Acronyms usually create confusion, especially in the digital landscape. The goal of this article is to make you “digest” the “PIM” acronym, explore the connection between a PIM platform and an e-Commerce platform, presenting a real use case and its benefits. Reading it could be useful if you’re evaluating the adoption of this software or if you simply want to learn more about its potential.
What is a PIM (Product Information Management) system
The PIM, an acronym for Product Information Management, is a tool to collect, manage, optimize, enrich and distribute product data/information. The output is a product catalogue or a file to share with sales and eCommerce channels. It’s a tool, but maybe more: it’s a process. Here’s a good article if you want more details.
A real scenario: you have 10 different Jackets to sell online.
You need the weight, number of pockets, and colours. Jacket A: 0.5 Kg, 4 pockets, black. Jacket B: 0.7 Kg, 3 pockets, red. And you need an Excel file to share with your sales team in Spain. You call your product manager, ask for the file of 10 raws with all the details you need and you get the file in 5 min. This is the best-case scenario.
Well, it’s not always Sunday, especially if you work in a small-to-medium enterprise (SME). Some common answers: “I don’t have time”, “We don’t have that data”, “I don’t know the colours translation for Spanish”, copy and paste some data on Skype, PDFs and my favourite overall: “here’s your printed list…” 😲. Printed, seriously? Do you remember I need to sell it online?
PIM software can help you to organize this process. Instead of having pieces of data information in each department (product, marketing, communication, purchase, customer care), you can centralise the product data collection and organize it in an easy-to-get database.
An example of product data in a PDF/image format.
PIM vs DAM vs ERP vs Master file vs whatever
The function explained above can be done with many tools. Every company have different tools and the PIM is not always the right solution for the need described (collect, organize and share product data). And there are different PIM solutions in the market. If you don’t want to get confused, here’s a quick recap:
- PIM: to manage product data (Akeneo, Thron, PIMCore, InRiver). Name, weight, material, dimensions, description, translations and similar.
- DAM: to manage digital assets (Canto, Thron). Product images, videos, lifestyle photos, spec sheets and similar.
- ERP: to manage your company data. (SAP, Oracle NetSuite, custom solutions, you name it). Orders, Shipments, Invoices, Costs, Customers and similar.
- Master file: an excel file with data information.
- Printed catalogue: used for sales events, sales meetings and similar.
- Other: specs sheet, PDFs from the product team, Google Sheets from the marketing dept.
The product data can stand in one of the mentioned solutions (usually ERP). But the ERP have some sensitive data. It’s not easy to have freedom for new attributes, you don’t want to share external access. And the Master file, it’s a file, with all the limits of a file (not online, not shared, not reliable).
Do you need a PIM for your e-Commerce project?
I tried to summarize some reasons to answer this question. As often happens the truth lies in the middle and it really depends on your needs.
Yes, for this list of reasons (try to match your needs):
- Your product data are missing, confused, not accessible and not organized.
- You’re struggling with product information gathering from different teams.
- You’re a mono-brand and you’re selling internationally.
- You want to start a translation process.
- You have a huge catalogue of products.
- Your product has a lot of technical details (e.g. material, shape, dimensions, features).
- You need to transfer data to different platforms (ERP, B2B, e-Commerce, Marketplace).
- …
No, for this list of reasons (try to match your needs):
- You have a small catalogue (e.g. 20, 50 products) with a little information needed to export/sell.
- You have a multi-brand store and you receive data from other companies. In this case, you will probably receive data from the brands (e.g. Adidas, New Balance and similar).
- You don’t want to sell online/digital channels.
- Your sales are mainly from B2B channels and your Sales Reps are selling with papers.
- You don’t need to export product data.
- …
Well if you’re on the “No” side, have a read on the following paragraphs (especially “Benefits”). Maybe you will change your mind. A quick sentence about the tool adoption: be aware, that if your company is not digital-centred and has a classic/retail heritage, it will not be easy to make understand the need and justify the cost of the platform and the implementation.
Use case: Akeneo & Magento integration
In 2022, I worked with my team on the Akeneo & Magento integration for a project in the sports industry. Our PIM system (Akeneo based) was quite new and had some basic information, but needed for our mono-brand e-Commerce website (Magento based).
Our requirements were to transfer from Akeneo to Magento some primary product data:
- SKU, EAN, Price, Product Name, Brand, Weight, Material Composition, Color, Gender, Short Description, Long Description, SEO Meta Title, SEO Meta Description & more.
With some complex behind:
- simple products and configurable products (with size as a variable) to sync
- product families (bags, eyewear, clothing) with different attributes to sync.
- 6 currencies (EUR, USD, AUD & more) to sync.
- 14 store views (Magento stores) to sync.
- categories management and product assignment to sync.
The integration project took a bit of time for some technical aspects (see the dedicated paragraph below). But the output was a synchronization between the platform, running and scheduled to run every morning.
Benefits from the adoption
Benefits for the team, company, and for operations:
- the e-Commerce team is not opening anymore (except for some cases) the Magento backend for product updates. If you have experience with Magento you can get how much time we saved.
- the product team can easily organize the product data. One database, all the product data.
- the translator’s process has sped up: no more files shared, no more pieces of information.
- but the real benefit overall is the product data sharing to B2B platforms, e-tailers, distributors, Marketplaces, e-Commerce websites, ERP. All these stakeholders get benefit from it.
How to connect Akeneo & Magento via API (technical)
Skip this paragraph if you’re not technical. I will talk about API, Sync Job, and data mapping. Scared enough? I tested with my team a free extension and a paid one. It ended up a custom solution was needed to make it work as we expected. Be aware: the solution worked well for us. This doesn’t mean that the free Magento extension or a paid extension is not good. They are not good from our experience. I hope you can prove the opposite 😉
- Free extension: basic and not adapt to the Akeneo community edition. Maybe it works fine with the paid version of Akeneo? Please share your experience on this.
- Webkul extension: standard, thought for a light connection. Not working as we expected. They try to force the Akeneo structure to the Magento import. Not the perfect way.
- Custom extension: we ended up with a custom implementation from our tech agency. It’s working fine. It’s an API call from Magento to Akeneo, not vice-versa. So it’s Magento import adapted to the Akeneo structure. This solution was functional for our project and straight to the point.
Issues we had and what we learned:
- Akeneo (community edition) have some limits: related products were not easy to synchronize.
- Images size: increases a lot the API request data transfer, not easy to test in staging.
- Magento URLs: it’s a bit of a mess. Redirects, especially from one store view to another.
Actions after reading
If you need help with a PIM solution or you want to connect it to your e-Commerce, please contact me. I’ll be glad to support your product data process improvement.
Email: andreafagan93@gmail.com
Side notes, credits, sources
- Articles: PIM Vendors, Akeneo.
- Images: North Face Ski Jacket, Rewind.com,
