Akeneo PIM: A Remote Control For Product Experience Management

It may sound crazy on first blush, but hear me out.

After all, where would we be without the humble remote control? (Especially during days and weeks like this!) Sure, you could watch television without one. But anyone who’s ever spent hours cramming themselves behind couches and under tables to try and find a missing remote knows just how essential the remote control is to the television viewing experience. Without the remote control, you can’t simply sit back, relax, and let the entertainment come to you. Instead, you need to go through the tedious, manual process of changing channels by hand, flipping through every single one until you find a program worth watching — and repeat that process every time a commercial comes on, every time you want to switch up the show you’re watching, every time you want to raise or lower the volume. What’s more, if you have a smart TV, it’s essentially impossible to navigate through streaming services like Netflix or Amazon Prime without a remote. Obviously, not having a remote control makes the TV experience more tedious and difficult. But it also makes it more time-consuming to find your favorite channel or program. And believe it or not, lacking a remote control can even lead you to make mistakes when it comes to choosing your program — because when you need to go through a long, arduous process, it’s more likely that something will go wrong along the way and you’ll be left watching something unappealing. So, there’s my argument for the remote control as one of the best inventions the world has ever seen, if not the single greatest invention known to man. And just like every good new television needs the remote control, every good product enrichment team needs its own essential piece of equipment — a product information management (PIM) solution. Because in many ways, a good PIM solution is just like a remote control for the product information and product experience.

Pilot your teams

Just like the remote control allows you to control your TV from anywhere in the house, a PIM can help you manage your product experience anywhere, anytime. PIM helps your teams collaborate whether they’re in a centralized office environment, working in offices around the globe, or working from their home offices. With a strong PIM solution, your teams can work together seamlessly to ensure that you’re able to offer enticing, compelling omnichannel experiences to your customers, no matter what environment they’re working in.

Switch channels

Just as a remote control can help you more efficiently and quickly change channels, PIM gives your team a purpose-built tool that can help them enrich or update product information in no time flat. It can also help optimize the process of collecting, enriching, and getting new products to market using one centralized, trusted source for product information by providing a system of record for product information and digital assets, improving the accessibility of product data and liberating it from disconnected silos. This means faster time-to-market for your business. But picking up the pace doesn’t mean you need to make more errors. Remember when we said a remote control can keep you from making mistakes when trying to choose a channel or program? PIM does the same when it comes to product information. Pushing your team to move more quickly without giving them the right tools can sometimes lead to errors and inconsistencies in product information, which kill your product experience. But with PIM, you can accelerate your time-to-market, all while eliminating errors and inconsistencies.

Get a guide

One of the best parts about your television remote is that handy-dandy guide button. It lets you get a view of all the available channels and programs while saving you the time and effort it would take to flip manually through each channel to find out what’s on TV. And, as luck would have it, your PIM solution can do much of the same. By giving your team a system of record for all of your products, product descriptions, digital assets, and any other elements that comprise your omnichannel experience, Akeneo PIM can serve as their guide to product information. It can also help them understand not only what products need to be enriched, but also help them assess the quality and completeness of the product data and assets you’re presenting to your customers. So, if the remote control is the greatest invention of all time, may we humbly suggest that PIM — AKA the greatest invention for managing product information — might just be a close second. Give your team a remote control for your product information management— master product experience management from anywhere, anytime, with Akeneo PIM!  Discover how companies like Novia and Pierce have used Akeneo to make product information management as simple as hitting a button on their remote control.