It's Time To Revisit Product Information Management (PIM)

Product data is the lifeblood of many large enterprises. For manufacturers and consumer product goods (CPG) companies, the efficiency of the product supply and distribution chain may be their one and only true differentiator. For retailers, the product catalog is their bible. And for service organizations, like telecommunication providers and financial service firms, a complex portfolio of products and services must be effectively managed to enable their sales, service, and marketing functions. But just mastering this product data is often not enough. With customer master data management (MDM) solutions, names, addresses, phone numbers, and other key attributes are often collected across multiple systems and channels — and later deduplicated, standardized, and synchronized via a customer hub. But product information management applications differ by also managing the end-to-end process for capturing, maintaining, and retiring product data.