Gauging ROI on PIM Investments – Let the Numbers do the Talking!
The global market size for Product Information Management (PIM) is expected to grow from USD 9 billion in 2020 to a whopping USD 16 billion by the time we hit 2025 (Source – ReportLinker). One would believe that these numbers alone should suffice in making a case for PIM adoption in digital commerce. However, as it is with any major expenditure, an enterprise’s executive leadership is always keen to understand the impact of an investment before committing to it, and rightly so.
The formula for calculating the ROI in PIM systems is seemingly simple:
However, with the many variables at play, it’s not always as straightforward to calculate these returns.
Knowing where to start
Taking a step back, knowing what the R (return) on PIM adoption yields depends obviously on the I (investment). Doing so requires one to consider all costs, including hardware/hosting requirements, licensing and implementation, process streamlining, and user training. The business must exercise foresight, taking into account possible delays, transitioning challenges, and other contingencies. For example, businesses need to factor in the financial impact of missing implementation schedules, and competitors gain an edge due to this lag.
Another important step in measuring returns is to have a thorough current-state understanding of where a business stands. How is the business currently performing on parameters that are expected to show improvement after PIM implementation? And this is what brings us to the next critical step in measuring the ROI on PIM investments: knowing what to measure.
Understand your KPIs
The benefits of PIM adoption can range across varying orders of magnitude, so it’s important to keep an eye on the ball and know which key performance indicators (KPIs) to look out for. For most digital businesses, these KPIs can be measured in terms of cost reduction and sales growth.
Cost Reduction Indicators:
- Search Time: PIM allows users to add essential attributes that facilitate advanced search. This helps reduce search time, enabling customers to find products faster.
- Data Integrity: PIM makes it easier to monitor and evaluate data consistency, helping users identify areas to enrich and normalize. This leads to better data completeness and quality enabling purchase decisions.
- Catalog Expansion Costs: With the right PIM system, businesses are able to implement robust data processes enabling faster product enrichment that is also more cost-effective.
- Error Frequency: Similarly, measuring error frequency is a great indicator of how PIM implementation eliminates manual errors saving both time and debugging costs.
- Return Rate: Bad data leads to an increase in returns. Tracking these metrics before PIM implementation gives a concrete understanding of how the system helps reduce these return rates with cleaner, more accurate data.
- Time for Data Processing: PIM systems help accelerate processing time for supported data formats substantially. This smooth import and export of data helps reduce business expenses greatly.
- Individualization: Whether is customization based on target audiences or geography, PIM helps create differentiated content with higher impact without the cost of manual intervention
Sales Growth Indicators:
- Time-to-Market: PIM implementation not only increases the frequency of adding new products but also helps businesses automatically update existing data at a pace. Improving processes and accelerating time to market can have a direct impact on sales.
- Rate of Data Integration: By automating a large number of repetitive, manual tasks, PIM reduces data integration time greatly
- Customer-base Expansion: Diversifying catalogs across multiple channels and markets translates to a wider outreach to a larger number of customers. This not only directly impacts ROI but also has an impact on business growth.
- Rate of Conversion: The higher the accuracy and integrity of data (enabled by PIM systems), the higher the likelihood of potential customers converting to buyers
- Total Turnover: All these other parameters have a direct combined effect on a business’s total sales. This metric gives higher-level visibility of the impact of PIM implementation on overall ROI.
While it may be tempting to measure the impact of PIM implementation on Total Turnover or Conversion alone, it is pertinent to note that since these metrics are often impacted by multiple factors, they may not always provide a lucid picture of the ROI on PIM. The preferred approach is to provide an inside-out quantification of ROI by combining both granular and higher-level KPIs.
For example, one can provide a granular view of data processing time and efforts to elucidate the efficiency gains of PIM implementations as such:
| Total Cost of Product Updates | ||
| Efficiency Gains | Without PIM | With PIM |
| Values to be Updated | 1,400,000 | 1,400,000 |
| Hourly Data Manager Cost ($) | 40 | 40 |
| Total Edits Done (Per Minute) | 12 | 17 |
| Time Required (in hours) | 2020 | 1376 |
| Total Cost | 80800 | 55040 |
| Total Gain in Efficiency | 25760 | |
At this point, it is vital to note that ‘efficiency’, in this case, depends entirely on the parameters chosen to gauge it. For example, with the right PIM system in place, users can save a substantial amount of time when searching for product information – another vital parameter that should then be added to the ‘efficiency gain’ point of view.
Taking these individual snippets of benefits from PIM implementation can then give a broader, more comprehensive view of how it provides a healthy return on investment.
| Total Investment Benefits ($) | Without PIM | With PIM |
| Revenue Gains from Channel Expansion | 400,000 | |
| Profit (3% average net profit margin) | 12000 | |
| Revenue Lost Due to Returns | 2,00,000 | 1,400,00 |
| Profit (3% average net profit margin) | 1800 | |
| Revenue Lost Due to Cart Abandonment | 3,00,000 | 1,200,63 |
| Profit (3% average net profit margin) | 5398 | |
| Increased Revenue | 19198 | |
| Efficiency Gain | 25760 | |
| Total Benefit of Investment | 44958 |
How Codifyd fits the Bill
While having the right PIM system in place can be a great boost to ROI eventually, the process of setting it up and implementing it can be complex and time-consuming.
Codifyd deploys Agile Scrum processes to manage complex development and implementation projects that are iterative and incremental in nature. We help businesses cope with changing requirements without losing sight of overall project timelines. Our Scrum processes help boost both productivity and timeliness by doing away with the shortcomings of legacy ‘waterfall’ processes.