The challenges and implementation of the PIM project at PCB CREATION

With over 5,000 customers in nearly 100 different countries, PCB CREATION specialises in food decoration for the B2B market. Dealing with artisans (chocolatiers, bakers), major industrial clients (Metro, Picard, etc.) and internationally via distributors, PCB CREATION must utilise multiple sales channels as part of its strategy.

Between field sales representatives, a dedicated API for major clients, a catalogue translated into several languages and an e-commerce site, management and automation can prove challenging – so how can this be addressed?‍

Before PIM: Problems and Challenges

Like many companies, PCB CREATION faces significant productivity issues in data management. Indeed, a substantial lack of automation and effective management of the various product sheets is hampering the performance of the different sales channels.

Several recurring problems have been identified:

• Manual updating of ‘key account’ files
• Translations not in sync with product release dates
• Handling multiple Excel files
• Time-consuming searches for the correct visuals
• Manual uploading of website content

Overall, these issues are holding back the opening of new channels due to the complexity of data management.

So what are PCB CREATION’s strategic priorities?

• Centralising and ensuring the reliability of data within a single repository
• Streamlining collaborative marketing contribution processes to reduce unnecessary tasks and speed up time-to-market
• Simplifying the distribution of information and media across all channels, including the future international e-commerce platform

Implementing the PIM: a 10-week project

First and foremost, it is important to adapt a coherent workflow to address the identified challenges as effectively as possible.

In the case of PCB CREATION, the workflow can be divided into three parts to address all the issues:

1. Data initialisation:

This stage enables product information to be properly structured according to a pre-defined template, and then communicated directly to the teams via the PIM dashboard.

1. Team enrichment:

This is the most important part of the workflow and also the centrepiece of the PIM. It is at this stage that the teams will enrich the product data as much as possible so that it can be distributed across all the various sales channels.

This process includes:

• ‘Standard’ data management checks (weight, price, stock levels, etc.)
• Daily ERP synchronisation and the import of media via the DAM
• Various marketing tasks (marketing content, e-commerce, etc.)
• Translation tasks into four languages for international markets
• Content approval and quality control of product information

Teams have specific tasks, which helps to minimise wasted time and speed up the dissemination of product information.

1. Automated omnichannel distribution:

The number one priority is, above all, the omnichannel distribution of all product information. Whether on the e-commerce site, marketplaces, B2B APIs or the brand portal (which, amongst other things, provides access to online catalogues), PCB CREATION must enable the optimised distribution of product data.

Before this distribution can be achieved, the PIM solution must be implemented.

This was achieved through collaboration between our onboarding teams and PCB CREATION’s marketing department, which maintained regular communication throughout each stage of the PIM implementation.

Within 10 weeks, our PIM solution was successfully implemented and put into use at PCB CREATION. Several steps were required prior to this launch:

• Firstly, the data model: pre-launch, kick-off meeting, PIM modelling and preparation of imports
• Then came the collaboration phase: defining data completeness criteria and configuring workflows
• Creation of analytics dashboards: Defining KPIs and widgets
• Defining PIM users: configuring users and managing roles
• Import/export of existing data: technical support, IN & OUT specifications, APIs and webhooks
• In-depth training on managing our solution: Introduction to PIM/DAM, advanced user training, technical training

Discover Quable: the PIM for Brands

Quable is, first and foremost, a 3-in-1 marketing platform (PIM, DAM & brand portal) offering a PIM solution dedicated to product information management, specially designed for brands.

With our tool, you can enrich your product records with text (composition, descriptions, technical specifications), as well as with media via a DAM (Data Asset Manager) natively integrated into the solution.

More recently, Quable has expanded its solution to include a B2B portal capable of managing, organising and optimising your commercial interactions. Easily share products from your PIM with your business network (employees, partners, suppliers, etc.).

Discover 6 reasons to adopt a PIM for your omnichannel strategy