From product design to sale: the product data journey
7 November 2025
In today’s hyper-competitive environment, companies are forced to innovate and regularly create new products whilst improving their time-to-market to remain attractive and meet customer expectations. The stages marking a product’s journey from conception to market launch can be divided into three key phases. It is during these key stages that the product data is shaped, which will ultimately be used to win over your customers at the point of purchase. That’s no small matter, is it? So let’s explore together how to manage product data effectively and which tools to use throughout this journey to ensure your product data effectively addresses your business challenges.
1. From idea to product design
Between conceiving and producing a new product, there are a few essential steps. Usually conceived by your engineers or designers, the product must be thought through, researched and prototyped if it is to make it onto the production lines. This process encompasses the various stages from ideation to production and even maintenance: R&D, planning, design, engineering and strategy, which will enable the basic idea to be refined and result in a viable, marketable product.
This stage in a product’s life cycle is managed using a PLM, or Product Lifecycle Management tool. By facilitating collaboration between different teams and automating work processes and information sharing, PLM streamlines workflows and teamwork, leading to greater agility and time savings. Above all, it enables you to centralise your data relating to the definition, manufacture and maintenance of your product throughout its life cycle (from BOL – Beginning of Life – to EOL – End of Life). No loss of information, effective version history management and simplified sharing of resources (information, documents, etc.): PLM is a key ally in your product development strategy.
During this ideation and research phase, you will collect a wealth of product data providing insights into the market, new trends, customers, consumer needs and your competitors. This centralisation of product data will then enable you to identify opportunities to create new products and/or improve existing ones.
2. Product definition
Now that you have identified THE product that will meet a specific need for a particular customer base, you must use the product data collected previously to define the characteristics and specifications of your future product.
This is where a PIM platform really comes into its own. A PIM such as Quable’s will be able to effectively assist you in characterising your product data (information, colours, materials, components, etc.) to make your product unique and ensure its data is enriched, complete, comprehensive and systematically updated.
3. Product design and testing
During the product design phase, product data will also play a major role. Indeed, it is during this stage that you will be able to test the first product created for testing purposes, also known as a prototype. This prototype will need to be tested against various factors such as the market, pricing, the product’s specific features, its benefits, its target customer base, etc.
Following these testing phases, your teams will be able to collect and centralise a wealth of data on the prototype’s performance. This will enable you to improve the features of your product under development in a relevant and effective manner, ensuring it fully meets customer needs and market expectations. Depending on the data obtained, it is then possible to carry out several phases of testing and iteration to ultimately identify the ideal product to develop.
4. Product manufacturing
At this stage, the teams and stakeholders involved in the product’s creation will focus on its manufacture. The product data will be useful at this stage for monitoring and optimising the manufacturing processes for the new product(s), as well as for quality control to ensure the products meet regulatory standards.
5. Product launch
At this stage, to prepare for the launch of your product online and/or in physical shops, your teams will need to use certain product data to target appropriate market segments so that they can subsequently implement tailored marketing strategies. This marketing and commercialisation strategy will serve as the basis for the positioning, pricing and promotion of your newly designed product.
Once again, monitoring this marketing and sales campaign will enable the teams to gather data to assess the effectiveness of the actions taken.
6. Logistics and supply chain
Once your product has been launched, other teams take over the logistics side of things. Numerous departments are generally involved in this phase of the product lifecycle: accounts, sales and logistics must work together to ensure effective management of orders and stock levels.
This phase will be made easier by using an ERP system: designed for business management, it enables the centralisation of information relating to accounting, sales and stock management. Orders, pricing and stock levels: all this data can be managed, organised and standardised within the ERP system. This enables your business to share a unified view of the data relating to its operations and to base all its processes on the same information.
3. Product distribution
You’ve created a superb product in the right quantities at a competitive price? Well done! All that’s left to do is… sell it! This ‘simply’ involves distributing the product across the various sales channels. The e-commerce and marketing teams then ensure the availability and quality of product descriptions (technical and marketing), translations, product pairings for upselling and cross-selling, and media assets (photos, videos, packshots, etc.).
To make this stage truly straightforward, the essential tool is a PIM (Product Information Management) system. It enables content, marketing and creative teams to collaborate easily on enriching product information and making it available across various sales channels, both online and offline. Convenient to use, it allows the information published to be tailored to the specific channel, whilst ensuring the centralisation and standardisation of product data essential to any marketing strategy.
Conclusion
There you have it – your new product is on sale! By managing data throughout your product’s lifecycle using tools designed for each stage, you have optimised the quality of the available product data. Ultimately, a structured and collaborative approach to your data enables you to create product listings that really stand out at points of sale, on your website, in print or on marketplaces. Your omnichannel marketing strategy is implemented seamlessly, as friction is reduced and your teams’ work is optimised. Your processes are automated to unlock the full potential of your staff and allow them to focus on the most important tasks. Roll on the next product development…