Implementing PIM for businesses in a Turbulent Market
Without accurate and up-to-date product information, a brand, retailer or manufacturer will struggle to maximise their true revenue potential in this uncertain economic market place.
Product data is the lifeblood of any organisation involved in retailing, e-commerce, manufacturing, product development or wholesale distribution, and the ability to secure, manage and deploy accurate information of your product range across your sales and marketing channels when needed, is key to harnessing your maximised sales potential.
We've all seen those product description, wrong image and pricing errors on a company website, e-com store or in print.
As consumers ourselves, it confuses us and prevents a potential sales transaction taking place and we move on as there's a mistrust of the information we are engaging with, diminishing brand reputation and tainting future potential interactions.
But in these economically challenging and uncertain times, this 'lost' sale for a business can and does have a more devastating, financially damaging impact on the bottom line.. Every sale is needed!
Removing any potential product information errors from your sales and marketing channels is now more important than ever.
Managing all this data has become a minefield of potential pitfalls and the amount of data businesses now have to collate, store securely and have on-demand global access to, has increased exponentially and at pace.
Companies have tried to adapt accordingly and surprisingly, this usually means adding more data to the ever growing collection of spreadsheets containing all their critical product information, rather than organise it in a structured hierarchal meta-tagged system, due to the perceived difficulties and integration time in implementing a Product Information Management (PIM) solution into their business.
Is your product data in multiple places and on multiple spreadsheets?
- You’re not sure who has the latest version of your product data
- You need to know what each person is working on, and what has been completed
- It’s difficult to collaborate on projects with other teams because there isn’t a single source of truth (or even multiple sources)
Product data should be in one place so everyone can see it.
That way, you can:
- Work together easily
- Avoid duplicating work or making mistakes
- Make decisions faster when important information is available instantly
- Get products out to market faster by reducing delays related to coordinating content changes across departments or locations.
It’s also easier for new team members or additional internal resource, to get up to speed because they can see exactly what’s happening and where their work fits into the bigger picture.
Simplifying this overview of your marketing and production processes, makes it easier for you to evaluate your current projects and make changes to improve efficiencies when you can see how they will affect the entire production route.
Do you need to launch a new season product range faster than ever before?
As a company, due to time constraints, market forces, budget requirements or logistical difficulties within your supply chain, you might be looking to launch new products to market faster than ever before.
Perhaps you've outsourced design and creative production work to third-party agencies or freelancers or maybe your creative design teams are working with suppliers' to develop new catalogue/brochure designs and marketing campaigns at breakneck speed.
With the uptake of 'Hybrid' working models now being implemented longterm by businesses across the working landscape, regardless of where your team is located, in the office, studio, working from home or in another country, you know that pulling together all of the different pieces necessary for a successful launch can be challenging—especially when so many different teams need access to each others' files during the final stages of production and stakeholders need approval of all collateral along the project timescale until sign off and deployment.
This can be especially problematic if your design files are stored on a remote server, which can make them difficult to access and manage.
If you're looking for a better way to collaborate with your team members, one solution is to use Renaissance, an integrated production workflow solution that allows teams of any size to work together and collaborate on the same documents, images, video, files and design artwork from anywhere in the world.
Whether you're a fashion retailer with both off & online sales channels, a manufacturer with a wide product range array, or a large brand that needs to collaborate with internal teams and partners across different geographies, across multiple projects, Renaissance offers a better way to collaborate than other tools.
Some of the key benefits of Renaissance:
- Store all your assets, files and critical data in one secure location, creating a single point of truth for all your product information, ready to be utilised across all your marketing and sales channels when needed.
- Collaborate on the same file/document from anywhere in the world, across multiple timeframes and stakeholders, with complete versioning control.
- Share updates and comments with your team to keep everyone informed about what's happening with a project, keeping track of any developments or potential production bottlenecks before they become an issue further down stream.
- Sync up changes automatically, so you don't have to worry about version control or keeping track of edits made by different people, with a full audit trail.
- Create and edit documents from any web browser, so you can work wherever is most convenient for you.
Are you collaborating across teams beyond your organisation?
You’re probably already collaborating with other teams within your company, but do you know how to collaborate with external partners?
Collaboration across teams beyond your organisation is key to streamlining production workflows and ensuring that all stakeholders have access to the information they need, when they need it.
The first step in collaboration is determining which departments need to be involved. It may not be obvious at first glance what their role will be or how they’ll interact with one another.
For example, if a brand wants to create a new product line for retailers, what departments should be involved in this process?
The sales team needs information about customer demand so that it can forecast product sales; the marketing department needs revenue forecasts so that it knows how much campaigns will cost, how many pages are required in the next seasons catalogue, or which products should be included and placed on what page to enhance sales potential; and the production team needs timeframes from both sales and marketing so that it knows how much resource must be available.
If these three groups don't collaborate effectively during this process then there's no guarantee that everyone will receive what they need when they need it!
Collaboration also allows employees who aren't part of one another's day-to-day workflow (e.g., someone who works remotely or in another department) to get involved in projects outside their specific departmental responsibilities, thus allowing you to redistribute your resources accordingly, depending on where they are needed.
Do you have outsourced design and creative production teams working on your products?
Do you have outsourced design and production teams working on your products and creative marketing?
Are they part of a collaborative workflow?
Do you share your product data across multiple places, spreadsheets and tools?
For example: An e-commerce site data contained in one spreadsheet. Pricing, product descriptions and SKU's in another spreadsheet, and an internal data list in yet another spreadsheet.
Each one with its own set of fields and formats. And that's just the beginning.
It’s important that your teams have access to the most up-to-date product data and associated images at the point they need it. This includes:
- Optimised & Approved images for appropriate channel deployment
- Pricing formats / Geographical pricing differences & taxes
- Product Descriptions & associated critical data ie; SKU's, Colourways, Sizing.
- Technical specifications for suppliers, manufacturers, Instore & staff documentation, SOP analysis and legal compliance.
Are you unable to find the correct product data quickly enough on your spreadsheets to produce accurate campaign and marketing materials?
If you're a brand or retailer, do you have difficulty getting the right product data?
Do you find yourself searching various systems and spreadsheets to find the information needed to create accurate campaign and marketing materials?
Are your product data sources in different formats, languages or locations?
Is it difficult to understand where this information comes from and who has access to it?
That's where Renaissance comes in and integrates into your production, eliminating the potential issues. Our solution simplifies data collation and management and streamlines your production workflows, allowing you to manage your projects more efficiently and effectively, with the ability for your complete team and partners to easily locate, access and deploy accurate, up to date product information, all from a single source of truth.
Is it difficult to understand the version control of your product data at any one time?
The time and money saved by using a single source of truth for your product data is significant. Yet, no matter how strong the case for implementing a single source of truth is (PIM), many brands don’t do it because they feel that their workflows are too complex or that their existing systems cannot easily be replicated to handle the volume of product information required.
To address this challenge, Renaissance was developed to easily manage this transition of your data and workflows into an intuitive system designed to simplify your production processes, eliminating duplication of resource and increasing collaboration across your team.
Managing multiple complex projects across multiple channels and within tight deadlines, the ability to clearly understand what's happening and what time in the process is no easy feat.
Controlling and managing the process can be accomplished by using software like our Media Production Management (MPM) module within Renaissance to simplify project overview and improve efficiency across multiple departments or teams.
Once you have streamlined your production workflow with MPM we recommend connecting it with the Product Information management system (PIM). Renaissance PIM allows companies to connect all sources of product information together in one place so everyone on the team has access and understands what version they are working on at any given time; this reduces confusion among teams when making changes to products/collections/lines etc.
Does your team need to do more with less budget this season?
The holiday season is a time when retailers and brands expect to see the highest volume of traffic and conversion. It's also a time when they're forced to stretch their budgets even further due to increased demand for manpower and resources.
It's crucial that you don't fall short of your marketing or sales goals this season.
If you do, your brand could take on a negative reputation with consumers or customers who feel left behind by your lack of support during this busy time of year. With these pressures in mind, it's essential that you work smarter than ever and that means streamlining production workflows across departments as well as budgeting more efficiently than ever before.
How can Renaissance help?
Key areas where we have successfully helped our clients include:
- Production Efficiency - By utilising the power of Renaissance, our customers have reported a 30% increase in efficiencies across their creative marketing teams.
- Product Information Management (PIM) - Our team works with brands who need access to accurate product data at all times without spending hours updating files manually every week (or worse yet...every day!).
Our system is already being used by many retailers, manufacturers, brands and wholesalers and we have received great feedback from them. Here is what one of our happy customers said:
"Since we started using the Renaissance Product Information System, our production process has become much more efficient. The system is easy to use, and the data is always accurate, which has led to a significant improvement in the quality of our catalogues and online store."
To see how Renaissance has helped Coopers of Stortford, one of the UK's premier e-commerce retailers to maximise efficiencies within their marketing production processes and manage their product data seamlessly, view the case study below;
https://www.ec2i.biz/case-study-coopers_of_stortford
Are there inherent issues with your current workflow which are causing data errors in your marketing and sales routes, but you can’t fix them because of time, money or resources?
Have you ever been in a situation where there are issues with your current workflow which are causing data errors in your marketing and sales routes, but you can’t fix them because of time, money or resources?
If this sounds familiar, you may be interested to know that there is a solution.
You can make the changes needed to regain control by scaling over to a more robust but simplified production route, utilising Renaissance as a complete, but most importantly, trusted, data silo for all your product information and critical business data.
Renaissance allows companies to connect every part of their marketing production with an API integration with simple yet sophisticated workflows that automate creative production tasks. This means businesses can save time and costs on things like: Document Management; Data Asset Management; Catalogue Production; Multi Versioning; Geographical Pricing Differences and the ability to custom develop the system functionality to your requirements.
Ensure accuracy, efficiency and security of your product data with our Renaissance platform.
With our Renaissance SaaS platform, you’ll be able to accurately and efficiently manage your product data with ease.
- Ensure accuracy, integrity and security of your product data with our Renaissance platform.
- Our advanced bespoke developed technology allows you to store, manage and flow product data to your deployment sources, within a secure environment that is accessible by authorised users only.
- This ensures complete protection from any malicious attacks or breaches that might compromise your information or affect the performance of your business systems.
- Our secure environment also means you don't have to worry about paying high maintenance fees for expensive hardware, software licenses or systems support staff—everything is included in one low monthly rate, with different packages designed for your business marketing needs, allowing you to easily scale as and when your production volumes change, including the amount of users, admins, digital storage, SKU volume or additional modular upgrades to compliment your business processes.
Conclusion
Renaissance is an integrated production workflow solution for brands, retailers, manufacturers, publishers and e-commerce businesses.
We provide a complete integrated digital asset management, Product Information, smart workflow solutions, publishing platform that helps you create engaging content across all of your marketing channels.
Through bespoke developed technology powered by our secure infrastructure our Renaissance platform allows access to your complete product information database 24/7 wherever you are in the world.
This enables collaboration across teams to eliminate erroneous data being deployed into catalogues, brochures and website stores.
Also acting as a central repository of all your companies images means no more awkward conversations around misplaced artwork or PDFs being copied and pasted onto email threads leading to mistakes or missing files.
Renaissance will help integrate all of your company's marketing assets into one convenient and easy to use platform. This will cut down on time, money, and more importantly errors, by eliminating the need for printing and shipping physical materials your company already has on file digitally.
This creates efficiencies within your business such as increased speed to market for new products allowing you to hit your revenue targets faster!
Renaissance.
The complete integrated production workflow solution.
For over 11 years, we've been dedicated to continuously improving and updating Renaissance, adding new features and capabilities to meet the evolving needs of our clients across multiple markets.
With Renaissance, you can expect to save time and money, increase productivity, and reduce errors and delays. It's no wonder why it's been a favourite among major UK brands, publishers, retailers, manufacturers for over a decade.
Developed from working with some of the UK's most regarded brands and companies to help streamline their production processes and manage their product information, allowing easy deployment of accurate & consistent data to all your sales and marketing channels effortlessly.
If you are interested in knowing more about how our product information management platform (PIM) can help your business, then please get in touch!
We would love to hear from you and discuss your challenges and demonstrate how Renaissance can power your marketing production and enhance your business performance.
Power Your Production with Renaissance - The complete Integrated Production Workflow Solution.
Developed by ec2i - Technology First, Creative Production Agency.