what’s the ROI on product information management?
building a frictionless path to purchase
Find out how a PIM solution can deliver both a quantitative and qualitative return on investment and deliver a frictionless path to purchase.
start with return on investment
To succeed in today’s highly competitive markets, omnichannel is everything. According to Forrester, 67% of the buyer’s journey is now done digitally. And, 57% of the purchase decision is made before they call a supplier. They don’t need you to buy a product anymore.
Whether B2B, B2C, or both – you need to invest in technology that enables you to meet buyer’s needs in any language, in any channel, quickly. And, ROI is always critical when making a technology purchase.
There are two sides to the ROI coin: quantitative and qualitative. Both are essential. Quantitative metrics include generating net new revenue, productivity gains, and operational efficiencies.
Qualitative metrics include increasing customer experience, improving employee retention, and increased performance in the market.
breaking down the ROI of PIM
The importance of PIM will only grow as organizations seek to forge stronger customer relationships via engaging product stories.
IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Product Information Management Applications for Commerce 2019-2020 Vendor Assessment
A PIM solution is foundational technology. It’s at the heart of commerce; centralizing product information, improving business productivity, powering content syndication, and shortening time to market.
According to the IDC MarketScape, “accurate, complete, and compelling product information is critical to all phases of the customer journey.” Clearly. PIM solutions are essential for commerce and show value in countless ways.
How will a PIM solution deliver both a quantitative and qualitative ROI?
Quantitative benefits include extending the number of selling days, increasing the conversion rates, launching new products faster, and reducing the number of returns, fines, penalties, or chargebacks. Sound good?
Qualitative benefits include improving data quality and consistency, establishing a single source of truth for product information, enriching content, and delivering immersive customer experiences. Wahoo.
PIM solutions deliver a frictionless path to purchase.
Inriver was named a leader in the IDC Marketscape 2021. Read the report.
PIM drives customer experience
Leaders in Forrester’s Customer Experience Index witnessed:
- 5x more revenue growth
- 10.6x more stock growth
- 4.5x more likely to pay price premium
Winning customers is about the experience. Behind that positive customer experience is PIM.
After price, what drives consumer behavior online? Product information. From finding the right product, to doing their own research, and making their own decisions – customer experience matters.
This was true for Zurn Industries. With inriver they were able to offer an intuitive interface so customers entered their own parameters to find the perfect solution.
Get it right and customer experience positively impacts your bottom line.
PIM improves data quality
Product information drives customer experience. What happens if that data is wrong or inconsistent?
Ventana Research highlighted that spreadsheets create errors in more than 90% of organizations. Add into the mix different teams working in silos and problems quickly multiply.
Having all your product information stored in a PIM means better data quality. Data is easier to update and accessible to all. Silos and error-prone manual tasks are eliminated. Finally.
In fact, Alfa Laval describes PIM as their cross-reference between the real world and their internal world as it maps onto their specific taxonomy.
Customer spotlight
Hans Troiza, Head of Online Sales at Alfa Laval
Want to find out more? Read our blog, Four ways to maximize the value on product information.
PIM is your single source of truth
Hamelin is now able to invest more time into becoming a global leader with their products instead of pouring over excel sheets, trying to match each bit of product information to the correct product in the specified language.
Laurence Teuma, International Key Account Manager Online, Hamelin
A PIM centralizes all your product or SKU information. Skip the numerous and fragmented systems to find product dimensions, images, marketing text, or translations. Everything is in one place, giving you consistent and accurate information. Goodbye stress!
For Teknos, inriver’s single source of truth made it easier to meet the various and ever-changing regulatory requirements when shipping products to different markets.
grow your business with PIM
8 out of 10 businesses face more competition now than just 5 years ago!
Competition is fierce; time to market is critical.
PIM is the invisible lubricant that helps your organization’s engine run smoother. Everything you need is there. Product information, images, translations – check! Adapters linking automatically to marketplaces and for quicker syndication – done!
Want to know when you’re ready to launch? Set product completeness metrics per channel. Once all the required content is updated, you can go live.
Zurn Industries witnessed a 10-18% increase in online conversions from content completeness! PIM helps increase selling days and who doesn’t love that?
increase productivity with PIM
customer spotlight
Laurence Teuma, International Key Account Manager Online at Hamelin Brands
Implementing a PIM helps employees reduce manual tasks and escape ‘Excel hell’. Focus efforts on high-value tasks that directly impact your bottom line. No more cut and paste for marketers and merchandisers.
Before inriver, Camfil product managers had to check 18 catalogs to be sure the product information was correct. 18!! What a waste of time, talent and selling days.
Now imagine creating 50 catalogs every six months without a PIM? We don’t recommend it.
maximize operational efficiencies
customer spotlight
How Office Depot reduced catalog production time by 80%
Ventana Research found that when organizations moved to a unified PIM approach, they saw 42% increase in operational efficiency. As core, foundational technology PIM impacts all areas of your business.
Living Spaces saw a 20% increase in their special orders process from creating new automated workflows in inriver.
How do you manage the complexities of syndication today? What about the expensive chargebacks, penalties, or risk of product removal if your content is in the wrong formatted or inaccurate?
An international building technology organization saw a 50% reduction in fines when they moved to inriver. PIM is not a nice-to-have. It’s essential for commerce today.
Interested to find out more? Read our blog, The secrets of syndication in e-commerce.
guest blog: the PIM ROI story
This is a guest post originally published on 13 June 2019 and written by Verndale (formerly Aware), an inriver partner.
The hidden value of PIM is in the costs that are not always associated with product data. Many manufacturers Aware works with tell us how much they pay in fines from retailers when their logistics data is incorrect. They also discuss the increasing number of returns from customers on digital channels. CNBC reports the average return represents 30 percent of the purchase price. In addition, 22% of online consumers say products rarely meet expectations and 48% then return goods.
Manufacturers understand these are data quality issues, but they do not have a good understanding of how and why they keep happening.
returns and chargebacks:
Chargebacks from retailers are a real cost drain, both in the fines weighed by those retailers and the delay in getting products to distribution centers in a timely manner. Many ERP systems have the ability to send base logistics data to 1WorldSync and other GDSN Data Pools, but struggle with more advanced data like marketing content and category-specific data pools are now requesting. The remaining data is hand-keyed, bringing user points-of-failure into the data syndication process.
aggregation:
Having a PIM solves this issue by creating an aggregation point where all syndication and website data is forced to flow. This brings consistency to a process that, in most companies, is handled by email and hand-keyed data. PIM tools use inheritance to ensure feature bullets and marketing copy are consistent, increase accuracy without the cost of post-syndication efforts like web site scraping and data remediation.
accountability:
PIM tools also make your data collection process scalable, bring accountability to your data collection processes, and adapt quickly to data changes and evolving product data requirements faster than ERP systems and manually-keyed data. The result? A reduction in product data collection costs from outside your organization. Reducing chargebacks and returns and avoiding missed sales is vital to reducing costs as margins remain under pressure from online competition.
To help the e-commerce community better understand the complexities of PIM’s ROI, read “The PIM ROI Story.” This 14-page ebook was created to help you not only decide if your business needs a PIM, but also how to define your PIM ROI story in order to avoid getting caught up in the haziness of demonstrating ROI of a PIM project.
build your business case for PIM
According to Ventana Analysts, complete and accurate product information is essential to the successful operation of every aspect of a business. PIM is at the heart of maximizing your revenue and optimizing operational efficiencies.
The positive impact PIM can have on your organization is far-reaching. You will see improvements in product data and product-related processes, but syndication also becomes seamless. PIM increases selling opportunities, as well as reduces returns and buyer frustration. Does it make the coffee, as well? Not yet.
But, seriously – what are you waiting for? Make your business case for PIM and digital shelf analytics by using our calculator to reveal your lost sales opportunities and how you can turn these into revenue.