What is a PIM system and when does a manufacturer need one?

A PIM system is software in which a manufacturer manages all product information in one place and distributes it from there to the website, dealers, catalogues and marketplaces. PIM stands for product information management. For a manufacturer with a handful of products, it is unnecessary. But as soon as you have dozens of product families, hundreds of variants, specifications in several languages and dealers who all need the right information, it becomes the backbone of your communication. In this article we explain what a PIM system is and when you are ready for one.

What is a PIM system?

A PIM system is the central source for all the information needed to describe and sell a product. Not the stock or the price the accounts department uses, but everything a customer, dealer or installer wants to know about the product.

Think of:

• technical specifications and dimensions;
• product descriptions, short and long texts, per language;
• images, drawings and 3D models;
• documents such as manuals, certificates and safety data sheets;
• relationships between products: variants, accessories, replacement models;
• classifications and filters for websites and catalogues.

The PIM system records that information according to a fixed data model and publishes it to every channel in the format that channel needs.

What is the difference between PIM, ERP and CMS?

The difference is that an ERP manages the business operations, a CMS manages the website and a PIM manages the product information. They overlap, and that is often where confusion arises.

• ERP manages item numbers, stock, purchasing, prices and orders. It is built for transactions, not for rich product descriptions in several languages.
• CMS manages the content of your website. It can display products, but it is not made to manage complex specifications, variants and documents for multiple channels.
• PIM sits in between. It takes basic data from the ERP, enriches it with everything needed for communication and delivers it to the website, the dealer portal and other channels.

When does a manufacturer need a PIM system?

A manufacturer needs a PIM system when product information is kept in several places and those places start to drift apart. Recognisable signs:

• Specifications are in Excel, in the ERP, on the website and in a catalogue, and they are not the same everywhere.
• A product change has to be made in five places, and one is always forgotten.
• Dealers keep asking for up-to-date product sheets or images.
• Adding a new language means a project lasting months.
• New products only appear correctly on the website weeks after launch.
• Product knowledge sits with a few people in product management.

If you recognise three or more of these points, the lack of a PIM is probably costing you more than introducing one would.

What belongs in a good PIM system?

A good PIM system has a flexible data model, support for languages and variants, digital assets, quality workflows and integrations with all channels.

A data model that fits your products

A pump has different attributes from a door or a motor. The data model must be able to have different fields per product family, without turning into a tangle.

Variants and relationships

Many products come in variants that share a large part of their information. A good PIM lets you record shared information once and only the differences per variant.

Languages

Translations belong to the product per field, with visibility of what is still missing. Technical values and units do not need translating, texts do.

Files and documents

Images, drawings and documents are linked to products, with version control, so the current manual is always shown.

Quality control

A product may only go to a channel once the required fields have been filled in. A completeness score per product and per language shows where work remains.

Integrations

The PIM supplies data to the website, a dealer portal, print catalogues, marketplaces and possibly a quoting system. Through system integrations it retrieves basic data from the ERP.

Off-the-shelf package or custom PIM?

An off-the-shelf PIM package fits if your products and processes match the package's model well and you mainly need to serve many channels. A custom PIM fits if your data model differs, if the PIM has to work closely with a configurator or portal, or if an extensive package is more than you need.

We build custom PIM solutions, usually with our own database on Supabase or Xano, sometimes on Airtable if the product range is manageable. We synchronise the product information to the website in Webflow and to portals for dealers. That way there is one source and everyone sees the same information.

What determines the cost of a PIM system?

The cost depends on the number of product families and attributes, the number of languages, the volume of files, the number of channels being published to and the quality of the existing data. That last point is often underestimated: cleaning up and migrating product data from spreadsheets and old systems is often a large part of the work.

How do you get started?

Start with an inventory: where is product information now, who manages what, and which channels use it. Then choose one product family to test the data model on. Read more about how to manage product data as a manufacturer, see our approach to a PIM system or get in touch.

How we set up a custom PIM system, from product structure to the first channel, is explained on our expertise page.