How much internal effort does a PIM need?

Internal effort is the cost block that PIM buyers underestimate most, and it decides whether the project succeeds. A vendor or partner configures the system, while only internal people can define the data, approve content and change ways of working.

PIMvendors estimate of internal effort per phase for a mid-sized company:

• Selection, 12 weeks in the PIMvendors method: a project lead at about 50 percent, plus workshops with product, e-commerce, IT and compliance.
• Implementation: a product owner at 50 to 100 percent, key users from each data-owning team at 20 to 30 percent, and IT capacity for ERP and commerce integration.
• After go-live: permanent data stewards, a governance lead and a platform owner in IT.

Two factors push effort up: data migration from many sources, and a data model that was never designed before selection. Both are cheaper to fix early.

In PIMvendors selections, internal capacity is checked before the RFP goes out. A project that cannot free a product owner should delay the selection, because the software will wait on decisions that nobody has time to make.

Put internal effort in the business case as a cost line with names and percentages, so the steering committee approves people along with the budget.