Two PIMs to Harness AI and Enrich Your Product Digital Shelf

In the race to build a robust digital shelf, Product Information Management (PIM) systems are evolving to meet the growing demands for efficient and effective content generation. Integrating AI into your digital shelf is a significant advancement. This innovation transforms how publishers transform the customer experience with product descriptions and related product information. Let’s delve into how AI is reshaping PIM and your digital shelf with a closer look at the offerings from leading platforms, one designed for high customization and another designed for rapid streamlining of your enrichment process through configuration. 

 

The Benefits of Generative AI for Your Digital Shelf 

Faster Updates to the Digital Shelf

Creating product content manually can be time-consuming. AI generation saves publishers valuable time by automating the creation process. This allows publishers to focus on other critical tasks, improving overall productivity.  Consider a case where you need to quickly fix issues with a customer’s ability to search your products; you’ll have high velocity on those product changes. 

Creative Springboard for Publishers

AI generation provides a fresh perspective on product information, offering descriptions and insights that publishers might not have considered. This can serve as a creative springboard, enhancing the overall quality and appeal of your digital shelf. 

Enhanced Accuracy

AI generation is less likely to have grammar or spelling issues, ensuring high-quality, error-free product descriptions on your digital shelf. This enhances professionalism and reliability. Many website search engines and customer perception can be sensitive to issues here. 

Expanded Publisher Pool

With AI generation, the pool of potential publishers expands beyond those with exceptional marketing writing skills. It includes individuals who may excel in product knowledge, search, customer experience, and efficient enrichment workflows, thus democratizing enrichment. 

 Multilingual Capabilities

AI can translate into multiple languages, reducing the effort required to expand a product’s reach into new markets. This opens up more customers for your digital shelf with minimal additional workload. 

Digital Shelf Stewardship

AI Generation is robust and efficient, but product managers can still have the final say, allowing a human touch where appropriate. They can review how a customer would search for that product and create a final revision. 

 

Generative AI Platform Features for Your Digital Shelf

 Highly Customizable PIM

 We provide strategic implementations on a platform that specializes in extensive customization (customizable PIM). To learn more about this specific platform please reach out to us.  It’s AI-generative feature introduces several capabilities to manage your digital shelf: 

Content Generation Tab: This tab is available on any data element (products, categories, etc) page, including custom-created record types, allowing for versatile application across various entities. For example, it could be used for a category description as well as for products. This will enable you to apply AI generation to more facets of your digital shelf. 

Tone Selection: Publishers can tailor the tone for the AI generation to match the brand’s voice to the customer. 

AI Engine Selection: It currently offers two AI engines and gives them the flexibility to integrate additional AI platforms in the future. 

Digital Relevance: It generates based on existing product information, ensuring relevance and accuracy on your digital shelf. 

Custom Terms: Users can include specific terms for the AI engine, enhancing the results in a targeted way. This improves the specificity of your digital shelf improving the relevance to the customer. 

Batch Generation: Users can create work areas for products, apply AI generation to those products, and then review them systematically before approval. 

Choices: You can control how many versions of the descriptions you want.  It will create many variations, and you can pick the best one. 

Images as Input: You can ask it to look at an image and generate a product description. 

 

Configurable PIM

 We also provide strategic implementations on a platform that is designed to be a turnkey solution where it’s functionality is driven by adjusting natively available settings (configurable PIM). To learn more about this specific platform please reach out to us. The configurable PIM also brings a robust set of features for managing your digital shelf: 

AI-Generated Attributes: Users can define specific product attributes to be generated by AI. A new tab for attributes, “Generative AI,” is available to configure this feature. 

Verbosity Levels: The platform allows users to select verbosity levels for descriptions, providing control over detail and length. 

Mass Digital Shelf Updates: It supports rules that apply en masse to all products, streamlining large-scale AI generation. 

Extensive Product Library: Trained on a library of 50 million products, It can generate content even with minimal initial data, such as a manufacturer number. Of course, a robust digital shelf needs products with much more than minimal information. 

Suppliers Can Use It: If you use the supplier portal feature, your suppliers can use the generative AI to enrich their product data and empower them to contribute effectively to your digital shelf. 

Control Over AI Instructions: Since it responds to instructions (prompts), it allows you to select from a list of prompt templates to request a short description that is SEO-friendly or even targeted for Amazon if that’s one of your marketing channels. You are creating an adaptive digital shelf. 

 

Comparative Analysis 

When comparing the customizable PIM and configurable PIM for your digital shelf, several key differences and similarities emerge: 

Data Utilization: Both platforms build on your existing product data, but the configurable PIM also uses extensive product training data to enrich product descriptions. 

Entity Support: The customizable PIM supports AI generation for any entity type, whereas configurable PIM is limited to product information. Some retailers have a high volume of categories on their digital shelf, which could be crucial. 

Shelf Optimization: Both support applying rules to products en masse, which can be more efficient for a digital shelf with many products. 

Feature Scope: The configurable allows your suppliers to leverage its AI generation if you are using the supplier portal. 

Image Input: The configurable PIM can leverage your existing assets to help create descriptions. 

 

Client Use Case: Real-World Application 

Consider a client that pulls product information from multiple sources to create comprehensive product descriptions. Their customers search shortened descriptions from the ERP, leading to search issues (e.g., “BLK” for “Black”). This client faces challenges balancing the ERP with other sources to create robust descriptions. AI-generated content could be part of the solution here, as it can merge ERP descriptions with other product data to be complete and accurate, seamlessly incorporating terms like “BLK” and “Black.” 

In cases like this, AI content generation could reduce the infrastructure and development costs of pulling and merging from multiple sources. It can also significantly reduce the time to market for your product content. 

 

Conclusion 

Integrating AI generation into PIM systems represents a significant leap forward in product enrichment. By leveraging AI, businesses can save time, enhance creativity, ensure accuracy, improve customer search, and expand their reach into new markets. Platforms like these lead the way, offering unique features to meet diverse business needs. As AI technology continues to evolve, the potential for innovative applications in PIM will only grow, driving efficiency and effectiveness in product information management.   

It is vital to ensure that humans review the content created since they apply experience from search. It’s also essential to include as much product information as possible as part of the source for AI. AI generation will create compelling product descriptions but cannot add attributes, specifications, or images.  

If you don’t have a PIM yet, I don’t recommend using AI generation as a specific selection criterion. Instead, the foundations of a PIM and how it meets your needs regarding data governance, source of truth, quality of product data, syndicating across channels, measuring success, and integrability are paramount. There are commonly understood best practices you probably need to adopt before diving deeper into these features. 

You may need professional consulting to ensure your move solves the right problem. We have subject matter expertise in PIM strategy, solution architecture, best practices, and feature guidance, as well as the deep technical experience to make your vision a reality.  Contact our experts today for other inquiries and information.

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