Product Information Management (PIM)

What is Product Information Management (PIM)?

A Product Information Manager or PIM such as SiteSphere® Product Manager, is an essential tool for organisations who need to effectively manage and enrich product content.

Employees of Manufacturers and Distributors are increasingly demanding web based access to the latest edition of detailed product specification information, which can be modified and controlled in a manner which complies with the company's internal policies.

SiteSphere® Product Manager is an easy-to-use web-based tool which enables Product Managers and sales staff to improve the efficency and accuracy of product information management.

Product Managers are keen to ensure that product information is accurate, correctly coded, categorised and specified with accurate pricing. Meanwhile, sales staff and customers rely on this information to make decisions which directly affect profitability and customer satisfaction.

Up-To-The-Minute Marketing Datasheets and Catalogues for Print

Imagine updating product specification data, such as figures on a performance graph, and instantly being able to download the newest version of the PDF datasheet to send to a customer! This is the service SiteSphere® Product Manager and SiteSphere® Publish will seamlessly deliver for you, using the latest industry standards such as XML, XSL:FO and Adobe PDF.  Complex catalogues can also be created using SiteSphere® Publish ready for print, saving much time and effort handling the same product information over and over.  Keep all the information in SiteSphere® Product Manager and maximise the benefits of this approach.

Contribute from anywhere, anytime

One of the key benefits of using hosted product information management is that wherever you are you can access the service and make your contribution - at any time of day or night. SiteSphere® Product Manager provides a secure web-based service, where all actions are audited. Once submitted changes are instantly published for all to see.  SiteSphere® Product Manager also supports previewing product changes for review and approval.

Rich Specifications and Categorisation

SiteSphere® Product Manager handles a wide array of specification information.  The number of attributes are limitless for a single item, or item variant.  Each attribute is fully language-aware avoiding the need to re-enter specification data in order to make information available in multiple languages.  In addition, many specification tables can be attached to a product, and data grids which can automatically have their contents charted.

Image and Asset Management

The SiteSphere® Product Manager also provides many features to upload and manage images, videos and document files. Each file is indexed along with properties such as Subject, Author, Image Resolution, Size and Date Time Created enabling rapid location. Both RGB and CMYK image formats are supported by SiteSphere® along with automatic resizing, cropping and manipulation of images. Each product can be assigned multiple assets in any number of languages.

Product Globalisation

Why not manage all product content for all markets in a single place?  SiteSphere® Product Manager delivers useful market segmentation features to ensure export criteria are met, and only relevant product information is available to certain regions.  Product content can be added in any language, and new languages and regions can be defined.  The SiteSphere® Product Manager Auto-Translate feature enables any content to be translated intelligently using predefined phrase matching to save as much time as possible within the localisation process.

Knowledge Management

Knowledge is Power, and if so then why not empower your website to provide customers with automatic answers to their questions on products or services? SiteSphere® Knowledge is a powerful tool enabling question and answer-type Knowledge Trees to be built using a simple flowchart method over the web. These Knowledge Trees are easily updated and can be used to answer any type of question sequence.

Full Integration

• Integrate SiteSphere® Product Manager into your organisation's workflow using Microsoft BizTalk
• Publish Punch Out catalogues to customers for Ariba SN or SAP OCI
• Automatically import product information from suppliers using Ariba SN or SAP OCI
• Integrates with Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Dynamics NAV or Microsoft Dynamics CRM
• Deliver rich product information feeds in XML format to any partner
  

Beyond Product Information Management (PIM)

Most product information management solutions stop at product information management! However, SiteSphere® Product Manager is built upon the SiteSphere® Content Management platform which means it extends well beyond product information. It also provides fully integrated content management and ecommerce features, and has been customised for use in many different industry areas.