Product data management (PDM)

The average business deals with more than 400 unique datasets every day. Unfortunately, the teams responsible for managing this data spend up to 80% of their work hours just filtering and organizing it all; yet, they’re often still left with inconsistencies and discrepancies.

In response, companies turn to product data management systems to enable better control over their product data to drive long-term growth.

What is product data management(PDM)?

Product data management is the process of managing your product data throughout the entire lifecycle of a product – from initial conception to go-to-market. This involves gathering, sorting, consolidating, and organizing the data in a centralized repository.

Considering almost 95% of businesses report managing unstructured data as their biggest challenge, the process demands high workloads, which prevents teams from focusing on big picture projects that contribute toward business growth.

For instance, imagine all of the data within a product feed of an ecommerce apparel store – product descriptions, images, videos, specifications, prices, reviews, product inventory, etc. Storing, maintaining, and syndicating all of this data across various ecommerce channels can seem impossible, especially when relying on manual workflows. It requires tedious entering, editing, updating, and removing of the data from each consumer touchpoint. As this often leads to errors in product listings and ads, the end result is a confused and frustrated shopper.

Having a good product data management system in place can help alleviate these pain points. The software serves as a unified platform for you to store product data, optimize it as required, track changes, integrate them across platforms, and make continuous updates as needed.

How can product data management benefit your business?

The more organized and accessible your data is, the faster and more efficient your business operations. Here’s how adopting a good product data management (PDM) system can benefit your business:

• Increased organization

The primary function of every product data management system is to store and organize scattered data from different sources under a centralized repository. This way there is only a single source of truth and there is no confusion. Further, your search time for any specific data is reduced, freeing up time to pursue growth opportunities.

• Improved communication and collaboration

Almost 72% of businesses consider their data as their most strategic asset. When your data is structured and organized well, your business operations within your team also improve. A product data management system ensures everyone within an organization is on the same page, using information that comes from a single source of truth. It allows different departments to work on the same file without risking version mishaps, all while keeping each other updated on any edits and changes made. This improves workflows and breaks down silos, which ultimately saves time, effort, and resources.

• Improved time-to-market

A product data management system allows for quick and efficient product content syndication across ecommerce channels via robust APIs. Faster distribution of standardized product information across the web accelerates your time-to-market, enabling you to reach your target audience before competitors.

• Reduced product lifecycle time

A good product data management system revolutionizes your entire product lifecycle by streamlining your processes and reducing redundancy. With a centralized product and process knowledge hub, you can stay up-to-date and mitigate errors immediately. Further, it enables your business to reuse your data throughout the product lifecycle for better decision making.

• Compliant with regulatory guidelines

Different platforms and marketplaces have defined regulatory guidelines and formats in which they accept data. Making your product data compliant with these regulations is a daunting task. But a strong product data management system optimizes your data to suit the accepted formats and guidelines of various systems to ensure all of your products remain active.

• Lower costs

Today, the worldwide spending on data management is almost $315 billion, which means managing product data efficiently is one of the most expensive parts of running a business. By speeding up workflows and removing errors, you also bring down the cost of managing all product content journeys.

Start making the most out of your volumes and volumes of product data! Begin by analyzing your business needs and choosing a product data management system that can complement your growth targets. Productsup’s P2C platform processes over two trillion products per month – Contact us to learn more!