PIM for manufacturers of fasteners and fittings

Five significant advantages for the fittings manufacturer who uses Perfion PIM

a ‘Single Source of Truth’ for product data, enabling easy and efficient maintenance of a large number of products and product variants
simple handling of product images, videos and other product information
much faster production of catalogues and product data sheets, without the risk of typos
efficiency savings, because data on products is 'inherited'
effortless administration of product data for export markets, in several languages.

Screws with a variety of head types, a host of different fittings’ dimensions, materials types, hardware and construction types, etc...

As a fittings manufacturer, you need to show the customer the entire product portfolio – with all the relevant product information.

All the while, you are aware that incorrect or incomplete product information can have serious consequences: customers use fittings on the basis of bearing capacity, for example.

It soon becomes a drain on resources to manually administer a large number of products and product variants. To live up to customers’ expectations for finding detailed, customer-specific product information, you need a Product Information Management (PIM system) that can serve as the “Single Source of Truth” for product data.

As a platform, an ERP system is not ideally suited to distributing detailed product information to customer-facing channels such as a webshop, or to making a catalogue, etc.

But with a PIM system, you can keep your ERP structure and at the same time, construct a PIM system that is tailored to the way customers need to see the products. You can build product categories and hierarchies that are both easy for you to administer and logical for customers to find their way around.

6 daily tasks in ERP which become a lot easier with a PIM system

Release yourself from the limitations of the ERP system and publish all product information – including ERP data – directly in your webshop, catalogs, data sheets and price lists. In this guide, we explain how.

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Product images, videos, certifications and similar are difficult to handle unless you have a PIM system where you can save and organise your product-related digital files.

The PIM system replaces the individual databases and image files, and allows you to keep an overview. You can then ensure that products always appear together with the correct and updated marketing materials to satisfy the needs of customers.

Often, fittings manufacturers have extensive product portfolios. Preparation of product catalogues can be a time-consuming affair: it takes up resources, too. Perfion PIM saves you hundreds of hours’ manual copy-and-pasting and time spent on internal emails; you can automatically pull product information into your publications, confident in the knowledge that your data is correct.

In this way, you can easily produce specific materials, for trade fairs, for example. It is even possible for customers to use the online facility to automatically generate the data sheets they need.

How to publish catalogs, datasheets and price lists in a flash with a PIM system

This guide covers some of the typical challenges in working with catalogs, price lists and datasheets, and how a Product Information Management system can speed up work and improve results.

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Fittings manufacturers often sell to an international clientèle, so they need to be able to supply product information in several languages.

Language versions can easily become messy and cause errors, since manual updates are demanding in terms of resources. The PIM system as a ‘single source of truth’ allows you to ensure that all updates are passed on correctly to the various languages. Confusion – or customers frustrated by incorrect product information – are a thing of the past.

A system of automatic translation can reduce time considerably; you simply have to proof-read the translations, rather than re-do them each time.

Many fittings will be the same across a range of parameters. When product information is manually entered, it may have to be added many times; Perfion PIM makes the process much more efficient, thanks to inherited data.

At Perfion, you select which product variants you want to access or ‘inherit’ data. You thus need only make the change in a single place – and all products associated with that class will be appropriately edited.

When product data is fragmented in various folders and databases, it can be hard to keep control on who updates what. Perfion PIM allows you to assign user roles and ensure that employees have access to edit only the relevant product data; in the end, this means you retain absolute control over your data.

”Perfion has revolutionized the catalog production completely. Where it used to take several full-time employees (in total 5-8 people were involved) up to nine months to create the large main catalog, the work is now done by two people within a week.”