MOVING FROM AWARE TO DEVELOPING
AWARE
Organisations often have an awareness that there is a problem; undefined processes, lack of adequate technology, lack of stakeholder sponsorship or understanding of the purpose of PIM/PXM in meeting business goals. A lack of buy-in presents a clear challenge for a program leader's ambition and desired change.
At this stage, external agencies and consultants can take the time to understand the state of the business understanding and vision, help generate awareness and alignment to secure the necessary sponsorship and develop a thorough business case to move forward. It's important to align on the ‘Why?” are you investing time and resources in this program; a collective ambition and the value it intends to bring to meet performance goals.
Moving from Aware to Developing: Practical Steps
People: Its now a good time to really quantify and assess the business need and potential value of PIM / PXM before running a technology RFP. Through educating the wider business on PIM / PXM value via internal SMEs or external workshops. Determining the people and organizational structure and any change management needed to ensure any program drives cross-functional collaboration with clear roles and responsibilities.
Process: In most cases, the current product information input is manual and typically handled by a few departments with varying expertise. Since this tends to be in the absence of an outlined process, siloed operations are common.
Mapping out the current “as-is” process and ambition to improve with an ideal “to-be” process to improve data handling and user accountability. Should you have a PIM/PXM in place, use vendor support to build better processes, permissions, and tracking within the system to drive efficiency and accuracy. As part of this process, it is worth assessing what adjoining exisiting processes touch product content, whether thats a content creation process, approvals via legal and compliance validation.
Technology: If you are without PIM, product data management relies on manual methods leading to inaccurate and incomplete data. As you look to expand your assortment and potential channels this complexity will increase, and it's time to think about technology investment to be able to scale your omnichannel selling motion. For existing PIM systems, explore enhancements for better data syndication and multi-channel connectivity through further syndication technologies or improved integrations.
