5 questions with Heiko Cichala
What were the key factors that made you choose the Informatica PIM system in 2012?
We needed a central “data cooker” that would allow us to cook virtually everything: images, texts, declarations of ingredients, attributes - until then, all of these existed only on file systems or in Excel sheets.
What was the biggest challenge when you introduced the system?
We had clear targets and a tight timeline. We wanted our PIM to supply data for our customers’ online shop. We had set a go-live date that had to be met. And it was met.
What has been the most significant benefit of introducing PIM into your organisation?
The main advantage of using a PIM system is the fact that it is much easier to design and continuously update the content of our product catalogue. We can, at any time, export our data through an interface and create a new catalogue. Before PIM, this process used to take several months.
Have your customers been able to benefit from the new PIM system?
Since even small businesses are increasingly relying on e-commerce, suppliers need to provide appropriate data (texts and media). To this end, our customers can use different platforms to exchange data. The central hub of our company's product content and data is, of course, our PIM system.
If, with your current experience, you could give your company some suggestions before starting a PIM project, what would they be?
If the aim of the PIM project is to create a central data repository and to define a workflow to automate data exchange, one of the top priorities should be to specify a matrix that defines file naming conventions. We neglected this point due to our tight schedule. Eventually, we had to put even more effort into changing an existing scenario at a later stage.