What Is Product Information Management (PIM) and How Can It Benefit Your Business?

David Božič18.07.2019eCommerce

PIM, an abbreviation that stands for Product Information Management, is a software designed to collect data, pictures and videos of products from different sources and offer strong tools for enriching product information and distributing it to multiple channels. With such a solution, you can therefore save tons of time and bring the user experience in your online shop to a higher level.

Imagine that you need to properly prepare, edit or enrich a big set of product data, be it for your next product catalog, the latest promotional flyers or the new digital marketing campaign for your online shop. In an ideal world, all your products would be accompanied by catchy descriptions and beautiful photos, the product categorisation would be a dream and all the product attributes would be neatly organised in sets based on product categories or specific features.

However, this is the best case scenario. In reality, your product data is spread across several Excel sheets coming from various departments and having several owners, each with their own version of the file. The photos and descriptions are often missing as many a supplier only provides SKU data and pricing lists … Yes, this is the real scenario. But there’s no need to despair. Product Information Management or PIM is here to help you solve such issues and neatly organise your chaotic product information.

PIM will neatly organise all your product information.

But what exactly is Product Information Management or PIM? In general, the term stands for a set of tools and processes for collecting, editing and managing information about the products you own. It usually consists of a centralized database that stores the product data model, product data itself as well as optimization and collection tools for data enrichment and distribution through relevant channels – usually e-commerce, print, social channels.

As a concept, PIM has just recently entered the mainstream world of marketing, e-commerce and logistics.

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As always, when a new technological solution enters the market, people quickly get confused by the many names and buzzwords associated with it and it is only after some time that one name prevails and is standardised. Currently, the abbreviation PIM is connected with, further explained by or replaced with several similar concepts, such as MDM, DAM, PXM, etc. It is also closely related to e-commerce terms, such as CMS, WCM and several others. To help you out, we made a handy dictionary that will explain the differences and similarities between all these names and make the situation a bit clearer.

So, without further ado, here is the PIM dictionary:

PIM dictionary

As stated above, these expressions are often used interchangeably, even if it is clear that they do not mean exactly the same thing. In many cases, the reason for several names associated with similar software solutions lies in the fact that many companies offer similar tools, each eager to take over the market with their own brand name. Now that we understand the basic concept of Product Information Management, we can delve deeper into its main uses and explain how PIM can be of immense added value to the end user.

We’ve already explained that, before the introduction of PIM, the enrichment of product data was almost always a messy and chaotic task. The reason for this can be found in the fact that Excel sheets, MS Office documents or even databases or ERPs – while absolutely useful to a certain extent – are not the best solution for organising large chunks of information. As they are not specialised for such a task, the result of their usage often comes in the form of time delays, inconsistent data or missing information. In a world where content is king, this can have immense negative effects on conversions and, subsequently, on your finances.

Benefits of Product Information Management solutions

The main value propositions of PIM solutions are

optimized data collection,
streamlined collaboration and approval workflows,
centralized enrichment and data storing,
multichannel data distribution.

PIM was developed to solve the problems one is almost bound to encounter when working on tasks such as product data enrichment.

We are working on detailed case studies to present the benefits of PIM solutions in real life cases. For now, you are invited to check out our Intersport case study, explaining the benefits of the PIM solution. You are invited to recheck this segment as we will be adding new case studies as we publish new projects.

So, what kind of companies would mostly benefit from using Product Information Management?

Product Information Management is perfect for companies whose portfolio includes thousands of products with complex hierarchy, variations or attributes, while they also have many suppliers and promote and sell their goods or services through multiple channels. However, the benefits of PIM are very similar for either small businesses or large enterprises. Relying on a well-organized system with strong tools for batch actions users, Product Information Management can save their precious time while the customers can enjoy a much better user experience.

How exactly does it all work?

The process begins when Product Information Management collects all available information from different possible sources like the company’s ERP or the supplier’s databases. Different PIMs support different formats of imported data but generally they all support Excel and CSV.

When the data and multimedia files have been imported, they can be organized into categories and subcategories relating to the chosen products. You can also create a preset of products’ attributes, which makes the descriptions more systematic and easier to prepare. At the same time, images, videos and PDFs can easily be linked to the relevant products. Some PIMs also offer a tool for editing photos while others come with an entire Digital Asset Management (DAM) already integrated.

PIM offers countless possibilities that lets you neatly organize your online shop.

A beautiful thing that every Product Information Management system should be able to do is creating product catalogs for various channels at once. Therefore, companies, who sell through different channels e.g. webpage, mobile app, Amazon or even printed catalogs, can easily promote their products through all those channels.

Moreover, Product Information Management makes it possible to give different access rights to every employee or any other party, which means that suppliers, for example, can enter the program themselves but only contribute or edit photos, videos and product descriptions or help to organise products and create catalogs. On the other hand, translators or copywriters can only edit texts and descriptions in their chosen languages etc.

The use of PIM is therefore incredibly beneficial for suppliers as they can add products and media directly to the program itself while the company employees can save time and edit data in a more efficient and organised way, especially as they can all work at the same time, which makes collaboration that much easier. Of course, this system also benefits the end users as they can enjoy a much better online shopping experience due to consistent names and product descriptions with appropriate photos and videos.

PIM is extremely beneficial for suppliers, company employees and, of course, the end users on your website.

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Product Information Management solutions

At Optiweb, our favorite Product Information Management systems are Akeneo and Pimcore, both of which are open source software. This means that the source code can be inspected, modified, adjusted and distributed by anyone. In contrast, the term closed source means that only the code authors have the right to inspect, modify, adjust and distribute the code.

The terms open source and closed source are often thought to be synonymous with free or paid software, but these concepts should not be confused as they do not mean the same. Both open and closed source software solutions can be either free of charge or paid. While the most popular examples of open source software include Mozilla Firefox, Magento and WordPress, there are also several closed source solutions many of us rely on daily. Just think of Microsoft Office, Skype or Google docs.

Using open source software has some considerable advantages: Along with the possibility of free access, there is no risk of getting “locked-in”, the programs are constantly improved by strong communities while businesses can adapt it to their own needs. But how to choose from several open source solutions? In the case of Product Information Management, one can, as already mentioned, use Akeneo or Pimcore. Which of these two is a better choice depends on several factors, where the size of the company, the number of SKUs, other systems the business relies on, the skills and knowledge of workers etc. play the most important roles.

Which PIM solution best fits your needs?

Both Product Information Management solutions mentioned in this article offer a free version and additional features that users need to pay. At Optiweb, we are already working on making a thorough review of both programs to make your decision even easier. In the meantime, the short comparison below will already make things a lot clearer.

While Akeneo is appropriate for small, medium and large companies alike, Pimcore is mostly recommended for medium to large enterprises. Based on several reviews, ratings and our own experience, Akeneo is easier to use as it has a more user-friendly interface than Pimcore. On the other hand, Pimcore offers some tools that Akeneo doesn’t provide, for example a CMS and e-commerce features.

Display of Akeneo’s dashboard

Display of Pimcore’s dashboard

Pimcore’s data model offers almost unlimited level of hierarchy while Akeneo proposes a product hierarchy on two levels with additional differentiators on each level.

Both of the presented Product Information Management systems are backed by large communities of people who continuously develop these products further and support each other in their use. Thus, Pimcore relies on the expertise of more than 650 people while Akeneo boasts an even stronger community consisting of around 2500 professionals. The community offers an ecosystem of integrators and the developers claim that their partners can help you with seamless integration of Akeneo with the company’s existing systems. Both of the solutions can be integrated into all major e-commerce solutions.

Both Pimcore and Akeneo are backed by large communities who work on developing their products and offering constant support.

As previously mentioned above, Akeneo offers two editions – Cloud and Enterprise. The only difference between the Cloud-based version and the Enterprise version is that the former is located on the customer’s server while the latter can be found on Akeneo’s server infrastructure. The Community version, on the other hand, is not as complete as the other two. All versions include standard tools for collecting data from any source, enriching and controlling product information data and spreading product information across multiple channels.

Only the two subscription-based versions also come with Advanced Enterprise Features, which include:

advanced rights management for defining roles, permissions, and groups of users
product asset management, which is a centralized repository for all the images, videos, and files related to the products and catalogues
rules engine for the automation of repetitive tasks
validation workflow for managing who can edit and approve product information before it is published
a teamwork assistant for generating and assigning tasks to team members
versioning & publication tool for keeping different present and/or previous versions of the same product information
Franklin insights, a function which also collects product information on trusted websites

Last but not least, the subscription-based solutions include support by the Akeneo team while companies using the Community-based version have to rely on themselves, others in the community or consultants if they encounter any issues.

To sum up, Pimcore includes a more complex feature stack offering a variety of functions like PIM, DAM, CMS and e-commerce while Akeneo is a more user-friendly and streamlined PIM solution that is optimized for less technical users. Of course, things are not quite that simple as there are many factors influencing the final choice. At Optiweb, we offer consulting to help companies decide which of the two solutions will offer the best value. Some will go with Pimcore, some with Akeneo. We will be happy to help you choose your PIM software and integrate it into your business. All you have to do, is book an appointment :)

How to approach a PIM integration project?

Product Information Management solutions represent a rapidly growing trend, both in the world of ecommerce and in the mighty B2B universe. It is expected that these solutions will gain even more popularity and that even more developers as well as clients will jump on the bandwagon and contribute to their further development.

With this article we tried to present the concept of Product Information Management (PIM) and present the main benefits of integrating such system in your technology and business process. If you made it this far you might wonder what the next steps might be.

Usually, each PIM project starts with reaching out to us in the form of a request for a proposal and price estimation. After our review of the inquiry, we propose a short introductory call to get a more personal impression of your company, to answer a few basic questions and then propose next steps. These next steps usually include a preparation of a demo presentation of PIM solutions that we support so you can get a better understanding of how your system might look like.

After this, it gets more technical – we break down the integration process into several steps. The most important step is usually the discovery process – we dig deep into your processes, current data models and technology stacks to give you an informed proposal on how to implement a PIM solution. The outcome of a discovery process is a technical and functional specification with a detailed timeline and activity plan. After that we usually go into development. This process varies a bit on your timelines, complexity of technology stack and processes, budget and other factors.

What we propose is that you make a short, painless, but the most important step – get in touch with us and we will gladly help you start with your PIM integration! :)

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Did we grab your attention?

Contact our coworker David, PIM solution specialist, to learn more.

David Božič

Digital Transformation Consultant, Client Success Manager

What excites me most about sales is tackling interesting challenges from the side of our clients and finding optimal solutions for them. Let’s finds the right solution for you, too!

What Is Product Information Management (PIM) and How Can It Benefit Your Business?

Benefits of Product Information Management solutions

So, what kind of companies would mostly benefit from using Product Information Management?

How exactly does it all work?

Product Information Management solutions

Which PIM solution best fits your needs?

How to approach a PIM integration project?

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David Božič

Digital Transformation Consultant, Client Success Manager

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