PIM and Omnichannel Strategy: How to Organize Product Data in Multi-Channel

Problem: Chaos in product data

Let's imagine an electrical wholesaler with an assortment from hundreds of suppliers. One manufacturer sends product information in PDF, another in Excel, and another on a B2B portal, often without pictures or detailed parameters. The introduction of the product into the ERP system, and then into the CMS of the online store, requires manual rewriting of data, which consumes hours. Publication on Allegro? You need to create a new description, because the product information from the ERP contains only the basics, such as SKU or price. As a result, the customer sees different prices, descriptions or photos depending on the sales channel. This creates confusion, undermines trust and leads to returns when, for example, the delivered product has a different casing than in the picture.

The situation is complicated by differences in the requirements of sales channels. On the Polish market, the product description must be in Polish, but on Amazon an English version is required in accordance with local regulations. Certificates and technical approvals vary by region, and marketplaces impose their own product hierarchies and attributes. Without a centralized product information and omnichannel strategy, companies are in chaos, wasting time and money on manual fixes.

A brief history of the problem of product management

At the beginning of the 21st century, with the development of e-commerce, companies began to sell through many channels — online stores, marketplaces, mobile applications. All product data was scattered: in ERP, CMS, spreadsheets. Manual management led to errors, and customers began to expect consistency — the same price and description in each channel. The lack of standardization and centralization of data has become a barrier to business scaling. Companies needed a solution that could organize the data and adapt it to different sales channels.

Solution: Implementation of PIM, DAM and Omnichannel marketing

To meet these challenges, PIM (Product Information Management), DAM (Digital Asset Management) and omnichannel strategies have been developed. Together, they create an ecosystem that allows companies to manage data and deliver a consistent shopping experience through catalog management — the process of organizing, updating and sharing product information to ensure its accuracy and consistency across all points of sale.
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PIM software: Centralization and standardization of product information

PIM is a system that centralizes all product data — from SKU numbers, descriptions, prices, to technical specifications and relationships between products (e.g. in the case of complementary products), providing a single source of truth for this data. Instead of manually rewriting data from PDFs, PIM for products imports it from suppliers, standardizes (e.g. mapping to ETIM classification), and allows easy customization for different sales channels. For example, for an online store the description can be detailed, and for Allegro short and marketing. PIM also allows you to manage multilingual versions of data, certificates or technical approvals, adapting them to the requirements of local markets.

From PIM to PXM: Building an Engaging Product Experience

While PIM for products focuses on centralizing and standardizing product data, PXM (Product Experience Management) goes a step further with an emphasis on creating a consistent and engaging customer experience. PXM uses PIM-managed data to deliver personalized, contextual and emotionally engaging content at every customer touchpoint—whether in an online store, marketplace, mobile app, or social media (the omnichannel product experience). For example, PXM allows you to adapt the way a product is presented (e.g. visualizations, storytelling, recommendations) to the preferences of a specific customer segment (so-called customer experience optimization), increasing their engagement and loyalty. Combined with the PXM strategy, PIM not only allows you to effectively manage your data, but also to build unique customer experiences that set them apart from the competition in the omnichannel strategy.

Automated Data Management: PIM and PXM Drive

The key element supporting the PIM system is automated data management. It is a process that uses technology to automatically collect, standardize, process and update product data without the need for manual intervention. Automatic data management allows you to import information from suppliers, clean data (e.g. remove duplicates, unify formats) and synchronize in real time with different sales channels such as Allegro, Amazon or online stores. In the context of PXM, automation enables dynamic adaptation of product content to customer behavior and preferences, e.g. through personalized recommendations or automatic translation of descriptions into different languages. With automated data management, companies save time, minimize errors, and ensure data consistency across all channels, which is the foundation of an effective omnichannel strategy.

Data Validation Workflow: Collaboration and Data Quality Control

The pim system also allows you to implement a Data Validation Process, which involves different people in the company and is based on precise authority management. In this process, all product data is completed, verified and accepted by different roles, such as copywriters, product managers or country managers, taking into account the different levels of access. For example, a copywriter can create and edit product descriptions, but only the country manager approves them before publication to ensure compliance with local market requirements or brand strategy (so-called data quality insights). The PIM system allows you to define roles and permissions, which allows you to configure a workflow where each participant has access to only the appropriate data and functions. This process not only ensures high quality and consistency of data, but also improves collaboration between teams, minimizes the risk of errors (e.g. publishing incomplete descriptions), and accelerates product launch.

Master Data Management: Combining PIM and BPA into a comprehensive data management system

PIM helps with product data management, but its full potential can be unleashed by integrating it with the broader MDM (Master Data Management) system with the support of Business Process Automation (BPA) services. MDM encompasses all the key core data in an organization — not just information and product management with PIM, but also customer, supplier, employee, and financial data — creating a single source of truth. Thanks to this, MDM ensures data consistency across different systems, such as ERP, CRM or OMS, which is crucial in an omnichannel strategy.

Business Process Automation (BPA) Services play a key role in building an effective PIM-based MDM system. BPA allows you to automate data integration processes between systems, such as synchronization of product data with PIM with customer information from CRM or inventory balances from ERP (inventory management). For example, with BPA, you can automate the process of updating product prices across different sales channels, generating invoices after placing an order, or launching marketing campaigns based on customer preference data. This type of automation eliminates manual tasks, reduces the risk of errors. Companies specializing in business process automation can design and implement such solutions by integrating PIM with other systems within MDM, creating a cohesive data ecosystem that drives operational efficiency and improves customer experience. As a result, the combination of PIM with BPA services allows companies to create a comprehensive MDM system that not only manages data, but also optimizes business processes, from sales to logistics.

Which PIM for products data management you should choose?

There are many PIM class systems on the market today such as Akeneo PIM, PIMCore, InRiver, Eggheads PIM, Crystallize, Crossbase, ContentServ and many more. Therefore, it is important to define our requirements in advance and choose the right one based on this.

Examples of requirements that we should consider when choosing a Product Information Management system:

• Are we a manufacturer or a reseller (e-commerce)?
• Do we operate in multiple markets and sales channels and are we looking for PIM to implement an omnichannel strategy?
• Do we have different portfolios and product hierarchies (so called catalog management) and sets of product attributes, depending on the sales channels?
• Do we want built-in support for integration with the OMS (Order Management System)?
• Do we want built-in support for publishing to the most popular marketplaces (e.g. Ebay, Amazon)?
• Do we want to sell products on a subscription model?
• Should our marketers, in addition to managing accurate product information, also have an extensive content management system CMS (Content Management System)?

Of course, these are just a few sample elements to consider when choosing a PIM system for omnichannel.

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DAM: Digital Asset Management

The PIM system with the often integrated Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution also allows you to organize multimedia — photos, videos, documents. DAM allows you to automatically process photos (e.g. crop, optimize resolution) and assign them to specific SKUs. For an electrical wholesaler, this means that even if a supplier provides one low-quality photo, DAM can generate 360-degree views or enhance the image, ensuring visual consistency across each channel.

Successful Omnichannel Strategy: Consistency in every channel

The implementation of the Omnichannel strategy ensures a unified shopping experience across all channels — from online stores, to marketplaces, to B2B portals. PIM solutions for Omnichannel deliver consistent data and resources, and omnichannel ensures that the customer sees the same price, description and photos, whether they buy in the mobile app or on Amazon. What's more, PIM helps adjust data to the specifics of the channel — for example, different product hierarchies on Allegro or specific attributes required by marketplaces.

How does the implemented PIM system for the company's products work in practice?

Let's take the example of the previously mentioned electrical wholesale. Suppose that it could have a PIM system that imports data from suppliers, e.g. via API, page scrapping or catalog card import. It then standardizes them to the internal format e.g. ETIM (ETIM classes, ETIM Features, ETIM Values) and synchronizes them with ERP and CMS. Descriptions are automatically translated into different languages, and certificates are adjusted to the regulation of a given market. DAM, part of the PIM solution, manages the photos, ensuring that each product variant has the right quality, and in combination with AI automatically generates photos of the products in the arrangements. When a manufacturer updates a specification, such as changing a product's firmware, PIM ensures that the change is sent to all channels in real time. On Allegro, the description is short and catchy, on the B2B portal - detailed, with a complete table of parameters. The customer gains consistent product information, and your company saves time and minimizes errors.

Benefits

• Consistency: A single version of the data in all channels, adapted to their specifics.
• Automation: Fast product rollouts and upgrades with PIM and DAM.
• Flexibility: Easily adapt data to different languages, regulations and product hierarchies.
• Customer Confidence: Accurate product information and high-quality multimedia reduce returns.

Product Information Management Summary

PIM, DAM and omnichannel are the answer to the chaos of data management. For manufacturers, wholesalers and resellers, they provide the foundation for scalable growth and effective response to customer needs in a multi-channel environment. With solutions such as Akeneo PIM, companies can implement centralized product information systems and thus offer their customers accurate product information in every channel.