Top 9 Product Information Management (PIM) Software
Here I've listed the best 9 product experience and information management software available in the market to manage product catalog & content solution to eCommerce.
Investing in product information management software (PIM) could be an overwhelming decision to arrive at. The reason being, every eCommerce business is unique, ranging from the type of product sold, to the number of channels catered to, and the number of SKUs dealt with. Therefore, shortlisting the best PIM software is quite a daunting task.
As PIM software providers ourselves, we decided to further penetrate the market and present to you all the crucial piece of information you’d ever need to help you pick the right one from the lot.
This guide will help you understand the top 9 product information management software (PIM) in the market – an overview of the tool, the highlights, pros, cons in detail.
PIMworks is a product experience management software that helps retailers, brands, and online business owners create personalized shopping experiences. PIMworks helps in centrally managing all product information that makes product data management and syndication easier. Also, product teams, vendors, and other internal team members can collaborate effectively by creating workflows.
Pros:
- Centralize product information lying in different sources
- Collaborate with vendors and internal teams efficiently by creating workflows
- Create rich product experiences with the power of data enrichment
- Syndicate data to different channels
- Ensure compliance to different channel guidelines through ready-to-use templates
- Expand sales channels quickly through product data on-boarding.
Cons:
- Though custom template are available in PIMworks, API integrations are available only for a few channels
Agility PIM software helps in creating the right content, in the right context, and at the right time. It combines PIM and master data management (MDM) capabilities to centrally view and manage content. The dynamic workflows of this PIM software enable smooth collaboration. It helps reduce time-to-market and streamline the process of data aggregation, content enrichment, and syndication to multiple channels. The data validation tools help in syndicating accurate content to multiple channels. This enables introducing products quickly to the market.
Pros:
- Streamlines process of sourcing product information, enrichment, and syndication to multiple channels
- Helps in contextualizing content for different channels
- Rapidly expand product ranges and SKUs
- Real-time performance analytics by product range or brand
Cons:
- The pricing data is not available and hence does not help you choose a concrete plan
Salsify is a product experience management platform that specializes in delivering a digital brand experience. They have an intuitive UI and the process of creating a product and syndication to channels is quite simple. Salsify has a 30-day free trial and a personalized demo for you to try and check out the product. Not many PIM players in the market have a freemium model. So, if you are convinced with the claims of Salsify and willing to explore the product, it is a win-win with the free trial model.
You can also enjoy some strategic integrations in this PIM software that help you simplify and make product experience management seamless.
Pros:
- Create a centralized repository for all your product content
- Import product information and digital assets from multiple sources
- Syndicate content in the right format to multiple channels
- Monitor market changes through actionable analytics
Cons:
- PIMs are quite complex to understand and work with. A deeper tutorial is what the support materials lack that helps users understand the product better. However, these can be easily fixed or are probably work-in-progress by the Salsify folks
- Bulk edits are really a lifesaver. It would be easier if this feature is a lot simpler and easy to use.
With three unique solutions in their product experience management suite – Akeneo onboarder, PIM, and Franklin Akeneo is definitely an end-to-end PIM software. It is an open source PIM system and the import engine allows you to pull data from any source. Once you onboard the product, you can define data attributes, complete product sheets, translate data into another language, and also add media files.
Pros:
- Store and organize all kinds of data like images, videos, and files with product data asset manager
- Discover the rules engine to configure attributes or automated classification
- Go to previous versions with “History version reverse”
- Manage advanced rights for people inside the company for different departments, language, and brand and outside the company for translators, suppliers, and partners
Cons:
- There is slight grumbling going on around about how the import/export processes are not very user-friendly. Not just that, the management of permissions also does not seem to be a very breezy task to do
- Akeneo does not seem to handle the integrations very well
Informatica is a scalable and flexible PIM software. It has an intuitive UI that allows efficient collaboration with internal and external teams. It allows seamless management of digital assets and complex product data regardless of the format. The automated data quality checks ensure standardization and enrichment of product data.
Pros:
- Manage digital assets and complex product information
- Superior supplier collaboration with an embedded self-service portal
- Automated data quality checks ensuring product information quality
Cons:
- The onboarding process was not very breezy.
- There are no adequate guides to help you explore the product
- The visual interface is not very appealing
Plytix is a robust and powerful PIM system. It is an intuitive and easy-to-use tool that helps managing product experience across multiple channels. Its fully customizable product catalog management software enables the building of error-free catalogs. The catalogs also offer B2B catalog management. Also, marketing teams can be benefitted by product analytics that helps in making informed marketing decisions.
Pros:
- Plytix is for both small businesses and large enterprises
- A single source of truth for all your data – that enables unlimited users to work on your product data at the same time
- Edit on the fly is a note-worthy feature that allows direct editing of product-label in the table-view
- Efficient content management through intelligent data filtering
- Allows syndication of contextual and optimized content
- Track product-level metrics across all online channels
Cons:
- Video guides seem to be what the users would expect to see to guide them better. It is probably already on their roadmap!
- While bulk edit feature is great, the ability to bulk edit attributes directly when you view them on the list would make it a lot more seamless.
Combining data management and experience management, Pimcore makes the lives of product and marketing teams a lot easier. Creating contextual content and compelling web content is made simpler by breaking up data silos.
It is an open source software and the solutions are largely classified into data management, experience management, and Pimcore platform. Data management constitutes PIM, DAM, MDM, and CDP. Experience management has WCM and digital commerce platform.
Pros:
- Can create a new product data model using the web-based data modeling engine
- The advanced workflow management helps to streamline business processes
- Pimcore data validation helps in monitoring the quality of product information
- Organization, aggregation, classification, and translation of rich product information based on a flexible and agile data model
Cons:
- The CMS module can be improved
- Also, the process of image uploading seems like a lengthy process to deal with
It is a PIM and MDM enabled platform aimed at creating differentiated customer experiences. Enterworks’ PIM is a comprehensive solution that aggregates product information from multiple sources and helps in centrally managing them. It is a 360-degree solution, meaning, you can onboard, cleanse, synchronize, and publish data – all through this platform.
Pros:
- Manage complex business processes and content through a drag-and-drop interface
- Collaborate between business, technical users, internal and external users by creating workflows
- Store, categorize and manage digital assets
- Utilize digital channel accelerators to reach marketplaces, multiple touchpoints, and social networks
- Allows seamless integration with other platforms
- Syndicate and update rich product information to multiple channels
- Supports multilingual, multi-country and multi-cultural content
Cons:
- There are some bugs and fixes that hinder the smooth use of the tool
- There aren’t adequate demo video content or guides to walk you through the product, especially when you start.
Contentserv is all about creating personalized product experiences. This product information management tool is diverse covering different modules – product information management suite, master data management software, digital asset management, and marketing experience management. The solution helps you reduce time-to-market, improve data quality, and drive better business results. Task management is made seamless by creating workflows and utilizing intuitive interfaces for collaboration and approvals.
Pros:
- Automate product onboarding from legacy tools and supplier feeds
- Enables collaboration by the creation of workflows
- Utilize powerful editing tools to enrich product information
- Complex data models for quick retrieval of relevant information
- Ensure content quality with rule-based classification and normalization
Cons:
- There aren’t adequate demo video content or guides to walk you through the product, especially when you start
- The pricing data is not available and hence does not help you choose a concrete plan
Wrapping Up
Investing in product information management (PIM) software could be one of the most strategic decisions your team has to make. As every business and their requirements are unique, there is no one PIM software that can serve them all. Depending on a lot of needs and other critical repercussions the choice can bring, you have to be very careful in evaluating the best PIM software. There are a set of standards and grounds for comparisons that should help you identify the most ideal fit.
If you may have to make the most rational choice, you cannot completely rely upon the online reviews or web copy claims. And this is exactly where we hope this post has helped. We have tried to understand the market, the key players, what the users feel about the product in addition to our research and compiled the top PIM software.
If we have missed out your favorite PIM solution vendor, feel free to comment below, we’d love to add them!
