What is a PIM System?
PIM is short for Product Information Management.
With product data becoming increasingly important in the course of digitalization, more and more businesses are recognizing the usefulness of central databases to collect, enrich and output data. These are known as PIM systems, or PIM software.
PIM Systems - The Future of Product Data Management
How are PIM Systems Used?
PIM systems provide companies with the ability to manage product data centrally in one place and use it in a variety of ways. Similar to ERP systems, PIM systems now play a fundamental role in companies. They can increase sales efficiency, optimize marketing strategies, ensure consistent customer communication and improve internal processes.
Typical applications (use cases) are:
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Why do You Need a PIM System?
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How do Companies Benefit from Centralized Data Maintenance?
Many businesses still manage their products and product data in a redundant manner, within numerous files and systems. Master data is stored in the ERP system and sales data in the print catalog, data sheets, labels and websites. In some cases, individual data only exists in Excel lists kept by individual employees. If a company has to individually maintain product information on these "islands", this is not only a waste of resources but also poses a high risk of errors.
In a PIM system, businesses can collect all product data once centrally, maintain it, and distribute it to the desired channels. With PIM systems, product data is maintained more efficiently and without errors.
What Benefits Does a PIM System Offer Your Company?
Internal benefits
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"With PIM, we've simply made it possible to have all the information around the product in one system."
Head of Business Processes & Digitalisation at MC Bauchemie
How Does a PIM System Work?
Collect data -> Refine data -> Output data
Collect Data
First product data is collected from various sources. These include, for example, suppliers, ERP systems, catalogs, websites and social media. The data can be in different formats, such as an Excel spreadsheet, PDF or XML. This external data is prepared and either input into the system, or automatically imported via interfaces from the PIM to these external systems.
Refine Data
Next, the data must be refined. This means that it is checked for completeness, accuracy and consistency. The data is enriched with images which are usually taken from a dedicated media database. High data quality is ensured via quality reports and quality management, which allows a quick overview of data quality via a dashboard. The process of refining the data is supported by workflows, with which different employees are assigned appropriate tasks and rights meaning that processes are configured appropriately.
Output Data
In the third step, the refined data is exported to the desired output channels, often via interfaces. This data can then be used to generate print documents, product labels, apps, online shops, information portals, or more.
Free PIM Webinar incl. Software Demo
Join us for a free webinar with Dr. Elke Radeke, a PIM expert with over 20 years of experience. Learn how to improve your product information management and experience a live demo of INCONY's technology-leading PIM system ANTEROS.
Some PIM Systems also Offer Cross Media Functions
Web
In order to use the centrally maintained product data and images from your PIM for ecommerce such as websites, online catalogs, online shops or product portals, all PIM systems offer interfaces to ecommerce and shop systems, such as Shopware, Intershop, Magento, ... Some also have their own ecommerce module, like ANTEROS.web, which can be fully integrated into your ERP system (SAP, Navision, ABAS, Infor, ...) via a web service interface.
Apps
A few suppliers also offer an app with which their customers can specifically search for their products, compare them and then request or order them. ANTEROS offers the webshop functions not only for Android and iOS, but can also be customized as required, e.g. with a photo function to find the right product in the shop with the photographed spare part (INCONY has implemented this for TMD Friction).
In the digital age, sales documents such as catalogs, price lists and data sheets are still important, even if they are not often provided to customers in printed form but as PDF files. PIM systems offer two technologies for creating documents:
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INCONY: The PIM and Cross Media Specialist
INCONY is a German software company that has been developing PIM and cross-media software for over 20 years. ANTEROS, INCONY's PIM and cross-media solution, supports companies in the management and use of product data. ANTEROS can merge, cleanse and harmonize product data from different sources. The software also offers functions for creating marketing and sales materials for print, online and mobile. INCONY has customers across various industries and of a range of sizes in Germany, Europe and around the world. The company has already received several awards.
MAIN Software 50 |
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Germany at its best |
IT best list in the "On demand" category |
SIMINO Quality seal
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For more information about INCONY visit our About Us page and for deeper insights into ANTEROS book a free online demo!
User Reports
Read testimonials from companies such as Poloplast, Motul and Klickparts that use ANTEROS. Find out how the PIM systems were implemented in the companies, how the employees were involved and what the benefits are.
Benefit from the experiences of other companies!
"The implementation went quickly, the data maintenance is very efficient and has increased our data quality and data integrity.“
Peter Sollak,
Project Manager at Poloplast
"With ANTEROS we can maintain our complex product data across many countries in a very simple and well-structured way.“
Mark Grunert,
CPO at Motul
"They showed a very good understanding of our specific data requirements and work was done quickly and very competently.“
Marko Wötzel,
CEO of Klickparts
ANTEROS Software Demo
Try it Yourself!
Use Product Information Management (PIM) as the key to digitization and book your free demo of our PIM software ANTEROS now.