EP098 PIMs 101 - Unlocking Product Data for E-Commerce Success
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[00:00:06] DARIN NEWBOLD: Well, good day. Welcome to Commerce Today. My name is Darin. Josh is here with me as always. And we're going to be talking about PIMS. Now it's not, the PIMS from the Avengers or anything crazy like that, but PIMS and really unlocking that product data for e commerce success. So Josh, why is it essential?

[00:00:28] DARIN NEWBOLD: Why is it essential for these?

[00:00:29] JOSHUA WARREN: Well, first of all, PEM stands for product information management. so it does pretty much what it sounds like, helps you manage your product data, has a very important role in centralizing that product data. And, since you had those great questions before, when we talked about CDPs, about ERP, just figure I'd go ahead and get it out of the way that, PEMs, CDPs and ERPs all kind of feel like they might have some overlap, but really.

[00:00:58] JOSHUA WARREN: the, what each of them do is really in the [00:01:00] name. So PIMS, it's all about the product data, the product information management, CDP, customer data platform. That's going to focus on your customer data, not really on your product data. And then even an ERP that's enterprise resource planning. That's looking at like a much higher level of the.

[00:01:15] JOSHUA WARREN: Financial aspects, the supply chain, things like that. So, the power of a PIM really, especially in a composable commerce solution is being that one source of truth where all your product data kind of flows in and out of, versus those other systems that. Might touch and refer to product data, but it's not as central.

[00:01:35] JOSHUA WARREN: And so in the world of e commerce, having consistent, very detailed product information is very important. It will boost your sales. It'll reduce returns. It'll elevate the perception of your brand. so it's obviously, very important.

[00:01:52] DARIN NEWBOLD: Extremely important, obviously. And, like we say often, almost every episode, it's the product information and the [00:02:00] specialization, as well as the, customer journey, of course, and we're really on that product side of things. So you've talked about some of the broader benefits of the PIMS for e commerce, but I think there's kind of five key advantages that, or maybe four key advantages that, that you were looking at.

[00:02:20] DARIN NEWBOLD: Tell us about those.

[00:02:21] JOSHUA WARREN: Yeah, so, kind of the five advantages of PEM, like I mentioned is the place where you can centralize your data. So you can manage your product details, your specifications, your media files, all in a single place with a single workflow. this gets really powerful, especially some of the PEMs you can easily integrate with your vendors.

[00:02:40] JOSHUA WARREN: So, They can actually submit product data. You can pull product data from multiple sources, centralize it all on this PEM and then have a workflow to refine

[00:02:49] DARIN NEWBOLD: That is very handy.

[00:02:51] JOSHUA WARREN: also just great, advancements, and enhancements for the customer experience. So, like you mentioned, we talk all the [00:03:00] time about how important the product data is in that customer journey when they're on your, Product detail page, whether you're a B2C or B2B business, having the right details on that page is really going to determine if those buyers or visitors convert into buyers.

[00:03:14] JOSHUA WARREN: also by streamlining, your product data and how you handle it, you can have a much faster time to market. This is probably the biggest thing I see companies struggle with that don't have a PIM. so they will have product data kind of all over the place. And They're managing it in spreadsheets.

[00:03:31] JOSHUA WARREN: They're trying to manage it via their e commerce platform. And it just takes them so long to get a new product up that they just, sometimes they give up, they just don't even try. Or if they're trying, they're spending actually more money on the, employees that are having to do all these manual processes to add the product data compared to what it would cost to actually invest in a proper PIM setup.

[00:03:53] DARIN NEWBOLD: Wow. Talk about a missed opportunity there.

[00:03:56] JOSHUA WARREN: And then finally, PIMS can really help you improve [00:04:00] your data quality. You can enforce rules and standards. it's kind of like a CRM for those that have worked in a CRM that won't let you advance a deal until you fill out certain fields. PIMS have similar features where you can say, okay, you can't actually mark this product as done until these certain key aspects are filled in, until this data has been acquired.

[00:04:20] JOSHUA WARREN: And then also, Making it that single source of truth, allowing that validation. You then know all the product data that flows out of your business, whether it's onto a catalog, onto a website, wherever it's going, Amazon, eBay, it's all going to be accurate. So, and that's so important these days. SKU counts are growing so fast.

[00:04:40] JOSHUA WARREN: People are adding so many products. Catalogs are getting so much more complex, especially on the B2B side. And then When you start looking at Omnichannel, if you are going to try to sell both online and in store, I've seen so many times when, and grocery stores seem to be the worst about this, when you go to their site and you search for something and there's no [00:05:00] image, there's no, like, it's literally just the, you know, maybe eight letter abbreviated name of the product that the manufacturer sent when they sent the UPC code and that's it.

[00:05:10] JOSHUA WARREN: People aren't going to buy if that's all you have. So you've got to have that unified source of this product data and push it out in all your channels.

[00:05:19] DARIN NEWBOLD: All great things and so key to, to a successful website or a successful e commerce site, of course. Well, you talked about the advantages, Josh. I know that it's going to be important for our listeners to know. Guys, who are the ones to really consider as a PIM for their site and for their needs?

[00:05:40] DARIN NEWBOLD: And you put together, it looks like there's kind of six top players. Let's, let's run through the highlights of, of those. You want to start with the first one?

[00:05:47] JOSHUA WARREN: Sure. And before I dive in, I will say just like our CDP episodes, this is going to be a two parter. we're talking about the top commercial PIMS today. Next week, we'll talk about the top open source PIMs because there's also some open [00:06:00] source options out there, and just a teaser. Some of these will appear in both.

[00:06:05] JOSHUA WARREN: and our first one, PIM Core, is an example of that. So PIM Core has a commercial offering as well as an open source offering and their commercial offering, is an example of that. It actually integrates deeply with, DAM, digital asset management, content management, and even their CDP capabilities.

[00:06:22] JOSHUA WARREN: So, within one stack, basically, you can not only have the PIM, but also the DAM, the CMS, all in one. It's also a very, flexible and scalable solution. So I typically see the, mid size enterprises that really want a full digital experience platform, but aren't bought into something like the Adobe suite.

[00:06:44] JOSHUA WARREN: they often will select PimCore. and then on the tech side, because as we'll talk about finding a Pim that's aligned with your existing tech stack can be, Important. so on the tech side, PimCore is built with PHP on the symphony framework. it uses [00:07:00] MySQL or MariaDB, so very familiar to a lot of PHP developers.

[00:07:05] JOSHUA WARREN: And then the customizations, for it are done in PHP, or you can do some front end customizations using JavaScript or Twig.

[00:07:14] DARIN NEWBOLD: very cool. All right. Next up, on our list, I'm afraid I'm going to butcher the name. Aquino? Aquinio? Very good.

[00:07:22] JOSHUA WARREN: Akinio, they are very much focused just on PIM. So PIM core kind of has a little bit of everything. Like I mentioned, Akinio, which also has both the commercial edition and the open source edition, they focused really specifically on PIM. So if you just want a simple PIM solution, they're a good fit for that.

[00:07:42] JOSHUA WARREN: they, lots of times when I see. Someone that wants something that's PHP based with great multi-channel support, they'll look at Kineo, Kineo, very similar tech stack as pimco. So PHP with Symphony MySQL. They actually use elastic search for searching. [00:08:00] and then the customizations are again, very similar to pimco, primarily in PHP.

[00:08:05] DARIN NEWBOLD: Interesting. All right. Well, next up on our list, Salsify. I think we've talked about them at one point once before.

[00:08:12] JOSHUA WARREN: we have. So Salsify is a very well known PIM, and they really focus on what they call digital shelf optimization, being able to manage very large catalogs across multiple channels, especially if you want to have different assortments in each channel. So they tend to be great for retailers and for brands that are really looking at.

[00:08:33] JOSHUA WARREN: omni channel and multi channel e commerce. They aren't open source and don't have that open source background of the other two, so typically customizations are through the API. You can do some basic scripting in Python or JavaScript, but most of the work you do there is going to be via the API. Or via connectors, there's connectors into a lot of other platforms.

[00:08:56] DARIN NEWBOLD: That's a key distinction as we're looking at these. So next [00:09:00] up, Sales Layer.

[00:09:02] JOSHUA WARREN: So SalesLayer has an interesting spot in the market because they are very much an enterprise grade PIM. They're a big, I don't want to say heavy, but a full featured enterprise PIM. But they really tout the fact that you can go live with them in six weeks. So it's still enterprise. It's not a Stripped down simplified PIM, like what we might look at next.

[00:09:24] JOSHUA WARREN: full featured enterprise grade PIM, but with a very fast time to market. also very robust data management built in and a lot of, connectivity to different marketplaces. So if you're one of those larger businesses, you need that enterprise grade PIM, but maybe you think, Oh, enterprise grade means slow.

[00:09:42] JOSHUA WARREN: not the case with sales layer. And so it can be a good fit there. sales layer also is a kind of closed ecosystem, like Salsify. So most of the, customizations you're going to do are going to be via APIs. mostly via REST APIs, if you're [00:10:00] a developer who knows what that is.

[00:10:01] DARIN NEWBOLD: Gotcha. Gotcha. And then, next up on our list, Katzy. This sounds

[00:10:08] JOSHUA WARREN: Yeah. So Catsy is a newer player in the PIM scene. And like I mentioned with SalesLayer, Catsy is kind of the opposite. Catsy is that, very kind of simplified PIM solution really focuses on managing your product data, but also syndicating it out into different marketplaces, they're really focused on small to mid sized brands that are really looking for.

[00:10:34] JOSHUA WARREN: efficient synchronization of their data into multiple marketplaces. so again, they also are a kind of a closed ecosystem. So any sort of customizations would be just using the API. They're really, their PIM isn't targeted to people that need a lot of customizations, really. they're targeted more at those that can just purchase it, go live and use it kind of off the shelf.

[00:10:57] DARIN NEWBOLD: Interesting. And built on the NET [00:11:00] backend. That's some fun right

[00:11:03] JOSHUA WARREN: Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, tend to stay out of the. net world for sure.

[00:11:09] DARIN NEWBOLD: Alright, and last on our list of six, Informatica MDM.

[00:11:13] JOSHUA WARREN: Yep. So Informatica has, a number of solutions and their product 360 MDM, which MDM stands for master data management. And that's a, it's kind of a superset of PIMS in a way. So master data management. Really is, for any sort of data you want to have a single source of truth on. So, whereas some PIMS may not want to dive into inventory levels or into other, especially the more financial aspects of product data, an MDM, it, any data that you want it to be the single source of truth on.

[00:11:48] JOSHUA WARREN: It will do that. So if you have a dedicated data team and you're a larger enterprise and you're looking for kind of that heavyweight player in the space and you want to roll out master data [00:12:00] management, that's where Informatica solution really fits. Speaking of. Environments I stay out of, like NET, it's actually built on Java, and customizations are via Java, Java, typically, it's very Java, Oracle, Enterprise type of, technology, for sure.

[00:12:20] DARIN NEWBOLD: Wow, and I was recently talking to our director of IT and Getting the difference between Java and JavaScript. There is a significant difference there.

[00:12:30] JOSHUA WARREN: You know, it's funny, when I was back in college, way back when, the, one of the big differences between the Engineering school and the business school. And so between computer science and IT, at least at my university, was computer science would teach like C IT was all about Java. And neither side at the time said anything about JavaScript.

[00:12:54] JOSHUA WARREN: And so it was always kind of interesting. Sometimes I'll even ask people, especially if they went to school kind of the same time as [00:13:00] I do, like what their preferred language is. And sometimes that can tell me what their major was or vice versa. But yeah, definitely JavaScript, Java, and C are all different

[00:13:10] DARIN NEWBOLD: Wildly different. Well, Josh, you've given six overviews here. We've got some information. What's some guidance on how does, someone kind of pick and choose?

[00:13:21] JOSHUA WARREN: Yeah. So the interesting thing is I feel like so many e commerce brands right now will choose software based on the ecosystem they're in. And what I mean by that is if they already are using a lot of Salesforce technologies, they might go with Salesforce Commerce Cloud. If they're already using a lot of Adobe technologies, they might go with Adobe Commerce.

[00:13:42] JOSHUA WARREN: None of these players have a really strong PIM solution. So that's where sometimes the choices, you have more choices, but the choice is a little bit harder to make. And I would say, with my background in development especially, look at your existing team, whether that's an internal [00:14:00] team or an external team.

[00:14:02] JOSHUA WARREN: Look at what languages your other technologies are already using. And narrow, at least narrow down your search to find other PIMs that work with that same technology that can really simplify your tech stack. now don't cut your requirements. Like if your business absolutely needs a feature that is only available in one of these enterprise grade PIMs, that's written in Java, customized in Java, you might need to stretch and go to the Java world.

[00:14:30] JOSHUA WARREN: but otherwise, you know, lots of times the feature sets are fairly similar. So sometimes the best choice is to look for. What aligns with your existing integrations and tech stack? but also don't just think about what sort of PEM you need now. Think about, you know, you don't want to change PEMs really ever, but especially not on the cadence that I see places change.

[00:14:52] JOSHUA WARREN: e commerce platforms. You want your PEM to be stable. So think about what, what could a PEM. Look like for you in [00:15:00] five years. And what would your PIM needs be in five years? Make sure you're picking a PIM that can kind of grow with you. And that's even kind of a teaser for next week's episode, because I think some of the open source options that also have commercial versions can be a great fit because you can start out small with that open source version and then.

[00:15:18] JOSHUA WARREN: Upgrade into the commercial version later.

[00:15:20] DARIN NEWBOLD: Yeah, that really, does make sense. Well, as we've kind of come to the end, a little bit of a, summary over all of this is really discussing what is a PIN, product information management, and how it differs from CDP, ERP. and those things basically some key benefits that Josh mentioned, data centralization, enhanced customer experience, faster time to market as well as improved data quality.

[00:15:47] DARIN NEWBOLD: And then, Josh gave a, an overview of six kind of the commercial side of the PIMS, PIMCorp, PIM, options, PIMCorp being the first one, Akinio as the second, Salsify, Sales [00:16:00] layer, Catsy, and then Informatica MDM product 360 is, is the last one. And a lot of great ideas that you just shared on kind of the choosing that.

[00:16:11] DARIN NEWBOLD: So with that summary, kind of bring us call to action and, what's next?

[00:16:15] JOSHUA WARREN: Yeah. So if you don't already have a PEM, you really need to be considering one, you know, I think we talk a lot about composable commerce and I think a good first step into that even is if you aren't already using a PEM, deploy one, make that your single source of truth for your product data, centralize your, product related workflows around it.

[00:16:37] JOSHUA WARREN: And then you can start building in some of the other composable pieces around that PEM.

[00:16:42] DARIN NEWBOLD: That is very, key. Well, coming up next as, Josh had mentioned for next week, we're going to be talking about the open source. sides of the PIMS. But as always, definitely reach out to Joshua Warren on LinkedIn. We'd love to spend 30 minutes with you to answer, your [00:17:00] e commerce related questions.

[00:17:01] DARIN NEWBOLD: And with that, as always, we appreciate you being here and send us any questions or comments. Otherwise, take care. Have a great day. 

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