Unified PIM and DAM solutions: why we're reconciling them?

Attention to customer data and CRM is now a reflex in the vast majority of companies. The aim is tocontinuously improve the customer experience, and the productivity of your teams. To further perfect this experience, marketing departments are now focusing on product data and the management of this information (media, marketing data, product lifecycle, etc.), also known as content management. Whether in the form of photos or product descriptions, these data and resources are one of the first points of contact between a brand and its customers on the Internet. A major point for e-tailers operating on the web.

In an atomized, omnichannel digital ecosystem, it has become essential for companies to have effective, cross-functional digital tools to manage this data live. To this end, solutions/software such as PIM (Product Information Management) for product data management, and DAM (Data Asset Manager), for managing media files, are positioning themselves as facilitators in the day-to-day work of marketing and e-commerce teams.

PIM and DAM platforms

The PIM solution is the platform for collecting, centralizing, prioritizing,enriching, validating and publishing all product-related information (descriptions, characteristics, SEO, translations...etc.), across all sales and marketing channels. The PIM Quable platform is a management tool that benefits various business teams: IT teams to control data flows thanks to this tool perfectly integrated within the IS system, marketing teams to increase the reliability and quality of product data sheets, e-commerce teams to accelerate the distribution of product information across all distribution channels, and photo studio teams to manage repositories (materials, colors, uses, recipes...) within a single, collaborative platform. With its numerous functionalities, the PIM platform, as a database, has the principal role of improving business processes, by automating certain tasks.

DAM is a solution designed to store, manage and easily distribute digital media (digital assets) for marketing use. These visuals, characteristic of a product sheet, are diverse: photographs, sketches, videos, packshots and even pictograms (safety warnings, labeling, food indicators, etc.). The DAM therefore acts as a content manager, and is used by marketing and communications teams (advertising), as well as distribution networks (catalogs, POS elements, etc.).

A unique platform

Faced with the need to put rich, complex information online quickly, PIM software ensures theaccuracy and instant updating of product information shared between the various players (consumers, producers and distributors). DAM is a response to the explosion in digital content linked to content marketing practices, and above all to the need to illustrate this content with images, videos and other digital media and resources. It is used to manage the company's media assets used in marketing and communications activities.

Until now, these two platforms have been opposed by their users because of their differences: intervention of different teams, different approaches to data. However, this opposition between raw data and visual data does not make sense when it comes to feeding a product sheet on the Internet . A web user would never finalise his purchase if the description of the travel bag he wants was not supported by detailed or even 3D photos of the product.

Quable has chosen to bring together PIM and DAM to create a single platform for integrating all product data (raw and visual) on a single interface, and streamlining the data enrichment process between the various parties involved. The PIM/DAM pair thus becomes a company's metadata repository.

Benefits of coupling PIM and DAM

It's time for reconciliation! Centralising content and media in a single interface allows teams to have a global vision and to manage all the data linked to the products.

When photos and descriptions are pooled, the data enrichment process becomes more efficient and relevant. Very often, the photographer in charge of shooting new samples enters the product references that correspond to the photos by hand, at the risk of making errors (which are human after all!), thus multiplying the number of round trips between the various parties involved, which are extremely time-consuming processes.

Although different, PIM and DAM solutions are highly complementary, and bringing them together makes perfect sense.

Coupling the PIM and DAM overcomes this difficulty by automating the naming of product photos thanks to a barcode generated from the product reference by a Quable application. The photographer scans this barcode when naming his photos and the associated product reference then becomes the name of the photo file. This file is then automatically associated with the right product in PIM.

When it comes to creating powerful communication tools based on product data, a solution that integrates PIM and DAM software makes perfect sense. Let's imagine the launch of your new lookbook: at the heart of this impactful medium for your customers, visuals and content are intimately linked. Then there's the need to combine products that "go together" to create a look. When content and media are brought together in the same tool, all the data is gathered and already correlated: creating a lookbook or any other document becomes much easier.

Finally, a PIM DAM solution avoids the multiplication of platforms, extensions and tools, with a view to simplifying the company's ecosystem of internal tools.

What uses can be made of this combination?

With DAM software integrated into Quable's PIM , all the company's players and partners benefit from a single reference database, where each media and digital resource is updated and linked to each product description.

This makes it easier to put in place a product development strategy that benefits from good, up-to-date sources from the outset:

• SEO teams optimise referencing by filling in the "alt" of images with the product descriptions directly in front of them,
• Copyright and expiry dates for models in the photos are managed on a single interface, limiting the risk of overruns,
• For partners, an extranet portal can be made available to situate the products in the brand universe during exchanges with customers,
• For sales staff, the web to print materials (lookbooks, catalogues or brochures) that are essential for attachment are quickly available.

In an era of multiple touch points (stores, print, social networks, marketplaces), companies need to process product data in a systemic way. Following the example of Quable, interfaces reconciling PIM and DAM save companies from pitfalls such as: erroneous correspondence between media and product content, lack of photos, difficulty in producing updated communication media, etc.

Use cases and benefits

Numerous customers across various sectors and industries have benefited greatly from the PIM/DAM coupling at Quable.

French luggage brand Delsey uses the PIM/DAM combination to upload and manage its 25,000 product-related visuals from the DAM. In this way, the PIM/DAM solution has become the reference support for their partners and distributors, enabling them, in an international environment, to generate product catalogs directly, quickly and from a single location, for a successful multi-channel strategy.

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In the clothing and ready-to-wear sector, the Gémo brand also suffered from the absence of a solution that allowed it to create, enrich and manage product data and the media library associated with the media for the various business teams. Now, with their use of the PIM/DAM solution, the Eram Group brand manages a real media library, ultra-collaborative, which has boosted its online sales and smoothed out the workload during peak sales periods (sales, Black Friday, Christmas...).

Conclusion

The new spearheads of marketing, PIM and DAM combine to ensure the accuracy of information processed centrally in the background, then distributed omnichronically, improving the operational efficiency of your teams and satisfying consumers to the full. Although there are certain differences, the combination of these tools forms a truly complete solution for companies in terms of product information management,product experience integration and product lifecycle management. The PIM/DAM combination is becoming the benchmark solution for data management within companies, and perhaps soon within your business?

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