PIM ROI as a Business Critical Solution: How PIM Supports Regulatory Product Compliance
Regulatory product compliance impacts brand manufacturers through a long list of requirements and standards. Products must meet these standards to be sold in each market because different countries (and some states, and some cities) have their own product compliance rules.
Product compliance regulations also differ from product to product. Each step in the product cycle has some component of compliance requirements.
Is it enough to make your head spin?
Regulatory product compliance includes:
- Electrical safety
- Chemical composition
- Hazardous substance restrictions
- Eco-design
- Energy efficiency
- Mechanical safety
- Children safety
- Safety labeling
- Consumer information
- Packaging
- And more
The challenges for manufacturers don't stop at meeting these standards. There's also the hurdle of proving through regulatory product compliance activities that their products and processes are all compliant.
Product compliance rules are always changing. For any brand manufacturer selling in the global market, meeting changing regulations across countries is an enormous to-do.
How does today's manufacturer meet regulatory demands?
Manufacturers need a comprehensive system in place to ensure product compliance with all aspects of their product catalogs. This is how brand manufacturers avoid costly mistakes or damage to their presence in a market.
A comprehensive system starts with understanding all the regulations a brand faces. Then, it requires implementing the product data management system to keep compliance information organized, accurate, and linked to products for simple exportation to send to regulatory bodies.
What's PIM (product information management) got to do with it?
Product information management (PIM) is the process of aggregating, storing, and optimizing all data related to products. This includes all product data from product development in CAD to marketing specifications, product assets like social media content or video, internal information for product organization, and much more.
Regulatory product compliance is best managed within the same PIM software used to manage all other product data, thus completing the suite of all product data a manufacturer needs for all aspects of its business.
There are many myths about PIM software. Brand manufacturers don't typically associate PIM software with product compliance because many PIM solutions are seen as marketing tools. This is a misunderstanding of exactly how complete a brand’s product data can (and should) be when aggregated to a single-source-of-truth software like a next-gen PIM.
These are the five specific areas where PIM software simplifies and supports regulatory compliance.
1. Adaptability
Because the rules around product compliance constantly change (and manufacturers' catalogs constantly change, too), brands are forced to innovate fast. No manufacturer stays compliant for long if product compliance information is not reviewed at least annually for every market and every product family.
The next generation of PIM software was built to be flexible, not just for compliance requirements but because of the equally unstable terrain of channel requirements for product data. Because these requirements also are in constant flux, brands use the next-gen PIM to stay flexible without completely reorganizing product data every time something shifts. Right inside the PIM, they just edit and add new attributes.
The next-gen PIM's flexibility is one of the chief reasons why brands adopt this PIM solution. One Amber Engine client, Derek Foster (Director of Ecommerce at The Howard Elliott Collection), said "what brought us to Amber Engine was really the customization and the fact that it was nimble enough to be our size."
Once brands implement it, the next-gen PIM injects an unprecedented degree of adaptability into product compliance and channel management.
2. Global Scalability
The digital market is an increasingly global one. Consumers have grown accustomed to the seeming ease with which manufacturers began offering products across borders. But for brands, offering products in another country is a lot more complex than it seems from the outside.
Regulatory product compliance consists of technical and legal requirements that change jurisdiction-to-jurisdiction. The production of products and then the marketing of them can both be halted if compliance for each step is not met.
In the next-gen PIM, individual attributes are assigned to products with compliance details for each market's regulatory requirements. Whole lists (static or dynamic) of products can also be easily saved or exported with precisely the data a brand needs for a given jurisdiction.
Organizing data is what PIMs were designed to do. Now, the next-gen PIM was designed specifically to manage even the most mercurial data as next-gen brands manage hundreds or thousands of SKUs across borders, across channels, and across business models.
3. Data for Product Compliance Conformity Assessments
Regulatory product compliance isn't just about meeting regulatory standards: it's about proving that a brand has met those standards through reporting to regulatory bodies.
The method to prove compliance is rooted in internal processes and product data. The most common forms of compliance conformity assessments all use different reports that can be exported from the next-gen PIM after its implementation and customization, including:
- Self-certification or declarations of conformity
- Registration of product compliance
- Third-party testing of product compliance
- Certification of product compliance
4. Include Compliance Markings Right in the PIM
The next-gen PIM has a specific feature that improved multi-touch-point marketing forever: its ability to manage and link all digital assets (including photos and videos) to the products they depict. These digital assets are stored in the same database as all the rest of a brand’s product data.
While this feature is a game-changer for product marketing, it’s also a critical feature for ensuring regulatory product compliance.
Along with all the product compliance requirements for product safety come the associated compliance marking requirements. Many compliance markings have to be depicted not only on product packaging, but on the products themselves. Some global markets even require that these markings be included on ads for products.
Product compliance markings can be organized in the PIM along with the rest of a brand’s digital assets. These required images can be linked to the products that need them. Markings from every market that a brand sells in can be managed this way and then easily filtered down to what's needed for each product data export—no matter the market, no matter the channel.
Learn more about how brands move from clunky image databases to an integrated asset management system with PIM.
5. Ensure Product Compliance Throughout the Product Cycle
Regulatory product compliance regulations also apply to product development and production processes. The next-gen PIM is also designed for collaboration across a business, which is critical here. Read: no longer is product data siloed away for each department. Instead, product data is captured early and all in one place, starting with concept and design data and all the regulatory information with it.
Design data is needed for regulatory product compliance when it’s related to:
- Dangerous substances directives
- And dangerous preparations directives
- And more
After the design, product manufacturing also brings more product compliance requirements. The compliance data collected at that point of the product cycle meets the requirements of:
- The Seveso II Directive
- Health and Safety of Workers Directives
- Water Framework Directives
- Council Directive of the Landfill of Waste Regulation
- And more
Finally, once products reach packaging and shipment, additional product compliance data is captured just as easily in PIM software. By this point, multiple departments have supported the brand's compliance requirements, and all their work is easily tracked and exported in the PIM.
The compliance data collected from packaging and shipment relates to:
- Unit Pricing Directives
- Packaging and Packaging waste Directives
- Restrictions on Marketing and Use Directives
- Health and Safety of Workers Directives
- Health and Safety of Workers Directives
- The United Nations Model Regulations on the Transport of Dangerous Goods
- And more
PIM software captures this data for easy demonstration of the product compliance standards met. Departments across a brand also collaborate better by pooling and sharing all product-related data in one place. The next-gen PIM also helps save money in product development and logistics beyond just compliance.
How to Develop the Appropriate Product Compliance System
Every brand manufacturer needs a flexible and holistic regulatory product compliance process in place. That process today requires the product information management (PIM) tool built for the global digital market.
Check the next-gen PIM software out for yourself.