Product Information Management ... beyond traditional CMS/DMS

I saw a lot of cool products at the Internet Retailer Conference (IRCE 2007) in San Jose. However the one technology that resonated with me the most was Production Information Management (PIM). In this modern day and age when building a website generally it’s generally always on a Content Management Systems (CMS) platform which enables you to truly split content from the design of the site.

The one limitation of traditional CMS is that they are generally focused on doing page level copy very well, but don't offer enough flexibility and scalability when it comes to warehousing large amounts of product specification and data. Enter PIM.

PIM enables you to create your central data store or content warehouse where web copy, product information and specifications, files and assets are all housed in one place and are truly versioned. Depending on the package the technology lets you create structured or un-structured relationships with the content that is housed in the system via taxonomy. Adding targeted or personalized content to users becomes a much easier prospect with a PIM engine behind the scenes.

This of a system where every content item or asset is housed in a data warehouse that is truly version and can be shared with any number of platforms (web, print etc) via XML, Web Services or through an API and you have one very useful tool.

The two vendors I met at IRCE 2007 where Stibo and Catapult. The following diagram is an excerpt from Stibo's sales presentation of its STEP product. It really helps to show how a PIM software solution can be implemented and used to its full effect:

You can centralize it all in one place and provide a system to divide labour to keep things up to date and fresh in one place as well as enforce workflow. It also provides a framework to allow true de-centralized content, so you can offer direct feeds to suppliers, partners, dealers or other 3rd partys.

By truly embracing a PIM system you can throw away your old offline spreadsheet or Access / Filemaker database. And Forget dated versions of Quark, Word or other electronic documents that store product data. Breathe a sigh of relief! :)