What is PIM?
Product information management (PIM) is the process of centralizing, organizing, and distributing information about products that a business sells.
What is PIM software?
PIM software is a platform that helps businesses centralize, enrich, and share all their product information. This software can store anything from SKUs and product descriptions to pricing and customer testimonials.
By collaborating with your team in a central source of truth (like a PIM system), you can easily make sure your product information is consistent and up-to-date across all your sales channels. Not only that, but you also save time and money by automating all manual tasks around product information management.
PIM systems come in two main types
1. Open-source PIM
Open-source PIM is PIM software that gives you full access to the original source code. This gives you the chance to add new features and update existing ones in the PIM system.
But, keep in mind, in order to make changes to the source code, you’re going to need programmers to help you.
2. SaaS PIM
SaaS PIM is PIM software that is developed and maintained by a third-party provider. You won’t be able to access and modify the codes.
With this type of software, you’ll need to pay for the license through a subscription payment. No need for a development team here since your PIM provider takes care of that.
PIM software goes by many different names, here’s a few examples
Product Resource Management (PRM)
Product Experience Management (PXM)
Product Data Management (PDM)
Product Content Management (PCM)
Product Catalog Management (PCM)
Item Master
How does PIM fit into your tech stack?
PIM is an essential part of a powerful ecommerce tech stack.
Enterprise Planning Resource (ERP)
ERP is a system that helps you manage data related to day-to-day business operations. There’s a misconception that ERP is the same as PIM, but it’s not. Check out this article about PIM vs ERP to discover why.

Product Information Management (PIM) with Digital Asset Management (DAM)
PIM software (with DAM capabilities) is a central source of truth where you can manage, optimize, and distribute all your product information and media that you need to sell your products.

Content Management System (CMS)
CMS helps you manage and publish content for your website (or webshop). This is your online storefront where you can sell directly to customers.

Feed Management System (FMS)
FMS manages your product data feeds, so you can get your products to your sales channels. Some PIM systems have feed management capabilities, but if you want the best of both worlds, check out how PIM and FMS work together.

Payment Processing
Payment Processing is the software that accepts credit card payments on your website. Make sure to find software that makes your customers’ payment process safe and easy so that you give them the best shopping experience.

Order & Shipping Management
Order and Shipping Management software helps you manage and ship out the orders your customers place. Some of these features might overlap with your ERP, so make sure to look for a solution that makes sense for your tech stack.

Analytics
Analytics software allows you to track, analyze, and interpret the ecommerce metrics you use to measure your success. Most ecommerce CMS systems will have this data, but you’ll want to find a solution that gives you a full view of everything you need to track.
What information is stored in PIM?
Taxonomy
- add Categories
- add Labels
- add Product variations
- add Relationships
Essential product data
- add UPCs
- add SKUs
- add Product titles or names
- add Product descriptions
Digital assets
- add Images
- add Videos
- add Gifs
- add PDFs
Marketing data
- add SEO Keywords
- add Product catalogs
- add Product sheets
- add Sales enablement documents
Product details
- addSizes
- add Colors
- add Materials
- add Measurements
- addTechnical specifications
Localized content
- addMultilingual content
- add Translations
- add Pricing in different currencies
Sales data
- addPrices
- add Testimonials
- add Customer reviews
Channel-specific information
- addMobile descriptions
- add Amazon titles
- add Customer reviews
How PIM works in 4 simple steps
1. Centralize
A PIM tool is your central source of truth where all your product information can live together in one place, so you don't have to work from multiple spreadsheets and folders. This means your team only needs to go to one location to find up-to-date and consistent information.
2. Enrich
There are features in a PIM database that allow you to identify information gaps, errors, and inconsistencies so you can quickly fix them. Having this type of overview of your product data also gives you the chance to enhance your current content to make sure it’s what your customers need.
3. Optimize
Search engine optimization (SEO) and product listing optimization (PLO) for visibility and ranking are easier with PIM. You can bulk edit your product information to make sure it includes important keywords and descriptions customized for each channel you sell on. (And if your PIM has DAM capabilities, you can easily prepare your images for different channel requirements.)
4. Distribute
PIM makes distributing product information easy—whether it’s putting products on your website, listing it on different marketplaces, or sending data sheets and product sheets to clients. A good PIM helps automate product syndication through product feeds and integrations.
What are the benefits of PIM?
PIM takes care of the main tasks in product information management so that you can spend time marketing and selling your products, and ultimately grow your business. PIM can help you with:
Time and money saving
PIM can save your organization about $9.7 million per year, which is the average amount companies lose due to poor information management. Your employees won’t spend 25% of their time combing through multitudes of folders to get the right product information as it will no longer live in silos but centralized in a single location.
High quality product information
PIM provides you with many features for creating, editing, and organizing all of the product information in your product catalog— no matter how extensive it is. You can categorize, add and match product attributes and variations, as well as connect product families and relationships. With PIM you’re able to do data cleansing to ensure that you don’t have duplicates, incorrect, or irrelevant information. You can standardize the format of all of your information to achieve consistency.
Faster and easier information sharing
Working with various supply chain stakeholders requires that you share quality and real-time information to upstream and downstream partners. The information sharing is continuous throughout the product lifecycle, even when the product is finally in front of the customer.
Faster time to market
Onboarding new products is faster with PIM because of the automated tools that the software comes with. The quicker you import and organize your product information following the PIM workflow, the quicker you can put your products in front of your customers.
Multichannel presence
Businesses need to have a presence wherever their customers shop. With PIM, you can easily manage large sets of product information for all of the different platforms. You can select all of the necessary channel-specific attributes to create a product feed that you can send over to a marketplace, comparison shopping engine, or social commerce platform of choice in a matter of minutes.
Better marketing
PIM enables you to leverage your reliable product information to create better marketing campaigns. Features like product relationships help you create upselling, cross-selling, and product bundling opportunities. Next-generation PIM tools come equipped with design capabilities for product sheets, product catalogs, and other sales enablement material that help you drive effective marketing efforts.
Saving time and money
PIM can save your organization about $9.7 million per year, which is the average amount companies lose due to poor information management.
That means your employees won’t spend 25% of their time combing through a bunch of folders to get the right product information. They can find what they need in seconds since it’s all stored in one place—your PIM!
High quality product information
PIM equips you with powerful features to create, edit, and optimize all your product information in your product catalog—no matter what the size! And if you have complex data with a variety of product relationships and variations, don’t worry, PIMs are made to handle that too.
To make sure you don’t send out poor quality information to your sales channels or customers, PIM helps you data cleanse—making sure there are no duplicates, incorrect, or irrelevant information. Plus, it’ll all be formatted the same, so you can guarantee your customers get a consistent experience.
Sharing information faster and easier
If you can share product information with your sales channels, retail partners, and clients quickly then you can make sales even faster. PIM makes that easy by offering quick data sheet exports, product feeds for automated updates on sales channels, and easy-to-use catalog makers (for both online and offline).
Faster time to market
Getting new products out to the market is faster with PIM. How? PIM automates all the tasks you need to do in order to get your new product out and ready to sell.
You just need to put the new images and content into the PIM once, and your PIM will send it out to everywhere you sell as soon as you're ready to launch the new product. Essentially, PIM's main job here is to put your products in front of your customers faster.
Greater multichannel presence
Businesses need to have a presence wherever their customers shop. But the two biggest challenges of selling on different channels are:- add Managing the different requirements of each channel
- add Sending product information to all your sales channels
Better marketing and sales
PIM helps you create reliable product information for better marketing campaigns. Not only that, but product relationship features help you create upselling, cross-selling, and product bundling opportunities to encourage your customers to buy more.
Next-generation PIM tools also come equipped with design capabilities for product sheets, product catalogs, and other sales enablement materials that help you drive effective marketing efforts.
Who needs PIM?
Manufacturers
Manufacturers need PIM to make sure all their retail partners can easily get the right product information. Plus, with online catalogs and product sheets created in a PIM system, selling to retail partners is made easy.
Brands
Brands sell across different touchpoints (whether it’s their online store, marketplaces, or a retailer’s store), so having accurate product data that is easy to send out is important. This is where PIM comes in and takes care of all of that for you.
Wholesalers/
Distributors
PIM centralizes incoming product information from suppliers while keeping that same product information consistent and marketable when sending it out to buyers.
Retailers
With PIM, retailers increase productivity and efficiency when managing product data. Not only that, but they also deliver high quality product information that customers want to see.
Who typically works with PIM?
As a company that sells products, you’re going to have different teams working together on your product information. Naturally, some teams will work more with PIM than others, so to give you an idea of what this could look like, here are a few ways we’ve seen different teams work with PIM.
Ecommerce and data teams
Ecommerce teams can prepare data to send out to their sales channels directly from the place where that data is kept. Meanwhile, data teams can easily track product data without having to search through multiple spreadsheets to find what they need.
Marketing and SEO teams
Marketers that need to manage a lot of content to create and modify campaigns across multiple channels can feel confident that the information is accurate and ready to go. SEO specialists can also get product content optimized for different channels directly in the PIM.
Sales teams
Sales can use PIM to get product data and sales materials (like product sheets and digital catalogs) whenever they need it. They’ll have the confidence knowing that it’s the most accurate and up-to-date information.
Customer Service teams
Your Customer Service team can have full access to the most accurate product information whenever a customer needs information on a specific product.
When should you consider getting a PIM system?
Here is a list of things that typically are a good indicator that you need a PIM.
When your product information is spread across multiple spreadsheets and systems, and it’s becoming difficult to manage
Choosing the right PIM software
Performers
PIM software comes in many shapes and sizes. With so many options, it’s not easy navigating what solution is right for you.
To help you with your PIM decision, we created “The Ultimate PIM Buyer’s Guide.” This guide compares the most popular PIM software on the market and helps you choose the right one for your business. To get your own free copy, download it here.
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