Anyone here has a good PIM recommendation? Ideally...
# generalv
victor
04/19/2023, 6:07 PMAnyone here has a good PIM recommendation? Ideally that plays with Solidus
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Jared Norman
04/19/2023, 6:22 PM
Most Solidus users don’t use PIMs. They add additional metadata to their products in Solidus and build out the admin, usually negating the need for a PIM.
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victor
04/19/2023, 6:23 PMI had the same idea, but currently considering it
victor
04/19/2023, 6:28 PMWe have about 1200 new products each season and some products carrying to the next that require changes in the attributes.
Solidus is not super user friendly (or fast) for most people and working with the importer is going to too wonky I am afraid.
victor
04/19/2023, 6:29 PMWe don't have specialised people doing the data entry and catalog management.
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kennyadsl
04/19/2023, 7:36 PM
Would a bulk action feature in the admin help with that?
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victor
04/19/2023, 7:37 PMIt would definitely help with a lot of tasks
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Gabriel Sambarino
04/21/2023, 7:54 AM@victor: a bulk action feature is something we have heard multiple times from our users during the last quarter and definitely, something we’d like to add later this year.
Could you please briefly expand on how you envision an ideal solution to your problem within Solidus (other than using a PIM I mean)?
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victor
04/21/2023, 8:01 AMThe reason I might consider using a PIM is two fold.
1. User friendliness for less technical users
a. We create most products in excel as its quick and data is delivered to us from our suppliers. We import this into Solidus.
b. An easy interface with proper checks on how data should me formatted
2. Abillity to integrate multiple platforms. We use various platforms such as POS, 3rd party sellers etc. I've written integrations for most but it would've been nice to have PIM.
3. While the stock system in Solidus is amazing, managing purchase orders is just a manual tedious task. An ERP will often come with a PIM like solution or easy to combine. So it would kill two birds with one stone choosing an external tool to manage everything.
victor
04/21/2023, 8:04 AMRight now you have to go into a product to change the fields individually. Although this is super fine for single products, it becomes a lot of work when you ned to manage a big catalog in a non technical way.
1. There is no mass attribute update
2. There are not many ways to manage the production flow of things. Creating products, assigning images etc etc. You don't know the state of a product in your catalogue and what is missing before it can go online.
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Gabriel Sambarino
04/21/2023, 10:05 AMThank you so much @victor for the feedback! As we are approaching some rework of the Admin, this is gold for us: gives us more information to steer our direction toward things that count most for users. Stay tuned, let’s see if we can do something this quarter (can’t promise anything atm but we will keep people posted).
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victor
04/21/2023, 10:19 AMNo problem at all. I'd be happy to help as I am looking for ways to add functionality to Solidus myself or use something external. We're a relatively small business, but with a constant changing and updating catalog. As the owner as well as developer I have decent visibility across everyone involved (just a small business, 10 people, nothing big at all)
What I notice now that we're growing (in staff) that and responsibilities are spread:
1. Risk of losing visibility of the health of your catalog (is the data still accurate)
2. Getting products online when multiple people are working on it (data entry, Q&A, product photography, merchandising, stock warehouse, store staff and POS integration)
3. Robust ways to import
a. Accounting for duplicates (same supplier sku from a new season with updated pricing for example)
b. Managing multiple EANs
Ability to merge products in a way (to remove duplicates or keep reporting synced)
In a way this is really about catalog and stock management and not perse e-commerce. Remains a matter of opinion what the responsibility of Solidus is in that area.