“Product Information Management Systems (or PIM systems) control and manage product-relevant data at a central point in a company. This is technical, logistical, marketing-relevant or other information. They distribute it – independently of media, departments and across various other IT systems – to different channels. This means that the information only has to be kept in one system, namely the PIM system.”
Source: PIM Directory, SDZeCOM
A PIM system is responsible for the central collection, management and enrichment of product information, the cataloguing of products and the distribution of product data to other sales and marketing channels. As a central data point, a PIM system combines all product information that is collected in the value chain at different points in product management, marketing, sales and logistics. During the consolidation of the data, it is simultaneously refined, translated and controlled. This is the only way to ensure that the product information is complete, correct and consistent and meets the industry-specific quality requirements. For this reason, a PIM system is also often referred to as a “single source of truth”.
A PIM system always aims to find solutions to all the problems that companies can encounter in product data management. If you distribute numerous products through diverse sales channels (whether in a B2C or B2B), then some of these problems will certainly sound familiar to you:
- Complexity of data handling, which increases with the product range
- Inconsistent data as it is maintained in parallel on multiple systems (data silos)
- Too much data that needs to be manually sorted in your system (attributes, technical data, digital assets, SKUs, etc.)
- Constantly changing product specifications (prices, stocks, descriptions, etc.)
- The management of different supplier data
- The translation and provision of product information for different markets and countries
- The increasing number of marketing and sales channels you need to keep under control (online shops, online product catalogues, marketplaces, apps, shops, print)