Automotive Businesses: Fueling Success in eCommerce with PIM

In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, maintaining a competitive edge in the automotive industry requires more than just having an online presence. Automotive businesses, including manufacturers, dealers, and aftermarket parts suppliers, must focus on delivering seamless online shopping experiences to their customers.

This is where Product Information Management (PIM) systems play a crucial role. In this article, we will explore the significant impact of PIM in addressing key business challenges , enhancing automotive online stores, and driving growth in the industry.

But first, let us understand what Product Information Management (PIM) is.

What is Product Information Management (PIM)?

Product information management is the process of organizing and managing all the information needed to market and sell products through various distribution channels. The information management process is streamlined and made effective by a PIM system/ solution.

The PIM system serves as the central repository for crucial product details, including product name, description, compatibility with automotive products, ancillary products, and more. It also helps you structure product information and enables collaboration between internal and external stakeholders.

For an eCommerce business, a PIM system can offer many benefits, such as:

• Centralized product information,
• Enhanced customer experience,
• Efficient business workflows and operations,
• Adopt multiple channels quickly,
• Improved data quality,
• Multi-channel consistency, and more.

Let us explore how a PIM system can help automotive companies and OEM manufacturers become more efficient, consistent, and customer-focused.

How does PIM help address Challenges faced by businesses in the Automotive Industry?

The automotive industry has witnessed a significant shift towards digital transformation in recent years. With the increasing preference for online shopping, automotive businesses have had to adapt to changing consumer behavior. Whether you sell auto parts, vehicles, or accessories, having a robust online store is no longer a luxury but a necessity.

One of the unique challenges that automotive businesses face is the complexity of product information. Unlike some other industries, automotive products come with a multitude of attributes, including make, model, year, compatibility, specifications, and more. Managing this vast and intricate product data can quickly become overwhelming without the right tools.

Let us look at how A PIM system helps tackle this challenge and many others troubling the industry.

• Challenge: Complex and Varied Product Portfolio – The automotive industry, in general, has a wide range of complex products with varied product attributes – such as car models, parts, and accessories. Managing detailed information about these products in multiple formats is a big challenge.
  • Role of a PIM system – PIM systems enable you to store detailed and structured product information, including specifications, images, pricing, and compatibility data. This ensures that customers have access to all the information they need to make informed purchasing decisions.

• Challenge: Multiple Data Sources and Data Inconsistencies – The product information in the automotive industry comes from multiple sources and lacks specific structure – in short, the product information is scattered and inconsistent. In addition, with the automotive industry constantly evolving, keeping product information up to date is critical.
  Role of a PIM system
  • A product information management system enables effortless coordination between various internal and external stakeholders – suppliers, manufacturers, media agencies, and more.
  • PIM systems allow businesses to map non-standard vehicle fitting data from suppliers to various formats like ACES and PIES. The standardization fosters data homogeneity across the industry, thus improving product data sharing with business partners and online marketplaces.
  • PIM systems simplify the process of updating product data across your online store, ensuring that customers always see the latest information. This drives accuracy and dependability while reducing the risk of errors in product descriptions, specifications, pricing, and more.

• Challenge: Product Discovery – Given the product portfolio size, automotive businesses struggle to get visibility to the right products. New product launches go unnoticed, while some products never get discovered effectively.
  • Role of a PIM system – By standardizing product information and maintaining complex product relationships, a PIM system aids efficient product discovery by enabling functionality like search-by-part, related products, product comparison, AI-driven search, and more.

• Challenge: Multiple Channels of Sales – Automotive companies typically sell their products through various channels, including websites, mobile apps, dealerships, and third-party marketplaces. Managing these channels effectively and efficiently while providing a consistent shopping experience is challenging.
  • Role of PIM system – In today’s omni-channel retail environment, consistency is key. PIM systems ensure that product information remains consistent across all your sales channels, whether it’s your website, mobile app, or third-party marketplaces, driving brand identity, unified messaging, trust, and credibility.

• Challenge: Rising Customer Demands – Customers increasingly demand easy shopping and a consistent superior shopping experience across channels. Meeting these customer demands from B2B and B2C customers is crucial to avoid losing them to competition.
  • Role of PIM system – A PIM system can help drive informed purchasing decisions and superior customer journeys with rich and accurate product information.

• Challenge: Regulations and Compliance – The automotive industry is subject to various regulations and standards, such as safety, emissions, and quality requirements. And these regulations change across regions globally. Maintaining and communicating the right product information effectively is essential to build trust.
  • Role of PIM system – A PIM system can help you capture all necessary information and effortlessly present this information in multiple languages to meet the demands of local markets.

• Challenge: Scalability and Growth Objectives – As automotive businesses grow, adding more SKUs, adding more customers, or expanding into new markets, running an efficient operation is key to success.
  • Role of PIM system – As business grows manually maintaining this information can be inefficient and unsustainable. A PIM system facilitates effective growth by centralizing and automating data activities. A PIM system also helps save time and resources by automating workflows related to product data management. This further helps automotive businesses adopt new channels effortlessly and go to market quickly.

• Other Benefits of a PIM system for automotive businesses include:
  • Data-Driven Decision-Making – A PIM system can provide additional insights into products and drive data-driven decision-making.
  • Shortened time-to-market – A PIM system streamlines data information management & associated workflows and improves collaboration, reducing time-to-market for new product launches – car models, parts, or accessories.

Who can use a PIM system in the automotive business?

• Sales Team: With PIM, the sales team can quickly create personalized catalogs, access up-to-date product information on automotive items and accessories, and share accurate information with prospects, driving customer trust and loyalty.
• Marketing Team: The marketing team must disseminate product information via various channels. With PIM, they can easily access product information and communicate it through several output channels, resulting in increased customer interaction.
• Chief Experience Officer (CXO): PIM for automotive enables the CXO of the automotive company to have a single source of truth for all the product data and provide unparalleled product and customer experience to the customers so they will remain brand loyal.
• External Vendors: Automobile organizations use product information management to collaborate with suppliers, vendors, dealers, distributors, and retailers to buy and sell automotive products and accessories from a single platform.
• Field Marketers/ Sellers: In automotive product information management, field marketers access up-to-date data and provide correct product information, allowing purchasers to make an informed and instant purchase decision.
• Operations Team: PIM is required for warehouse personnel, store managers, inventory management teams, and others to access product data to check product details and availability. They can inspect the stock in the warehouse and keep track of the inventory of in-demand products and accessories.

As the automotive industry continues to embrace digital transformation, having a robust online store is essential for success. Product Information Management (PIM) systems are the key to efficiently managing the complex and ever-expanding product data in the automotive sector. By leveraging PIM, automotive businesses can enhance their online stores, provide exceptional customer experiences, and stay competitive in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. Whether you are a manufacturer, dealer, or aftermarket parts supplier, embracing PIM is a strategic move that can drive growth and success in the automotive eCommerce space.

How can i95Dev help Automotive businesses?

i95Dev has extensive experience providing eCommerce, ERP, PIM, and Systems Integration services to several businesses in the automotive industry. We can help businesses in automotive industry :

• Adopt a PIM system – We can help automotive businesses elevate their online presence, streamline workflows, and deliver an unforgettable customer experience by implementing and optimizing leading modern product information management (PIM) systems.
• Adopt Multi-channel Sales – We can help automotive businesses create a dealer portal for B2B customers, a brand store for B2C customers, or a unified store to serve both B2B and B2C customers from the same eCommerce platform.
• Build and Integrated Ecosystem – We can help automotive businesses build an integrated commerce ecosystem by integrating eCommerce, ERP, and PIM systems, driving omni-channel shopping experiences.
• Improve Brand Visibility – We can leverage the extensive product information in the PIM system to optimize your eCommerce store for search engines, driving more visibility (traffic) and sales (orders).