Product Information Management Case Study

NHP Product Information Management System

NHP is a leading provider of industrial electrical engineering products which they take to the market in Australia and New Zealand. Their primary focus is on switchgear and automation products, but they have a huge range of items from climate control systems to solar panels. NHP cements their place as a leader in the industry by providing outstanding customer and technical support services which ensure customers return in the future. The role this case study is based on is the product information management for all of the electrical products that NHP stocks. This position relates strongly electrical engineering as prior knowledge of the different aspects of products assists with the work. However,

In essence, PIM is about entering and maintaining information of products. At NHP, this is implemented through a system called Perfion which manages the database of all their electrical product information. This information includes a range of different aspects such as electrical characteristics, product descriptions, product images, diagrams and much more. Evidentially, data entry is a large aspect of this and is how Elizabeth got started in this area. Over time, she developed her skills and eventually took over the position of product information manager. Since NHP has over 25,000 different product lines, this process of data entry can often be quite tedious and repetitive but it is necessary to build up and maintain the system. Automation of inputting data into the system would be ideal, but in reality, it would take more time than it’s worth to write a program that is capable of doing so. The data entry itself is focused on efficiency and structure. Elizabeth has put a large amount of work into ensuring there is a rigid structure to the Perfion system which allows for information to be set at different levels such as product categories, product lines and so on. This allows for data to be entered both more efficiently and usefully as it saves having to manually enter information for every product individually. But despite the tedious aspect of data entry, Elizabeth still considers the position very rewarding. She finds the job technically engaging which is a key requirement for her coming from an engineering background. Another benefit is that it is stable and isn’t the type of job that will “take your soul” [IS QUOTING APPROPRIATE?? IS THIS??], which is important to Elizabeth as she tends to commit herself entirely to her work. These aspects of the job can also be credited to NHP and their well-structured corporate environment. Elizabeth stated that the only two