Technological change can always be challenging for any organization, but it’s especially so when you’re talking about a shift as significant as the e-commerce PIM adoption process. Thankfully, there are a few straightforward best practices that you can follow to help guarantee the most successful PIM deployment possible.
Choosing the Right PIM System
By far, the most important best practice to follow for a successful PIM implementation involves making sure that you’ve selected the most appropriate system, to begin with.
Remember, there is no “one size fits all” solution. The right system needs to be one that fits your unique business needs and specific processes. Here are a few things to consider while choosing the right PIM system:
- Business needs: Identify your business needs and requirements, and make sure that the PIM system you choose aligns with those needs.
- Scalability: Consider whether the PIM system can grow and scale with your business as it expands.
- Integration capabilities: Look for a PIM system that can easily integrate with your existing systems and tools, such as your e-commerce platform, ERP, and many potential digital selling channels.
- Data modeling: Check whether the PIM system can accommodate your product data modeling requirements, such as complex hierarchies, multiple languages, and various product attributes.
- User interface: Ensure that the PIM system has a user-friendly interface that is easy to navigate and use.
- Customer support: Look for a PIM vendor with good customer support, including training, onboarding, and ongoing support.
- Cost: Evaluate the cost of the PIM system and whether it fits within your budget.
By carefully evaluating these factors and choosing a PIM system that aligns with your unique business needs and processes, you can ensure a successful implementation and effective management of your product data. Always select a solution focusing on customer success to help guide you through the integration process step-by-step.
Data Preparation and Migration
Once you’ve confirmed that your chosen system is the best fit for your use case, you can begin migrating data to a new system. Yes, this can be equal parts time-consuming and difficult. That is especially true if the data is not properly formatted or standardized, as is often true with older environments.
Start by cleaning and standardizing all of your existing product data. Ensure that your data is properly formatted to be ready for the migration process. All of this will help ensure the smooth transition of mission-critical data to the new PIM system.
User Training and Adoption
One of the major challenges that organizations often face when transitioning to a new PIM implementation often comes with overall resistance to change. When employees already feel like they have technology that “just works,” they may be slow or hesitant to adopt something new. To help avoid this issue, you need to not only engage all stakeholders and listen to their concerns, but you must also create a culture that emphasizes continuous improvement from the top down.
Much of your success will come down to the opportunities you provide for training all relevant stakeholders on the new system. If you want people to embrace a new system, they need to know how to properly take advantage of it so that they can see how it will ultimately make their lives easier.
Be proactive about encouraging users to engage with the new PIM system. Don’t wait until you’ve confirmed that adoption isn’t where it needs to be, and react to it after the problem has already appeared. Stop the problem today before it has a chance to become a much bigger one tomorrow.
Continual Monitoring and Optimization
Finally, one must understand that implementing a new PIM isn’t something you “do once and forget about.” If you’re going to create a culture that emphasizes continuous improvement, that mentality needs to extend to everything – including the technology you use daily.
Having said that, making these types of regular improvements can be difficult if you’re not consistently monitoring and optimizing your new deployment. You can’t improve upon that which you are not measuring.
Therefore, you must regularly review and measure the effectiveness of your PIM implementation. In essence, you should ask, “is this doing what it’s supposed to be doing and generating the value I thought it would?”
If your current answer is no, determine the reason why. This is how opportunities for improvements and optimizations reveal themselves. Once an issue has been addressed, repeat the process to continue to make meaningful gains toward accomplishing your objectives.
In the end, your entire organization should continuously strive for excellence when it comes to a task as essential as product data management. By following the best practices outlined above within the context of your PIM implementation, you will go a long way towards accomplishing precisely that.
If you’d like to find out more about the best practices you can follow for a successful PIM implementation, or if you have any additional questions you’d like to go over with someone in a bit more detail, contact Digitbridge today for a brief demo.
