Digital Transformation Blog | Frank Riedijk

Now this is quite a data-technical question. One for the experienced data-PIM (Product Information Management) architect. A question however that many companies will have to answer to play in the modern era of online sales. Let me fist give some context: product sales companies promote their products, in catalogs, in a CMS-based promotional site, a webshop, the Point-of-sale system, etc. This data has to be stored somewhere in the companies' systems. Until a few years ago the question where to store it was easy. Via EDI or incoming files the product data would be imported into the ERP. The ERP would be the single source of truth about article-number, product dimensions, prices, descriptions, etc. In the mean time ourwebbased sales channel has multiplied the amount of attributes per product. Added promotional information, visual representations, etc. This is well beyond the capabilities of the average ERP. Try using the product description of an ERP-based product in your webs...

How do you choose the right tools for you online channel, for sales, marketing and corporate information sites? As usual in the IT-branche, we have a lot of abbreviations and "newest of the newest that you cannot do without". PDM (Product Data management), PIM (Product Information management), MDM (Master Data Management), CIM (Customer Information Management), CMS (Content Management System), CRM (Customer Relationship Management), you name it. So: "What do you need" or more basic "what is it"? Obviously no one answer can describe it, nor is any single answer truth for all. This short blog entry is an attempt to clarify what is the position of some of these technologies, with emphasis on the fact that it is the actual view, so December 2009. For your online experience, you need to feed actual productdata to your potential customers. ERP-vendors (like SAP and Oracle) will tell you that they have the main capture of that covered. Truth is however, that typ...