PPE manufacturers: Why choose an expert PIM?
- A structure that already models your products: the standards, the benefits of your industry, your risks, your sizes, your colours, your materials, your manufacturing methods, topics that aren’t typically discussed with customers, that have been perfected by others and on which you will spend a considerable amount of time with little chance of improving on competition. This time saved can be spent on differentiating yourself: your descriptions, your translations, your designs, your communication.
- Your product data: that’s why we plug in all your data. A structured export from your current PIM, an Excel table. We may even log in to your website to extract all your information. In any case, you won’t start from scratch.
- “Business line” algorithms that save you a lot of time. Because we’ve spent time studying your products, and because we’re pretty good at automating repetitive tasks, we’ve created “business line” algorithms that perfectly understand your product data. Our PIM embeds this “product intelligence” that will allow you to identify inconsistencies and gaps to display only the relevant attributes according to the type of product, or deduce a dozen attributes from a simple standard to avoid double data entries.
- Your competitors’ products: because why not? In a traditional PIM, you are typically limited to your own products (which is a challenge on its own!). But let’s imagine that your favourite platform has put all the work in so that, with a simple subscription, you have access to the same level of information on products in your market without having to switch tools. A whole new world is opening up: training your teams, anticipating competing offers, substitutions, benchmarks, real-time monitoring: nothing will ever be the same again!
Why hasn’t anyone done this before?
A PIM (Product Information Management) is a system for collecting, enriching and sharing information about one’s products. Implementing such a tool is essential for any PPE manufacturer. Indeed, manually updating one’s website, technical data sheets, internal or external digital tools, catalogues or flyers – and in every language! – can quickly become a headache and lead to mistakes.
Therefore, investing in a PIM is a plus. And we believe investing in an expert PIM is even better, so we tell you all about it in this article.
What exactly is an expert PIM?
An expert PIM is simply a PIM, augmented with your own expertise. A diligent manufacturer typically starts off with an off-the-shelf PIM tool and refines it year after year to obtain a perfect modelling of their products. Glove manufacturers such as Ansell or Ejendals are able to provide flexible and consistent product information, suitable for any device. But make no mistake: a PIM is not a project, but a process!
At PPE analytics, we are very familiar with this process. It is the same process we’ve used to build our company around a promise: How best to model all PPEs on the market, so that everyone - expert or novice - can understand, compare and recommend them? In 3 years, we have digitised over 15,000 PPE items. Gloves, shoes, as well as helmets, goggles and overalls. Today, we are able to combine our data expertise with your product expertise to build an expert PIM specifically for your range in just a few weeks ( see here the list of our projects awaiting sponsors).
PIM vs. Expert PIM
A regular PIM is delivered empty. It can be populated and worked to reflect your products, but it is up to you to inject your expertise into it. Like all learning, it is a long and costly process. Many iterations are needed (after 3 years of work, we have recently iterated the glove’s data structure once again).
The work is already done on our side, so we simply make it available to you to save you time and money. The idea is simple: to provide you with an already populated PIM. We trust you to take advantage of the time and resources this will free up!
A populated PIM contains:
If you look at it from a PIM editor’s standpoint, an expert PIM simply isn’t scalable. Their job is to design a PIM that is as generic as possible, in which everyone can integrate their own expertise. Understanding and modelling a PIM standard is not profitable for them because the next customer will need to go in depth on the various subtleties of cutting fluids composition. Increasing their expertise in your products won’t translate into progress for them. We, on the other hand, aim to become the reference platform for the PPE market. Modelling your expertise helps us advance our own expertise so it can be put at the service of our distributors or end users. As a result, we are willing to spend the time it takes to create an expert PIM for you. Alone, you won’t go faster, but together, we’ll go further.
And of course, because it’s important to you, we’ve been working on our classics:
Connectivity
Your PIM does not manage all product data. Logistics data, such as references for instance, can be maintained in other systems. In this case, a regular export from these software programmes allows us to synchronise your PIM’s data.
Of course, any data you enter can be exported in the format of your choice. We can also create APIs that will allow your other software, customers or sites to connect to your product data.
Collaborative translation management
The problem with translation is not so much to find a person capable of translating (you have some in your teams), but more so to truly allow them to collaborate. That’s the real challenge. We rely on a dedicated tool that allows your referents in each language to translate your content. Once again, you are not starting from scratch. As you probably aren’t the first to translate your content, you benefit from the translations put online by the PPE team, our translators, or our other customers’ translators. The Deck community can benefit from your expertise in Slovak, and the community helps you save time on your German versions!
Broadcast media
Let’s not forget the initial objective: to disseminate your content. This can be achieved via other tools thanks to the export function, but also directly on Deck using the following modules:
- Data sheets: you provide the template, we structure and generate your data sheets in all your languages.
- Editing web pages: you provide the template, we generate one page per product and per language to be hosted on your own site.
- Editing catalogues: if you enjoy the Deck catalogue, it can be redesigned to be used directly on your website.
- Editing selection guides: do you enjoy the Deck selection guide? We can customise its design and reorganise its questions to be used in your branding colours, on your own website.
Data protection
Collaborative and privacy compliant may sound like a paradox. But we just have to agree on what is confidential and what is not. You set the collaboration’s boundaries. The “private” attributes or data are stored in protected “containers”, with access limited to a few people in your company. As it is mentioned in our contract: we have no right to use or own your data, and confidentiality is a pillar of our business model. On the other hand, we are happy to share public information to help your partners better recommend your products.
Expert support for your business lines
As you may well have gathered by now, we share your passion for your products, and rely on the experience of having modelled hundreds of PPE manufacturers. We’re always willing to learn, understand, share what we know and listen to your feedback to improve further.
How much does it cost?
Probably less than a traditional PIM, or the negative impact of not having one... We operate on an annual price with no set-up fee. You can count on our launch offer:
- €5k: Manage your data in Deck’s Expert PIM and export it to your software (single segment)
- €5k: Editing Technical Data Sheet
- €5k: Editing the Selection Guide
- €5k: Editing Web page + Online catalogue + Download centre
- €5k: Multilingual management beyond English and FrenchWe look forward to supporting you in this transition!