Product content is crucial in driving the customer experience, revenue, and a business’s operational agility. Unfortunately, many organizations don’t prioritize effective content and data management systems, which means brands are losing out on the full potential of their content strategy. Many times, product information management (PIM) is viewed as a cost center rather than a value driver. Successful brands recognize that the right PIM system is a strategic investment for businesses, regardless of what or to whom you sell.
Getting product content right –– from creation to distribution –– is absolutely essential to your content strategy and the overall success of your business. Whether you’re in marketing, e-commerce, or a master data manager, PIM is a strategic investment that is foundational to the longevity of your brand: revenue growth, efficiency gains, and a competitive advantage that puts you above the rest.
The Cost of Inaccurate Data
In the omnichannel retail context, products don’t sell themselves; it’s the product content that converts. From initial discovery and awareness to education, product comparison, and everything in between, product content is the element that engages shoppers, excites them, and ultimately turns them into customers. Get product content wrong on any level, and you’re losing sales and customer loyalty.
In the updated version of the Product Content Benchmark Report (Full report forthcoming! You can find the 2024 edition of the Product Content Benchmark Report here.), 91% of consumers agree that high-quality content makes them more confident to buy. Furthermore, in both 2024 and 2025, “quality of product information” is the #1 factor after price when ranking what influences online shoppers to finalize a purchase.
Keeping data up-to-date and valid is crucial to maintaining efficient, accurate product content. The real-world impact of inaccurate, incomplete data can paralyze your momentum and irreparably impact your business:
- Lost sales due to missing or incomplete product content. Consumers can spot low-quality content from a mile away. Research indicates that more than 80 percent of consumers expect seamless, consistent content experiences across all interactions with a particular product or brand. When the digital shelf allows shoppers to compare across multiple sites, consistent, accurate, up-to-date content is paramount. A lack of quality content or inconsistencies across platforms erode customer trust, resulting in lost sales.
- Higher return rates from inaccurate or inconsistent product descriptions. Nearly half of all product returns are due to misleading or inaccurate product or feature descriptions. Accurate content sets consumer expectations and minimizes return rates, reducing associated revenue loss.
- Compliance penalties due to regulatory inaccuracies. Non-compliance with GDSN and GS1 standards can result in substantial fines, as well as penalties that remove content and hinder discoverability and sales. When brands miss the mark on labeling, nutritional, or regional requirements, the consequences can be costly.
- Time and productivity loss from manual content fixes and data duplication. Manually managing content is all-consuming. Even the most meticulous team is likely to miss vital corrections and make errors in data entry or content editing. Furthermore, once your catalog reaches a certain volume, manual data and content management become logistically impossible, and the cost of hiring a team to handle your content updates eats into profits.
These costly issues are the natural result of inaccurate, inefficient product data management. But they are avoidable with the right PIM tools. The first step in presenting the need for a PIM system to leadership is to address the pain points that matter most. Numbers matter to every organization. Highlighting the cost of low-quality, inaccurate, and inconsistent data –– and the very real threat that poses to your organization –– is central to building a business case for a PIM system.
Presenting PIM as an Engine for Growth
PIM isn’t merely a convenience tool, nor is it used solely for content accuracy. The right PIM system is a catalyst for expansion and growth. The automated nature of PIM solutions accelerates new product launches and channel updates, enabling brands to achieve a faster time to market –– a critical factor in gaining a competitive advantage. These systems empower organizations to efficiently support new retailers, regions, or D2C strategies, building agility into content workflows.
In addition to this agility, PIM systems enhance the customer experience, increasing conversions. They enable uniform product stories across digital and physical shelves. The rich, consistent product content improves buyer confidence, boosting sales today and in the long term.
Ultimately, PIM isn’t just about data governance. It enables agility, scalability, and creates space for innovation, empowering brands of all sizes to grow and thrive. This is the perspective shift data managers need to focus on when presenting PIM adoption: it’s about more than data; it’s about the future success of the business.
Create a Clear ROI Projection with Realistic Metrics
Decision-makers want to know how implementing a PIM system will affect your bottom line. Provide quantifiable benefits to leadership as you present your case. Include these quantifiable benefits in your presentation:
- Time saved per SKU or product team member
- Reduction in error-related returns and support tickets
- Increased sales attributed to improved product content or faster product launches
- Improved time-to-launch cycles
- Faster onboarding of new products or vendors
- Scalability opportunities
PIM platforms drive growth, revenue, and efficiency. Emphasizing the long-term benefits of these tools will be critical in making the case for implementing a PIM system in your organization.
Use a 12 to 24-month horizon to forecast ROI, then break down that ROI into tangible savings and gains. Show where the business will see those savings and how each department will benefit from the time, money, talent, and energy returns. Align your presentation with CFO pain points and expectations: keep it conservative, clear, and backed by data.
Reinforce the Business Need with an End-to-End Solution
Your business needs a PIM system, and choosing the right platform and partner will be instrumental in your success. Your presentation must include a straightforward, powerful solution that leadership can take action on.
As the parent company of 1WorldSync, Syndigo offers a best-in-class, enterprise-grade Product Information Management (PIM) solution designed to create a single source of truth for your data. Recognized as a leader by top industry analysts, Syndigo’s cloud-native platform excels at helping global brands:
- Centralize and Govern Data: Unify product, supplier, and location data in one place with AI-driven validation and customizable compliance rules to ensure accuracy across all systems.
- Accelerate Time to Market: Eliminate bottlenecks with automated, collaborative workflows and AI-powered content enrichment that streamline product launches.
- Scale Globally: Seamlessly expand into new channels, regions, and markets with a flexible, multi-domain Master Data Management (MDM) foundation.
- Drive Growth and Efficiency: Reduce operational costs, improve data quality, and gain deep insights with built-in analytics to optimize your entire commerce ecosystem.
Together, Syndigo and 1WorldSync provide an unmatched, end-to-end solution. By combining Syndigo’s powerful PIM and MDM capabilities with 1WorldSync’s unparalleled content syndication network—including the world’s largest GDSN data pool—brands can manage their product information from creation to consumption with complete confidence. This integrated approach ensures your product content is not only accurate and governed internally but is also delivered efficiently and correctly to every retailer and marketplace.
Conclusion
Businesses shouldn’t view a PIM system as an operational cost; it’s an efficiency driver in every sense of the word. As you build the business case for a PIM system, help facilitate this shift in thinking by assessing the actual cost of data quality gaps. Data doesn’t lie, and for leadership, it’s the most compelling evidence for the long-term, strategic benefits of employing a quality PIM system for your organization.
Syndigo and 1WorldSync are here to help your business with complete product content and data solutions. From creation to disbursement and every aspect of information management, we have the tools and expertise to ensure you’re both optimizing and maximizing every piece of data.
Connect with our team to explore how our scalable PIM solutions can boost your efficiency, revenue, and growth starting today.
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