according to PwC’s Experience is Everything report, 59% of consumers would walk away from a brand after several bad experiences, and 32% would completely abandon a brand after just one bad experience.
   Shoppers make more confident purchases from you — and a higher volume of them — when they can trust that what you’re furnishing them with is clear, accurate, and complete product information. A PIM platform enables your teams to manage all product data so that it is up-to-date, complete, engaging, personalized (where possible), and consistent across all touch points.
   In a nutshell? Better product information increases confidence and trust levels in potential purchasers — which ultimately unlocks more sales.
   
4. Reduced return rates = more savings
   According to The Forrester Wave report, Product Information Management (Q2, 2021), 18% of US shoppers returned an item bought online because the product description was inaccurate.
   Indeed, returns continue to present a costly problem for e-commerce retailers. For example, returns were projected to cost over $890 billion for the past year (National Retail Federation, 2024), with two-thirds of retailers stating that they will be prioritizing upgrading their returns capabilities in 2025.
   By integrating a PIM platform into your product data operations, your e-commerce business can ensure that product information remains accurate and up-to-date at all times — reducing the likelihood of returns caused by customers feeling misled or confused by the product page.
   In a nutshell? Fewer customer returns translate into significatn cost savings.
   
5. A natural ability to scale = more savings + revenue
   It shouldn’t be mandatory to scale up your workforce or tech stack costs just because you want to expand your product catalog or enter new markets.
   With the right PIM system already established at your organization, you’ve got the flexibility needed to manage larger volumes of SKUs, handle more localization tasks, and fulfil the listing requirements of additional sales channels — all without needing to make new hires, invest in new tech, and overwhelm your teams.
   In a nutshell? There’s no need to increase spend to increase revenue when your PIM platform already possesses scaling capabilities.

The financial case for PIM is crystal clear

We’ve highlighted the five major ways a PIM platform like Inriver PIM can save you money and generate more sales revenue, but there are more besides these!

Inriver PIM can improve the financial ROI of your business by cutting time and labor costs, supercharging conversion rates, reducing customer returns, accelerating product launches, and enabling the scaling of your business — without the need for further investment.

So, if you’re currently in the process of evaluating the investment you need to make to future-proof your e-commerce tech stack, the question isn’t whether you can afford a PIM system — it’s whether you can afford not to have one.