Workflows in PIM: Efficiency instead of Wait Loops

Last week, I was at a medium-sized machine engineering company. 450 employees, 12,000 product variants, an impressive 40 years on the market. The product manager demonstrated their “optimized” product implementation to me: an Excel list with 127 columns, 23 different email distribution lists, and a release process of 6 weeks.

“We are organized rather well,” he thought.

Followed by silence.

 

The Hidden Cost Factors

What this product manager did not see – and what I come to experience again and again in my 20+ years’ worth of PIM projects – are invisible time killers that systematically slow down companies. Not the obvious problems like “Excel is slow” or “emails go missing,” no. Much to the contrary, the really expensive traps are much more subtle.

 

Category of Traps 1: The Coordination Tax

A new product usually runs through 15–20 phases: The product management defines the specification, the marketing team writes the texts, the tech writing department creates datasheets, localizes translations, ecommerce maintains categories, and sales defines the price.

The Problem? Everybody is waiting for one another.

While the graphic designers are waiting for the finalized text, they cannot start working on the product images. The translator can only begin once marketing is done. The ecommerce manager is left hanging until all product data and images are available.

Reality: Within 6 weeks runtime, only 8–12 hours are effective worktime. The rest is waiting.

Cost Estimation: Given 50 product implementations a year and an average hourly wage of €65, we are looking at €130,000 in pure waiting time costs.

 

Category of Traps 2: The Context Switch Killer

Recently, a product manager told me: “On Mondays, I do releases. On Tuesdays, I check translations. On Wednesday, I create new products, …”

And that’s the crux of the matter! Every switch from task to task takes 15–25 minutes of getting back into the groove. The brain needs to regain its focus, re-contextualize, recollect the specifics.

Given 8–12 different product processes a day, this amounts to 2–3 hours of pure switching time.

 

Category of Traps 3: The Quality Escalation Spiral

This is what I identify immediately: Product data is copied manually from system to system, e-commerce teams “interpret” technical specifications, and marketing invents product properties because the datasheets are not finalized yet.

The consequence: 30–40% of all new products must suffer through a post-editing loop. Each and every post-correction is 5x more expensive than getting things right the first time.

 

The Workflow Turning Point: From Sequential to Intelligent

What if product implementation would no longer run like a conveyer belt chain but an intelligent orchestra?

Imagine the following:

• Parallel Editing: While the marketing team is writing texts, the system is automatically generating the first datasheets from tech data
• Intelligent Routing: Standard products go through the express workflow, complex novelties become intensive quality checks
• Proactive Escalation: The system identifies delays and resolves them automatically with plan-B scenarios

 

BPMN Meets PIM: Why Visual Automation Works

The reason why most workflow tools fail in PIM environments is simple: They are either too technical or too over-simplifying.

• Too technical: Only IT can operate them
• Too over-simplifying: Complex product processes cannot be mapped

BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation) resolves this dilemma elegantly.

It is internationally standardized, visually intuitive, and still expressive for complex automation.

Please have a look at this typical product release process:

What you can see here:

• Diamond Symbol and Decision Gateway: Decision point (e.g., standard product or custom development?) – Can run in parallel or be an exclusive decision based on parameters
• Service Tasks (green): Automatic actions
• User Tasks (orange): Human input required

The genius part: Your product managers understand it right away. No cryptic code snippets, no IT hieroglyphs.

 

The 5-Minute Reality

A real-case example: Recently, I implemented a seemingly simple automation workflow for an electrical retailer: “When new products are created, then automatically assign categories and boot price calculation.”

Effort in the old world: 3 emails, 2 Excel updates, 1 phone call, 45 minutes of editing time.

Effort with intelligent automation: 0 human interaction, 30 seconds of system runtime.

The result after 6 months:

• 67% faster time-to-market
• 89% less data errors
• €156,000 saved personnel cost

 

The Inconvenient Truth about Quick Fixes

But wait a moment – why do companies not simply solve such problems with more personnel or better Excel templates?

Because manual processes do not scale.

• 10% more products = 15% more effort (because of coordination overhead).
• Twice as any products = 3x more chaos.

I have seen companies that tried solving product complexity with more manpower. This works up to roughly 500–800 active SKUs. Any more, and the system collapses.

 

The Turning Point: When does Automation become a Must-Have?

After 20+ years of project experience, I recognize the warning signs immediately:

• Red Flag 1: Time-to-market of more than 8 weeks
• Red Flag 2: More than 3 “product experts” required
• Red Flag 3: Release processes with more than 5 phases
• Red Flag 4: Regular “data cleanup events”

If 2 or even more of the above points apply, the manual processes have hit their limit. What comes next?

In the next article, I demonstrate to you what a modern BPMN workflow looks like – step-by-step, with more real screenshots from ATAMYA Product Cloud. You will see how you can set up an automatism within 20 minutes that will save you 200+ hours each month.

Up until then, this will be the homework: Record the time your next product implementation takes. Take note of waiting steps, each loop of check-back questions, and every “I’ll have to double-check that” moment.

You will be surprised.

 

Content in Top Form: Quick, Individualized, and Professional

From catalog to flyer – your publication process is about fine-tuning your product content to approach your target groups and distinguishing yourself from the competition. At the same time, however, you also want to make your product content available to all target media outlets in a timely and efficient manner.

Unify content and form with a central PIM system: On the one hand, the lack of a PIM means tediously collecting and filtering technical, emotional, and use-case-related information and content from data aggregates which may be scattered all over the place. On the other hand, the effort required will otherwise multiply itself, since every publication is to be provided in various versions, channels, and languages for varying target groups.

When it comes to catalog generation, you can simply let a PIM system do all the heavy lifting in the background thanks to user-defined automatisms. Focus your creativity on what really matters: good content for your customers! In this blog post, you will learn everything you need to know, as well as valuable tips and tricks for efficient and automated print production.

 

Maximize Your Saving Potential

Print products can be many-sided, both figuratively and literally: be it a central catalog, a catalog for flagship products, or a flyer for niche products or a very specific target group which requires an individualized customer approach. A PIM system that offers integrated publishing tools allows you to use reusable templates and streamline the creation process. The use of style sheets, text modules and templates for pages and articles optimizes the entire process. In this context, a powerful print tool should offer the following functions:

• Automated generation of pages and even entire catalog PDFs
• Minimize effort with dynamic templates
• Subsequent layout editing in a layout editor

 

Establish Your Corporate Design

With a well-integrated print and publishing tool, you can significantly reduce the time and effort required to create your communication materials by simply letting your data flow into pre-designed master layouts. This ensures that your corporate design is always consistent and of high quality in all media. The following features help you save time and resources while ensuring your corporate design in all communication materials.

• Control publication and task planning with the fully-integrated module.
• Establish your Corporate Design in all target channels such as your website, web shop, or personalized e-mails.
• Set up information process chains in a semi-automated or fully-automated manner as necessary.
• Outsource some work steps to your Desktop Publishing thanks to standardized interfaces and data export formats.

 

Put a Smile on the Face of Your Design Team

The combination of a PIM system and a print tool makes your work much easier. You can select your product data and automatically transfer it to programs such as Quark or InDesign, where it is then prepared for printing. Thanks to integrated interfaces, you can work with the latest data in your familiar interface. If your publications appear in different versions and language variants, this is also not a problem for a powerful PIM system. This allows you to automatically convert texts on publication pages into all maintained languages. Here are a few more features that make the process even more efficient and take the pressure off your design team:

• Dynamics catch page overflows caused by language-dependent sentence lengths
• Seamless integration of neighboring modules for data maintenance and translation
• All publication channels are supplied with content in relevant language variants

 

Generate in a Fast and Target-Group-Oriented Manner

In an increasingly digital world, it is crucial to produce marketing and sales materials such as catalogs, brochures, flyers and data sheets quickly and efficiently. A powerful PIM system combined with a print tool enables you to create product previews based on templates and to process them directly. Here are some features that significantly speed up the production process:

• WYSIWYG: “What You See Is What You Get.” – Previews exactly match the final product
• Swap out stylesheets or products of templates with a few clicks
• Save previews of print pages directly on the product in your data model for fellow users

 

Automated catalog creation – efficient, flexible, consistent

Ein modernes PIM-System in Kombination mit einem Publishing-Tool macht die Katalogerstellung schneller, effizienter und flexibler. Von der Planung bis zur Ausspielung: Automatisieren Sie Prozesse, behalten den Überblick und sorgen für konsistente Publikationen über alle Kanäle hinweg. Diese Vorteile optimieren Ihren Workflow:

Adjustable Publication Processes
Actively control all publication processes – from planning to distribution – parallel to the continuous data acquisition and data management.

Reusable Templates
Make process steps sustainable with stylesheets, text modules, as well as templates for pages and articles.

Representative Reviews
View live previews of entire publications at the click of a button, save them, and share them: “What you see is what you get!”

Multilingual Publications
Centralized data management allows content to be automatically converted into all maintained languages, enabling you to create internationally consistent publications.

Seamless System Integration
Automatic update of changes – even directly in InDesign or other connected systems.

Personalized Content
Create customized publications for different target groups and inspire your customers with relevant, emotional content.

 

Automated catalog creation with ATAMYA: Seamless integration for maximum efficiency

With the ATAMYA Product Cloud, all this is possible seamlessly thanks to an API-driven architecture. Print and publishing tools can be easily integrated, so you can stay in your familiar working environment while still benefiting from maximum automation. Changes are synchronized in real time, multilingual content is easily published, and publications are efficiently created – all without media discontinuity.

Experience it for yourself! Secure an appointment now for a personal ATAMYA demo and discover how easy and flexible your catalog production can be.

Utilizing Product Data and Generative AI for Automated Product Descriptions

Product Information Management (PIM) systems are essential in all those fields where extensive information records and structured units of data are to be organized and published for commercial purposes. They boost efficiency, reduce errors, and accelerate processes. But how can you further maximize these benefits? The answer lies in the clever combination of a PIM system with generative artificial intelligence (AI) and data-based content creation.

The connection between PIM systems and technologies such as ChatGPT, GPT models, or comparable language models enables the automated and dynamic generation of product descriptions – technologies that have proven to be useful for establishing an essential competitive advantage. This is because generic, undifferentiated, or perhaps even incomplete product information does not only lead to dissatisfaction and cancelled purchases on the customer’s end but also play a crucial factor in product returns.

In this blog entry, you learn how PIM systems, generative AI, and data-based text automation can contribute to the success of digital commerce and how the scaling and effective application of such well-combined technologies can save you both time and resources.

 

Structured Data, Content Automation, and Generative Artificial Intelligence: Efficient Strategies for Describing Products

Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini revolutionized automated text generation. On the other hand, however, they have also posed new challenges to companies: Meeting complex requirements concerning quality, legal compliance, and text diversity while also maintaining a high production speed. One solution to all this is the combination of generative artificial intelligence, data-based context automation, and an efficient Product Information Management system.

The PIM system functions as a central platform for administrating, organizing, and editing all product information. This well-structured and high-quality product data serves as the basis for the automated creation of standardized and use-case-specific descriptions. Thanks to innovative automation tools, these descriptions and product texts cannot only be scaled on demand but also provided in different languages which, in turn, allows you to optimize business processes across your entire information chain. Accordingly, the precision of product data is decisive for the quality of such automatically produced content.

There also already are, however, novel approaches in the field of data-based text automation that support companies on their path towards processing even unstructured data with the help of generative AI such as ChatGPT and co. Through the combination of generative AI and data-based text automation, you can generate text models and recommendations for text variants, while you can use the possibilities of a scalable content automation to mobilize these texts for your use cases. In the process of doing so, knowledge accessible from the internet and gathered data is combined in order to create thousands upon thousands of texts for web, products, and SEO. With this combination, you can guarantee for quality, legal compliance, and text diversity in your automatic text generation.

 

The Combination of Generative AI, Data-Based Content Automation, and PIM System Offers Six Decisive Benefits for Companies:

1. Fast Market Launch: With the support of generative AI, data-based automation, and a PIM system, you can significantly reduce the time to market of your products and offers. The automated creation of product descriptions for both designing new offers as well as updating existing products increases your operating speed and efficiency in product marketing. Automated processes for text generation do also require much less resources and reduce the effort of coordination which, at the end of the day, translates into a faster market launch in virtue of reducing or cutting tedious communication paths with external service providers.
2. Efficient Workflows: Automation tools and PIM systems enable companies to efficiently organize and maintain their product information. They do not only help when it comes to optimizing work steps but also simplify procedures since all required information is saved centrally and can be accessed anytime and from anywhere. Additionally, the systems make sure that all content comply with market guidelines and that adjustments can be made in real time, therefore securing a high quality when it comes to content output.
3. Improved SEO Rankings: A further advantage of the automated generation of product descriptions is the capacity to achieve an improvement in the SEO positions of several thousand products. The unique content created by the generative AI receives positive evaluations by search engines. On top of that, it’s possible to adjust text models and continuously optimize them in order to react to requirements of products and market conditions. This establishes that your generated texts are always up to date, one of a kind, and optimized for search engines. At the same time, you can combine individual buying intent and content automation on the grand scale. In the light of novelties such as the AI-driven search Google SGE, this is of immeasurable value.
4. Simple Integration and Scalability: Technologies for the generation of content can easily imported into your system, significantly facilitating the process of adapting and implementing content. Thanks to this newly acquired flexibility and adaptivity, you can effortlessly scale your processes as the requirements of your company grow. Independent of your corporate size or number of products and offers, these systems used for the generation of content can contribute to easily fulfilling all your requirements revolving around the creation and management of content.
5. Internationalization: With the use of generative AI and data-based text generation, it’s possible to automatically translate product descriptions into various languages. This facilitates not only the process of internationalization significantly but also saves you valuable resources. Instead of suffering through tedious and expensive translation processes, your system can quickly and efficiently provide you with product information in required languages. In this context, today’s automation tools already allow you to cover all conventional European and Asian languages with built-in features.
6. Consistent Brand Message: Tools for the automated creation of product descriptions contribute to a standardized and uniform brand presentation. By creating product descriptions in a flexible manner that is in accordance with individual market guidelines, you can guarantee for contradiction-free and high-quality content. This consistent brand message, in turn, supports you in establishing your brand identity and strengthens your corporate image. Even keeping such messages up to date in the context of strategic adjustments is feasible even on a grand scale and easily implemented.

 

Efficient Content Creation through a Data-Based Approach

In today’s era of digital commerce, the combination of generative artificial intelligence, data-based content automation, and PIM system allows for efficient and high-quality product descriptions. The centralized management of product information enables the automated text generation in a variety of formats, for all sorts of channels, and for different target languages. A strategic use of automation tools can not only boost your efficiency and save resources, but also contribute to a stronger online presence, higher conversion rates, and, consequently, an increase in your sales.

The implementation of a well-combined solution made up of PIM system and text automation provides companies with the possibility to describe extensive product assortments, to always keep SEO-relevant and high-quality content up to date, and make adjustments in a quick and easy manner. Content automation tools offer you the chance to design and standardize diverse, target-group-specific, and search-engine-optimized content for online shops.

Efficiently Mastering Daily Challenges with PIM and ERP

Have you ever experienced this for yourself? Given a request by your clientage or from retail, you require some specific data about your products. And with that, the first problems already start popping up: after all, there is no single source of truth which you could ‘draw’ from. There is only a diverse range of data aggregates, each providing intel in different versions, of different states. Now, the tedious search for relevant product data starts to get rolling – scattered over different systems, Excel tables, and PDF documents, across various departments.

This is the case despite the fact that your company has at its disposal a fully implemented Enterprise Resource Planning system, in short ERP. Within this system, you can only find a part of the required data and product information. Many images, videos, additional documents such as datasheets, and also extensive description texts – which are even available in all sorts of target languages – are simply not stored in the ERP and are usually managed by different teams and employees in separate file and directory structures.

Additionally, if you don’t only have different input channels but also different output platforms, including your own web shop and/or website, on top of customers and retail, then this spells an enormous effort which, more often than not, also comes with lower data quality under severe time pressure. As such, channel-specific and target-group-oriented data usually remains a distant dream.

 

Does the following fit your current shoe?

• You’re required to distribute data into various channels in a quick and efficient manner, for various target groups, as a multi-channel publication which supplies…
  • e-commerce systems,
  • content management, cross media publishing systems, and/or
  • enterprise content management systems.
• You need to be flexible to react to new customer challenges on a day-to-day basis on the various markets.
• The production of catalogs is eating up too many resources over extended periods of time.
• The quality of the data you provide may be insufficient.
• There is no option for a fast and easy update for website, web shop, online portals, marketplaces, or other e-commerce channels.

Your problems throughout the process are:

• There are many different data aggregates from different departments of your company…
  • You’re required to organize the data from all your employees by yourself
  • Product data is scattered all over the company
  • Different, inconsistent states of knowledge and no single source of truth
  • Incomplete product data
• Data is only provided in raw formats, e.g. in Excel tables.
• Supplying data translates into a lot of manual labor.
• Updating product data is time consuming.
• Data quality of information provided is no longer sufficient.
• You can only reply to requirements concerning communication channels on short notice in an inadequate manner or not at all.

Does one or more of these points reflect your own situation? In this case, we’ve got good news for you. Since the solution is very easy: the combination of PIM and ERP.

 

Differences which Perfectly Complement Each Other: Distinguishing ERP Data from Product Data

Let’s first have a look at the corporate tasks the ERP must take care of. In general, the core tasks of an ERP system encompass the planning, controlling, and administration of personnel and resources such as capital, operating supplies, and materials. In relation to product information, the tasks which can be derived cover areas of function like materials logistics, production, purchases from suppliers, marketing, and sales. Here, the first intersection between ERP and PIM becomes explicit in the concrete form of Master Data Management and Product Information Management.

An ERP must be 100 percent operative and available around the clock. To always guarantee this availability, the ERP is kept as light as possible. Data is stored in flat hierarchies and limited to a specific scope of product information.

In a PIM system, in turn, the focus lies on managing product information. This includes data records such as descriptions, dimensions, colors, and technical properties, but also higher-order information for Marketing like texts or media assets compiled for datasheets, images, and videos. Most of the time, such information is accumulated step by step throughout the product’s lifecycle. Here, the name of the game is the interplay of the systems. The refinement of product data is, finally, also carried out in PIM – ideally, you have well-defined roles, standards, and guidelines set up in your PIM system which eventually lead to the desired data quality. The last step is to supply the respective target channel or context with the right information.

The above figure makes one thing clear: data doesn’t equal data. All ERP data is listed in the blue area, while all product data is listed in the red area. This visualizes how both systems serve different use cases and purposes despite their overlaps. To this end, it’s all about differentiating and defining clear processes concerning which system has the data sovereignty over what kind of data. This way, you avoid redundancy in your data management.

 

And if the ERP system reaches its limits?

However, why can the aforementioned requirements only be covered by a PIM system? Isn’t ERP sufficient for managing all data? The answer is perfectly obvious: Especially when it comes to the export of channel-specific information out of a flat data structure, you’ll hit a limit pretty quickly. A PIM solution provides you with the option to build well-defined data records and data structures by channel, on the basis of which you can maintain target-group-oriented content exactly the way you need it. The ever-evolving requirements of the markets downright force content managers to be always ready to adapt. Such changes can be easily implemented for a single channel without affecting the data foundation – without a PIM, in contrast, the entire publishing process is to be handled and adjusted manually. And this costs a lot of labor.

Additionally, content is to be created and maintained in several languages. Here, too, is where a PIM supports translation management by controlling relevant processes. Whether you can fall back to a PIM’s built-in translation functions or you’re required to also connect a translation software, that’s a subsequent decision to be made.

 

The PIM System as Your Central Datahub

Input Channels of a PIM System:

• ERP systems such as SAP, Infor, Sage, Navision, Dynamics
• CRM Systems
• Supplier Data
• Translation Memory System (TMS)
• Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)
• Product Data Management (PDM)
• Master Data Management system (MDM)

Output Channels:

• E-Commerce Platforms
• Electronic Catalogs such as eClass, ETIM, ARGE
• Master Data Management system (MDM)
• App
• Print Catalog
• Social Media
• Marketplaces such as Amazon, OTTO
• Website

PIM draws its required data from a variety of systems – be it CRM, SAP, or other ERP systems. The data from all input channels is pooled together, centralized, refined, and kept up to date.

And then comes the most exciting point: On the basis of this simple and central data management, you can distribute all information to the right channels at the click of a few buttons. This is how the dream of channel-specific and target-group-oriented data becomes reality in virtually no time.

 

PIM and ERP – The Best of Both Worlds

The ideal combination of ERP system and PIM system provides you with the optimal solution for your daily challenges.

ERP System:

• Enjoys data sovereignty over article data
• Manages and supplies technical data
• Reserves transaction data

PIM System:

• Process-controlling data management and translation
• Up-to-date product information across all departments
• “Single Source of Truth” for product data
• Quick and easy export and publication of specific information to various target channels…
  • Catalogs
  • Websites
  • Shops
  • Customer-specific platforms and data supply
• Target-group-oriented data can be exported on demand
• High, context-sensitive data quality
• Minimal effort