Now Live: Strategic Technology Selection Guide For PIM And The Product Information Management Systems Landscape, Q2 2023

According to Forrester’s April 2023 Consumer Pulse Survey, 71% of US and 69% of UK online adults find the ability to filter by basic product attributes to be important when shopping on a retailer brand’s website. This isn’t surprising as product information, including images, videos, and detailed attributes, are what consumers see through digital store windows before transacting online. With US Customer Experience Index (CX Index™) rankings in decline for the second year in a row, brand manufacturers, retailers, and distributors across B2B and B2C need to deliver detailed and accurate product information on digital shelves to positively impact their customer experience (CX) and drive new business value.

The Product Information Management Landscape, Q2 2023 reveals that: 1) an explosion of channels is forcing enterprises to syndicate accurate product information; 2) lasting business impact needs a flexible data model and change management; and 3) AI capabilities can substantially reduce time to market and increase operational efficiencies.

PIM Solutions Are Foundational To Business Growth In The Post-Pandemic Digital World

With macroeconomic headwinds and organizations looking to reduce sales expenses while growing top line revenue, a PIM system to power the digital experience seems like a no-brainer. Yet, adoption is not as widespread as one would expect in 2023. Most organizations continue to rely on mundane tasks that are prone to error for product enrichment. In the report Reduce Technical Debt By Understanding PIM Capabilities Before RFP, we help leaders improve operational efficiencies while growing revenue by selecting the right capabilities and emerging features to impact their revenue and cost drivers. Leaders should consider the following to further reduce time to value with PIM:

  1. Quality, not quantity, drives positive CX. For today’s connected consumer, the quality, consistency, and availability of your product information is vastly more important than your digital goals to syndicate to as many storefronts as possible through a PIM implementation. Focus on CX quality before expanding the reach of your product information.
  2. PIM is a sales enabler. The use cases for digital commerce are expanding quickly. Leverage your PIM to power your digital experience for customers and sales teams at the same time. Your sales teams need the ability to understand the intersection between your products and postsale follow-on conversions of parts and services sales orders. With new sustainability initiatives on the horizon, like Europe’s Digital Product Passport, PIM will become a requirement for many global organizations.
  3. AI capabilities are enabling team efficiencies faster than ever. PIM solutions are already leveraging AI to help tag, classify, map, and even generate “romance copy” for product descriptions. The next frontier will likely unlock syndication capabilities to more digital shelves faster – making PIMs even more turnkey in adding business value than today.

Strategically Align Technology To Value Before Evaluating The Landscape

Strategic technology selection guides focus on moving your business toward a value-aligned tech stack through five foundational principles: 1) building the right business case through a holistic review and selection of business value drivers; 2) understanding the available technology capabilities and emerging features of solutions in market; 3) understanding the differences in category vs. embedded solutions; 4) conducting a value-based capability gap analysis; and 5) developing a plan to facilitate key activities before moving toward a formal request for proposal or project kickoff.

The Landscape report helps our clients understand, identify, and shortlist the vendors that align with their most critical business technology issues. A Landscape features a market’s definition, value proposition, top use cases, and top vendors.

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