Functions of a PIM system

• Managing complex products
• Establishing object dependencies
• Industry standards / classifications
• Translation Management
• Media Asset Management (MAM)

Managing complex products

Companies whose product range is characterized by a huge amount of combinations and varieties are confronted with complex processes concerning data management. To communicate these kinds of products to customers, however, poses the biggest challenge.

Establishing object dependencies

Variants’ management is one important PIM issue. The establishment of object dependencies is another. Products often relate to each other as e.g. spare or replacement parts, fittings, varieties, alternatives or historical information of forerunners do. These dependencies can be smoothly displayed in your PIM system.

Industry standards / classifications

Companies nowadays exchange product information more and more by using national and/ or international standard classifications such as eCl@ss, ETIM, UNSPSC, InstalNet, EFO Blokknummer etc. As long as there is no worldwide accepted standard but many local and international ones, a modern PIM system needs to support multiple classifications – often even different versions of one classification.

The use of standard formats as BMEcat is another major aspect of electronic data exchange. Other frequently used formats to transmit product information to business partners are excel, csv etc.

Translation Management

More and more companies that manufacture and trade products are internationally active. Nevertheless, selling abroad does not necessarily mean that catalogues and documents are translated into the respective national languages. One reason for that are high translation costs. Another is the organizational aspect of leveraging human resources. A PIM system can facilitate these workflows. Direct dialog translations acknowledging workflows that integrate staff as well as external translation bureaus, and translation memory systems (TM-Systems e.g. Trados, Across 3, etc.) that highly automate translations, are options to reduce costs and efforts.

Media Asset Management (MAM)

Media Asset Management systems in its classical meaning are attached to technologically advanced PIM systems today. These manage documents such as pictures, pdfs and videos, refer them to products, and make any functionality of standard Media Asset Management systems (media data base) available: search functions, format conversion, cross-reference, data export etc.