ETIM adoption isn't just a technical exercise - it's a strategic move. By reverse engineering from the outcomes you want, you ensure that your data efforts actually deliver measurable business value.
Start by defining what you want to achieve from your product data, for example your objectives could be one of more of the following:
1. Better, clearer, and complete explanation of your products' performance on e-commerce websites to influence buying decisions. Increasingly, wholesalers/distributors/merchants are adopting digital or multi-channel sales strategies and are introducing B2B ecommerce web sites which require complex searching and filtering capabilities to enable buyers to find the right product. If your customers can't see how your products perform, they are unlikely to buy and, of course, you want to sell more products. You want your products to stand out from the competition for all the right reasons.
2. With increased focus on product and building safety, a standard data structure promotes greater accuracy.
3. You want to retain control over your product data. You are not leaving it to your customers to fill in any gaps.
4. Accurate data means fewer returns and an improved customer experience.
5. Compliance with industry standards. ETIM is the preferred data standard for the UK in these sectors: electrotechnical, building materials, HVAC and plumbing.
6. You demonstrate that you understand the needs of your wholesaler/distributor/merchant customers and can provide data in a single format to multiple customers. Product data from multiple suppliers must be in a standard format. Imagine the workload if every manufacturer supplier sent their product information to their customers in a different format.
7. Improved efficiency by bringing all your technical product information into one central system in your business - creating one source of truth for your product information, reducing errors, and managing version control. Ideally, your organisation adopts an ETIM-enabled PIM (Product Information Management) system which holds all your product information.
8. You are an electrotechnical manufacturer and want to launch your products in the EDATA data pool and achieve Gold Standard Data Quality. ETIM is at the heart of EDATA.
2. With increased focus on product and building safety, a standard data structure promotes greater accuracy.
3. You want to retain control over your product data. You are not leaving it to your customers to fill in any gaps.
4. Accurate data means fewer returns and an improved customer experience.
5. Compliance with industry standards. ETIM is the preferred data standard for the UK in these sectors: electrotechnical, building materials, HVAC and plumbing.
6. You demonstrate that you understand the needs of your wholesaler/distributor/merchant customers and can provide data in a single format to multiple customers. Product data from multiple suppliers must be in a standard format. Imagine the workload if every manufacturer supplier sent their product information to their customers in a different format.
7. Improved efficiency by bringing all your technical product information into one central system in your business - creating one source of truth for your product information, reducing errors, and managing version control. Ideally, your organisation adopts an ETIM-enabled PIM (Product Information Management) system which holds all your product information.
8. You are an electrotechnical manufacturer and want to launch your products in the EDATA data pool and achieve Gold Standard Data Quality. ETIM is at the heart of EDATA.
Preliminary work on your product data
- Audit data held for each SKU
- De-duplicate attributes
- Identify missing digital assets for each SKU – such as images and data sheets
- Create a glossary of abbreviations so they are used in a consistent way when creating data in future
- Map existing digital assets to existing SKUs and ranges
- Define meaningful standardised ‘long description templates’ using product attributes which will optimise them for search engines
- Identify cross-sell/up-sell opportunities for existing products
- Create a spreadsheet of marketing features or USPs that can be easily loaded into the Product Information Management (PIM) system when implemented
- Start to classify your products to the ETIM classes. If you are an electrotechnical manufacturer, you may find these ETIM Guidance notes useful – designed to help you find the right ETIM Class for yor products.