WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENCES?
PIM (Product Information Management) and PMDM (Product Master Data Management) are solutions designed to build and manage a company’s product catalog.
Needs differ depending on whether you are a distributor or a manufacturer of your own products. In the first case, we’ll refer to it as PIM, and in the second as PMDM.
But can we really separate these 2 approaches when a company that manufactures is also the distributor of its products?
Let’s take a closer look.
1. For a distributor, PIM manages the following data pipeline:
▶ Onboarding: from n supplier catalogs to 1 company catalog,
- Offer a portal for suppliers to collect their catalogs by applying processes
- Complete and enrich information
- Consolidate duplicate products
▶ Syndication: from 1 company catalog to n sales catalogs,
- For each channel: e-commerce, paper, marketplace, in-store salesperson
- For each brand, each region, according to customer or price segments: BtoC, BtoB …
▶ To succeed in this transformation, the PIM must manage each product from 2 angles:
- Buy side: supplier-compliant version
- Sell side: the sales version
2. For a company that manufactures its products, PMDM builds a complete and reliable product sheet:
- Consolidate all types of information: PLM data, ERP coding, logistics, marketing, media view, etc.
- Manage hierarchies according to different business models
- Integrate information processing workflows
- Integrate management rules: validity dates, etc.
3. The ultimate aim of these 2 approaches is the same: to enhance the customer experience and improve conversion rates.
- Accelerate product integration and time-to-market
- Propagate only validated data
- Offer consistent, richer and more complete product information
- Managing links between articles: similarity, upselling and cross-selling
4. Ideally, you should be able to do everything on the same platform, integrating different modules if necessary:
- An onboarding module that enables each supplier to be involved in formatting their catalog within a dedicated portal.
- A multi-domain repository that presents, in gas pedal form, the functionalities specific to a PMDM, integrating a DAM, and focused on the collaboration of all types of players: industrial data, management, media, customer-oriented content editors, translators…
- A syndication module that allows e-commerce stores, partners, etc. to load their version of the catalog on demand or by subscription.
What’s the success factor?
Few solutions cover the whole spectrum, even though integration into a global solution is a major key to success. It must combine user experience, performance, time-to-market and TCO.