THE TRADE-OFF
Skuply, a PIM,
doing it yourself or outsourcing.
Four ways to fill empty fields, with an honest column for each. We sell one of them, so do read the part that says when we are the wrong choice.
SIDE BY SIDE
The difference is not in the filling. It is in the staying filled.
SKUPLY
A PIM
DIY
OUTSOURCE
Fills empty fields
yes
no
yes
yes
Keeps them filled
continuously
no
by hand
per job
New SKU complete
the next pass
if someone types
if someone has time
next round
Source on every value
yes
sometimes
no
no
Rollback per field
yes
sometimes
no
no
Normalises values
yes
you write the list
you invent it
by agreement
To the first outcome
3 weeks
an implementation
now, and never done
a delivery
What it costs
fixed per month
licence plus rollout
hours of your people
hourly rate
What you end up with
filled fields
an empty cabinet
filled fields, and a backlog
a file
This table is about one question: what ends up in your fields and who makes sure it is still there in six months. About everything else a PIM can do, it says nothing.
A PIM
A cabinet is not content.
A PIM is where product data belongs: one source for every channel, rights per user, versions, translations. Everything a PIM promises is true. It just fills no field at all. Roll out a PIM with empty fields and you have an excellently organised empty catalogue.
Pick a PIM when
You supply several channels with different requirements, work across multiple brands or countries, and there are people working on product data every day.
Pick Skuply when
The fields exist but sit empty, and there is nobody who is going to walk ten thousand product pages to fill them.
Both is also fine
Skuply writes to a PIM just as well as to a shop. Then the PIM is the source for every channel and we are the engine that fills it.
DOING IT YOURSELF
Work it out once, with your own number.
Doing it yourself is not expensive because the hourly rate is high. It is expensive because it never stops. Every new supplier, every new season and every new SKU starts again, and the backlog grows faster than the catching up.
Take the number of minutes somebody at your company spends on one product: reading the title, taking the value out of it, putting it in the right attribute. Multiply that by your number of SKUs. That number is the comparison.
AN EXAMPLE, WITH ASSUMPTIONS
12,400 SKUs
× 6 minutes
Hours, one-off
1,240
At € 45 an hour
€ 55,800
Skuply, first pass
€ 1,240
Skuply, per month
€ 499
Six minutes and € 45 are assumptions, not measurements. Fill in your own numbers; the ratio only changes once a product is complete in under half a minute. All amounts on this page are excl. VAT.
And the one-off column is the kind one. Doing it yourself means the same sum comes back every year for the products that were added since.
OUTSOURCING
A delivery is a moment, not a state.
An agency or a freelancer delivers a file. That file is correct on the day it lands and starts ageing on day two. No value carries a source, so afterwards there is no checking why something says what it says, and rolling back is manual work. For a one-off catch-up on a bounded category it is perfectly fine. For a catalogue that grows every week it is a subscription with extra steps.
A delivery
A sheet of values, imported at one moment. No source, no number, no way back. With the next hundred products the conversation starts over.
material = full-grain leather
CORRECT TODAY
A running source
The same value, with where it came from, the number attached and the date. Which is why it can go back, and why the next SKU knows about it too.
rubber · stands in your title · 0.92
CORRECT, AND STILL EXPLAINABLE
FAIR IS FAIR
Three cases where Skuply is the wrong choice.
Under five thousand products
By hand is then faster, cheaper and better. An afternoon a week and you are up to date. We would be solving a problem you can still hold in your head.
When there are no sources
Three-word titles and descriptions that say nothing. We read only your own text, so then there is nothing to derive from, and inventing is not something we do. The scan says so up front.
When the problem is mess
Duplicate products, wrong categories, variants that became separate SKUs. That is clearing up, not filling in. Filling before clearing only makes the mess bigger.