5 Product Data Levels to Consider
When talking about Product Master Data Management (Product MDM) Product Information Management (PIM) I like to divide the different kinds of product data into the schema below:
At the first level, we find the basic product data that typically is the minimum required for creating a product in any system of record.
Here we find the primary product identification number or code that is the internal key to all other product data structures and transactions related to the product within an organization.
Then there usually is a short product description. This description helps internal employees identifying a product and distinguishing that product from other products. Most often the product is named in the official language of the company.
If an upstream trading partner produces the product, we may find the identification of that supplier here too. If the product is part of internal production, we may have a material type telling about if it is a raw material, semi-finished product, finished good or packing material.
The second level has product data related to trading the product. We may have a unique Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) that may be in the form of an International – former European – Article Number (EAN) or a Universal Product Code (UPC). Here we have commodity codes and a lot of other product data that supports buying, receiving, selling and delivering the product.
On the third level, we find the two basic pieces of product information that came to existence when we started producing product catalogues and had the first ecommerce solutions online.
The extended product description is needed because the usual short product description used internally have no meaning to an outsider as told in the post Customer Friendly Product Master Data. Some good best practices for governing the extended product description is to have a common structure of how the description is written, not to use abbreviations and to have a strict vocabulary as reported in the post Toilet Seats and Data Quality.
We often see that the extended product descriptions need to be present in the range of languages covering the locations where business is done either if the business is international or done in a country with multiple countries. The trend of increased user customization (or should I say customisation) drives this point further.
Having a product image is pivotal if you want to sell something without showing the real product face-to-face with the customer or other end user. A missing product image is a sign of a broken business process for collecting product data as pondered in the post Image Coming Soon.
At the fourth level, we have three main sorts of product information: Product attributes, basic product relations and standard digital assets. These data supports when customers makes buying decisions within eCommerce and other self-service scenarios.
Product attributes are also sometimes called product properties or product features. These are up to thousands of different data elements that describes a product.
