Sometimes PIM, DAM and other software come to the company after a digitisation path subject to more or less conscious mistakes, which can undermine the economic return on the investment made and, as a consequence, the goodness of the choice made.
In this article we have collected seven fatal mistakes to avoid when implementing digital innovation paths.
Which in other words means thinking too much about the remedy and too little about the problem.
The choice of the right software (PIM DAM or whatever it is) cannot be made without a precise analysis of your business challenges and objectives.
For example, if you are in the process of choosing a new DAM software, chances are you already know that you need a Digital Asset Management solution to organise, share and deliver digital assets.
But have you thought about why?
Answer the question by framing what challenges your company faces (time spent searching for content, delays in launching campaigns, …) and assess whether and how the new tool can help you with each of them.
For example, the challenge of time to market necessarily also involves product information and keeping this in mind will help you consider more levels of integrability with a PIM software and/or unique DAM+PIM platforms.
The era of silos is (thankfully) drawing to a close.
Software – especially that which by its nature is more transversal such as PIM, DAM but also ERP and CRM – today tends to support a much wider range of departments and stakeholders than those for which it was originally designed.
Drawing on our experience, for example, CIOs and IT managers often interface with us, acting as spokespersons for scattered needs: from marketing to e-commerce via operations.
In addition, depending on the case, DAM and PIM software can also support the work of many other teams: from sales to logistics, from human resources to technical departments and retail teams.
The most successful digitisation paths are those that capitalise on widespread needs, identify the information that people need to work and support the day-to-day work of operational and strategic figures in as large a portion of the company as possible.
The involvement of management is also essential because it will give the actual green light to the investment.
In this case, the focus shifts to the actual costs and return on the digital investment.
Digitisation often tends to focus on technical and economic aspects.
This is physiological, since the impacts are mainly on the evolution of the technological infrastructure and processes, in order to contain costs and resources on the one hand, and to increase turnover on the other.
However, what is often paid little attention to is the cultural issue.
Indeed, technological innovation is a necessary tool to enable evolution but not sufficient; to reap the benefits of digital, technology must become an integral part of processes.
For this to happen, users need to perceive its value and use it in the right way; otherwise, the risk is that they will suffer the change and even end up sabotaging the new.
A good strategy to avoid making this mistake is to involve the teams from the outset and provide dedicated change management and training.
From this point of view, a Customer Success program often proves essential.
There are over 11,000 suppliers of PIM DAMs and MarTech solutions in general in the market.
Before arriving at the shortlist (the list of technology companies vying for the final choice), it is advisable to compare digital suppliers on several dimensions, such as functionality, integrability, support, certifications, use cases, and experience in the relevant sector.
In this respect, both review portals (such as Capterra or G2) and comparison checklists (here is ours in Italian) are valuable allies.
Sooner or later one needs it: it is inevitable.
What should not be done is to remember it too late.
The technical support of the technology provider – especially when it comes to company-wide solutions such as PIM and DAM – is crucial.
Already in the software selection phase, it should be considered among the most strategic elements for the final choice.
There are numerous aspects to be considered in order to judge it; to name but a few: timing, quality, language and service levels.
The presence of support portals and the average results of user satisfaction questionnaires also make it possible to assess a customer service as more or less adequate.
These are some of the questions that it is essential to ask in order to avoid being surprised by originally unforeseen costs, such as fees, when talking about PIM DAM or other SaaS tools. An inaccurate assessment from this point of view risks nullifying the effectiveness of an investment.
Choosing SaaS solutions does not necessarily guarantee optimal impacts for the corporate digital ecosystem.
A common mistake in digitisation, even in the case of software adopted as a service, is to consider a single tool as an island.
Such an approach encourages the duplication of information and content (copied and pasted within different spaces), makes work processes less structured (to complete a task you need to jump between many different tools) and tends to increase the IT budget (because ad-hoc integrations cost money and need to be maintained over time).
In order not to forget the digital ecosystem, it is crucial to consider the level of integrability of the platform one wishes to adopt and, all other parameters being equal, to choose the most versatile one.
In other words, you avoid mistakes by choosing platforms that are more complete (you do more things with the same tool) and can be integrated in an agile manner via connectors or APIs.
Returning to the PIM DAM theme, a good example from this point of view is THRON PLATFORM.
Experience, you know, is a good teacher.
If you have read this far, first of all thank you.
And if you want to delve into some digital success stories (PIM DAM-themed): here are a bunch of them.