Pimics ROI calculation

Looking at the current enterprise software landscape, one can see that PIM systems are often misunderstood or overlooked. This reality is changing at a rapid pace because of the growing need for companies to have a competitive online presence, but still there is huge potential for this technology to be embraced at a global level.

Sometimes people do not even know if they have a PIM system in their organisation or not. Many of them assume that existing tools that they use daily for running the business, like ERP, CRM or Excel, can also handle all their product data, but the reality is that if you are serious about having an online or printed catalogue with comprehensive data about your products, you have no alternative to using a good PIM system. After all, managing your product information is the spine of your business.

Of course, in order to have a business case for adopting any new solution in an organisation, one should be able to calculate the Return On Investment (ROI) for that particular solution and make a decision based on clear figures. Calculating the ROI for a PIM system and for Pimics in particular is no easy task, precisely because the benefits of using such a solution are numerous, and they will be felt within the organisation sometimes upfront, and sometimes in more indirect ways.
 

Here are a few criteria to discuss when assessing the ROI of a PIM system

Data accuracy

Bad data has a devastating influence on companies. To some degree, it is present in all aspects of any company’s operations, but if revenue is any measure of a company’s success, then that company will need to make sure that their customer-facing data is as accurate and well-presented as possible.

Kissmetrics states businesses lose up to 20 percent of their revenue because of bad data. Pragmaticworks states 20 to 30 percent of operating expenses are due to bad data.

As experience shows, any SKU count over 1,000 means enough product data to justify using a PIM system. If a company selling upwards of this SKU count will continue manipulating their product data using obsolete methods and a lot a manual work, the following risks become apparent:

• wasted employee time repairing product data, or manually cleansing out-of-sync item information

• lost sales coming from customer dissatisfaction with item data presented on the website

• increased returns originating from bad customer-facing data

• damage to the company’s reputation

• possible regulatory compliance fines

• data consistency issues across sales channels

• missed digital growth opportunities, poor SEO results

A PIM system such as Pimics goes a long way towards minimizing these risks.

Especially when working with a large number of SKUs, errors are inevitable but they can be much better controlled by using a PIM solution because of the structured approach to importing and managing data, and because of all data being refined over time to build a Single Point of Truth which is the PIM database. Remarkably, in Pimics’s case, the PIM items database is the same as the ERP items database, and this brings additional integration and reliability savings, not to mention minimal user training due to the familiar software interface they already use.

Product Management’s Productivity

Pimics existing implementations show improved productivity with at least 50%, with significant employee time saved either when editing product data or when collaborating on setting up product data. Product Managers can automate repetitive tasks that waste their time and have a high probability of generating errors.

Product catalogues for print or web are much easier to create and update using Pimics, which means dramatically improved time-to-market. Product assortment can be extended much easier, without hiring more people to handle the new products. Importing vendor data and exporting partner data can be streamlined using the Vendor Catalog extension. And for industries where data standards as BMECat or Datanorm are widely used, product managers will find Pimics to be an invaluable tool.

Localizations handling and data quality control means that translations or market-specific adaptations cannot go missing when it comes to tackling different markets in different geographies.

Customers will be better reached and served through additional sales channels. All of these channels will be a breeze to update with any change in product data.
 

ROI calculation for Pimics

Let’s take a few points of impact that we can estimate data for, calculate amounts and build a business case for adopting Pimics. For this particular instance, we will consider an average small-to-medium company, that has 20,000 SKUs in their portfolio. Of course, SKU number is variable over time, but for the sake of this simulation, we will calculate ROI for just one year taking into account the above SKU count.
For an actual Pimics price quote, please access our price request page.