FAQs About Getting Started With a PIM

Congratulations! If you’re reading this, you clearly value organized product data. Whether you’ve bought a Product Information Management (PIM) solution, or are still evaluating your options, you likely have a lot of questions about how best to set it up for your brand’s unique needs.

Where Do I Start?

If your company is implementing a PIM for the first time, product data is likely scattered across various data sources. It is common to find information in spreadsheets, shared drives, USBs, hard drives, PDFs, and even physical paper records stored in dusty cabinets.

Before you dive straight in and start scouring for all the places your product data is stored, start by creating a list of each product your company manufactures. As simple as it sounds, this list will be your most valuable project management tool. It defines what it means to be done with implementing your PIM. If you don’t have a checklist of products that need to be added to your new PIM, how will you know if you’re done?

How Should I Organize My Products?

Through the process of documenting each and every product your brand manufactures, you will likely start to recognize how products are grouped together. It is critical that products be thoughtfully organized within a PIM solution. For example, all accessories should be organized in one product type within your PIM and parts should be organized in another product type.

This will enable your team to easily create data-driven product experiences tailored to the products you want to showcase.

Walk through our two-minute product tour to see how the Lumavate PIM enables you to manage product data and related digital assets. 

What Product Information Should I Gather?

Lumavate’s PIM enables brands to store product images, documents, specifications, and descriptions. It’s recommended that your PIM implementation project manager gather:

• Product description

• Product features

• Customer-facing product name

• Product detail PDFs (This may include an installation guide, an owner’s manual, or safety instructions.)

• Product image(s)

• Product specifications (These are all the numbers and stats relevant to your products, such as measurements, horsepower, ratings, or certifications.)

• Compatible products

What If I Don’t Have Good - or Any - Product Photos?

High-quality product images are a valuable resource for customers, partners, and dealers. They enable customers to visualize your product, build trust, and confirm their selection meets their needs. Marketing teams should invest in having high-quality images taken of each product.

If your brand has poor-quality images, avoid using them at all costs. A bad image leaves a bad impression. Upgrading to a PIM is an opportunity to organize all product data, including images, and ensure only accurate and approved information is getting to your audiences.

If your brand has bad images, outdated images, or no images at all, seek out renderings or graphics. While not a permanent solution, depending on your audience, a rendering may fill the gap until high-quality images can be taken.

When building digital product experiences, Lumavate offers an option to display an alternative image when a product image isn’t found in the PIM. This enables you to enhance the PIM with images as they become available, without sacrificing your digital experiences.

How Long Will It Take to Load All the Product Data?

Unfortunately, there isn’t a clear-cut answer to this question. The amount of time it takes to load product data into your new PIM depends on how many products and data points per product you have.

Good data preparation expedites the data loading process. The better you organize and plan before adding anything to the PIM, will save you significant time. It’s recommended to collect all product images and PDFs in a central file location. This way, when it comes time to upload them to your PIM you know where to find them.

Once All My Product Data is in the PIM, How Do I Create a Digital Catalog?

Lumavate’s Product Experience Management (PXM) Platform enables users to store product data in a PIM and seamlessly pull product data into digital experiences built in Lumavate. This means Lumavate customers can create a digital product catalog in under 30 minutes. The best part is when product data is updated in the PIM, the changes are immediately reflected in the connected digital experience.

Lumavate’s platform ensures your customers always have access to the most up-to-date product information, and your team has a single source of truth for all product data.