To remain competitive, your business needs to be innovative and regularly launch new products on the market. 84% of shoppers1 prefer brands which do so.
For a business, this means reducing the time to market of new products and accelerating the preparation of information before distributing to selling channels: updating, enriching, adapting to each context, validating…
The only way to achieve this is to use a PIM (Product Information Management) solution. Businesses that have implemented PIM have significantly lowered their time to market, reducing it from several weeks to just a few days2.
Discover the challenges around reducing the time to market that can be resolved through PIM.
#Challenge n°1: Finding the right product information
To launch a new product on the market you need to have access to the right product information (3D photos, video tutorials, marketing descriptions, technical features…) and to ensure that they are integrated correctly into the product pages.
Too often, Product and Marketing teams do not have the technologies required to find the information they need quickly. The tools they have are not adapted to their needs and they waste a lot of time and can spend 40% of their working hours3 looking for the reference files containing the right product information.
PIM (Product Information Management) solutions optimize the process and accelerate the time to market for new products. Through its connecters, PIM interfaces with the company's third-party applications (ERP, CRM, Excel files…) and centralizes all product data: marketing, logistics, technical… Allowing your Product and Marketing teams to quickly find the information they need to launch your product.
#Challenge n°2: Updating product data
When launching a new product, it is important to be flexible and to quickly make any necessary changes to the brand's product catalog: adding new products, removing old references, creating a specific category… You should also ensure that the changes made are visible on all selling channels (eCommerce, mobile, print, point of sale…).
Product and Marketing teams often make these updates manually and lack clear processes for checking and validating data before publication. These working methods are time consuming and when it comes to updating data, teams can waste around 25 minutes per SKU3.
PIM (Product Information Management) solutions make product launches easier and speed up procedures for updating the relevant information. Through an intuitive, user-friendly interface, your Product and Marketing teams can quickly edit and update the information in your product catalog. Validation workflows also allow you to inspect the quality and reliability of data before distribution to the various selling channels.
#Challenge n°3: Enriching product information
To successfully launch a new product, it is important to be able to enrich product information easily: complete a product description, add new images, integrate a demo video… and ensure that the information is detailed and complete before publication.
Product and Marketing teams often don't have the required technologies to manage this data enrichment phase. To provide comprehensive information, they have to go through around 15 different steps3 and end up exchanging multiple files.
A PIM solution reduces this process to just 6 steps3. It's multi-user management features allow you to organize the work of several contributors. Depending on their user rights, each contributor can enrich product information while a workflow system allows them to monitor completeness before distribution.
#Challenge n°4: Contextualizing product information
For a successful product launch, it is important to prepare your information for contextualized distribution: translation into the relevant language, adaptation to the formats required for each eCommerce platform, adaptation to each country and/or target… You must also ensure that this data is distributed quickly and efficiently to each selling channel.
Product and Marketing teams often do not have a suitable solution for managing the preparation and contextualization of product information quickly and efficiently. This is a recurring problem4 for each new product launch.
Using PIM accelerates the preparation and contextualization of product information before distribution. Through a unique data base, Product and Marketing teams can work on the data so that it is systematically adapted to each selling channel, each country, and each target. Context management features also allow you to store and distribute information adapted to each selling channel.
To recap, PIM simplifies the management and preparation of product information: simplified data updating process, collaborative management of product data enrichment, speedy adaptation to each context… Thanks to this increased efficiency and the time saved in the work process, businesses are significantly reducing the time to market of their new products and can strengthen their position on the market.
1
Drake, A. (2019, October 10). The Product Launch : 31 Statistics to Keep in Mind. learn.g2.com.
2
Santis, M. (2019, November 8). Time to market : définition et conseils pour accélérer votre mise sur le marché. appvizer.fr.
3
How PIM Adopters Are Outperforming Their Competition. (2020). plytix.com.
4
Biswas, S. (2022, January 4). Top Product Launch Statistics for 2022. saasworthy.com.