PIM PROVES TO BE A GREAT SOURCE OF TOP LINE GROWTH

PIM PROVES TO BE A GREAT SOURCE OF TOP LINE GROWTH - Tim Wallace, CEO

The growing interest in product information management (PIM) can be tied to a business directive from the office of your CEO…. Grow the top line! A recent industry report from The Yankee Group makes a strong empirical case for companies that have deployed a PIM solution; the annual business improvement averages some 24%.

	Optimized Promotions 27%
	Improved Customer Loyalty 26%
	Enhanced Customer Service 26%
	Better Channel Relationship Management 26%
	Maximized Product and Brand Management 23%
	Increased Collaboration with Partners and Suppliers 20%
	Increased Employee Productivity 20%

So what is holding up an investment in a PIM Solution?

With $40 billion in bad data costs per year in the CPG and Retail industry, what appears to be the hang up with PIM adoption? Based upon our five-year history as being the leading PIM solution in the market place, here is our assessment of what is really holding up the tremendous ROI by deploying a PIM strategy.

	CEO Sponsorship
	The one common trait we see from PIM customers is that they have a CEO who is driving innovation and sees that good product data is necessary for market agility. In the world of traditional brands, consumers pay a premium price for the brand-name product because, to consumers, the brand equals quality. In the post-brand world, consumers pay a premium price for the brand because of product innovation. Newness rather than familiarity sells. And with market life cycles shrinking, reduced development life cycles and reduced time to shelf become critical. A couple recent examples of brand innovation are: H.J. Heinz taking back market share from store brands by creating new squeezable plastic bottles of its ketchup; P&G winning more shelf-space at Wal-Mart for its Crest brand by creating an entirely new category with the introduction of Crest Whitestrips. Takeaway: PIM is a key enabler to your product innovation strategy. It requires support and commitment from the highest level of the organization.

	Build vs. Buy
	Some think they can internally build a robust solution in six months for a couple of hundred thousand dollars. The successful, innovative companies I previously mentioned, H.J. Heinz and P&G, were visionary in their technology investments years ago and funded the years of development of their internal solutions with many millions of dollars. This of course was before they even had an option to evaluate and purchase off-the-shelf enterprise product information management products, such as FullTilt. Today, you don't have years to wait for your investment to reap its stated rewards. Takeaway: Flexible, extendable, off-the-shelf products now exist to allow your IT resources to focus on other priorities where software for purchase are not available or an option.

	External Data Synchronization Solved the Issue
	Many CIO's believe today their organization has solved this issue through their data synchronization compliance mandates. Many companies truly believe that their synchronization efforts with UCCnet, Transora, WWRE or other data pools put the issues regarding enterprise management of product data to bed. On average products require approximately 500-1,000 attributes for an accurate definition (per Forrester Research). Most synchronization efforts have focused on a small subset of the least common denominator of product attributes. This means that the “other” competitively differentiating product details are not being centrally managed and are not easily sharable with your trading partners. Takeaway: A PIM helps protect your product differentiation and competitive advantages in an electronic world where side-by-side product comparisons are creating additional margin pressure.

	No Internal Ownership
	Does your organization have a person who is accountable for the management of your product information across the enterprise? In most companies, the different information silos own the individual responsibilities for their own area of domain, but have had little visibility or access to product information in the other silos of the business. Without a single owner with responsibility, it is virtually impossible to create, no less maintain, a single source of product truth for your company's products Takeaway: Assign a top executive who has ultimate responsibility for product data throughout your enterprise. The reality is that PIM provides a significant ROI and is the heartbeat of an organization's competitive strategy. It affects your efforts toward a Demand Driven Supply Network, Global Data Synchronization, RFID and all other collaborative initiatives. Accurate product data is key to your overall business innovation and a key enabling solution to improve your business processes…with a quantifiable ROI that is costing you top and bottom line dollars every day you wait.

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