If you want to improve the product information quality for your business, you have probably contemplated the possibility of integrating PIM (Product Information Management) system with your existing ERP software. Or maybe you have considered extending the functionality of your existing ERP so that it could also serve as PIM? Let’s find out why the first approach is more beneficial both efficiency and budget-wise and what the limitations of the ERP-as-PIM strategy are.

We will also discuss how to perform PIM ERP integration in the most optimized and rational way possible.

Why is PIM ERP Integration so Beneficial for Your Business operations?

Does Your Businesses Need to Integrate their ERP with PIM?

PIM and ERP software serve different purposes with ERP systems not being designed to deal with complex and structured product information. Therefore, such an integration is not only reasonable but absolutely necessary for companies with multiple products and/or complex and elaborate product data needs where creating product description is a meticulous and detail-focused process that requires significant resources.

Not all companies require dedicated PIM software. Companies will a limited number of products as well as the businesses with the simple products do not require classification while using a lot of different attribute values, detailed descriptions, or multiple product photos. For them PIM solution is not a necessity. For example, if you are a bulk agricultural product supplier, a small local boutique, a raw material distributor, your business may do well without a PIM system due to the simplicity of your product information, digital assets, SKU numbers, attributes, etc. For such companies managing an additional information directly in the ERP software may be sufficient.

Targeted Business Processes

Some of the main purposes of an ERP system is managing warehouses and orders, while things like the quality of product descriptions is outside the scope of an ERP system. By providing a centralized database, ERP systems help track inventory levels, manage stock locations, process orders, and monitor supply chain activities. ERP systems are designed to manage all processes related to purchasing products, storing inventory, and delivering them to partners and/or end users.

ERP typically allows users to manage only product characteristics related to its weight, size and volume including height, length and width, since they are the most relevant for shipment and optimized packing. Due to this, all logistically important characteristics should always be stored in ERP.

Many ERP systems do not provide functionality for storing multiple product images. For example, the popular SAP Business One ERP enables its users to store only one product image.

Some ERPs are striving to improve their product data management functionalities by allowing their users to give products more attributes or adding more pictures or additional descriptions. This might work well for simpler products with a limited number of attributes. However, if the products are more complex, this often causes inconvenience for users.

Such ERP systems still do not concentrate on the main goals regarding the product information – unification, higher data quality, consistency, accuracy, and accessibility. Making it possible to store detailed product data is not the same as supporting you in creating high-quality product data, which is the biggest challenge on its own. PIM software, on the other hand, concentrates primarily on business processes related to preparing, management, and syndication of your product data.

Access Control

One more reason to use both PIM and ERP is the ability for company employees or other external specialists working on your product descriptions to have access to the product data they need without direct access to the company’s ERP system. As a result, copywriters, translators, photographers, or other specialists involved in the process can add and modify the product information within PIM system only, which, apart from being secure, also saves your ERP training time and resources.

Minimizing Costs

Integrating your ERP with PIM system means that no additional programming and customization is needed inside of ERP. While trying to add PIM functionality to your ERP inevitably leads to additional customization efforts, such customizations also must be also maintained in the future, making updates for your ERP unnecessarily complicated and expensive. Even if additional cost to integrate both systems will arise, they still be considerably lower than the cost needed to make PIM out of your ERP and make it work on the long run. Due to all of this, two separate systems integrated with each other is the best way to go. Customizing an ERP is costly, and the creation and support of PIM-like functionality can lead to a substantial long-term investment. It is far more reasonable to have two separate systems that undergo minimal customization.

How the PIM ERP integration typically works

Before delving into the reasons and methods of PIM ERP Integration, it is important to acknowledge that not every PIM system can be integrated with every ERP system. Therefore, it is often reasonable to choose PIM software for your business according to your ERP integration needs, the systems compatibility and the integrations PIM vendors provide.

When integrating PIM with ERP, ERP typically comes first. This means that PIM system imports data from ERP on a regular basis depending on the specific needs of certain companies. Some may synchronize data once per day while others might need hourly synchronization between the systems.

This integration is typically one-sided. Regarding the product life cycle, it is typically created in ERP and then transferred into PIM. However, the two-sided data exchange between ERP and PIM is also possible with more advanced PIM systems.

Which data is Synchronized?

Master data includes the main data about the product including product name, SKU number, article number. Logistics data like product weight and dimensions is typically synchronized into PIM as well. However, any other product-related data can be synchronized between ERP and PIM as well - product descriptions and names, their translations into different languages, product options, features and attributes, product images, product associations, and so on. Some data can be added directly in the PIM, and only some of this data can be synchronized back to the ERP, such as product names in different languages or specific attribute values that should be added primarily in the PIM.

How is data synchronized?

Different ERP systems have different technical abilities. Most modern ERPs have a REST API – standardized interface for data exchange. Therefore, the full integration of ERP with PIM can be implemented through REST API. This is the recommended way for everyone as far as it is technically possible.

If your ERP Software has no REST API, the integration can be implemented via other means.

Therefore, if the company has some unified system that saves all company data or some database like Oracle, MS SQL, the data can be exported from these systems through their REST API or by directly fulfilling database requests (through DB queries).

The third method, typical for older ERPs, is file exchange. In this case, the ERP generates files with data that could be in CSV, Excel, etc., and the PIM system regularly examines these files to import the data. Not all PIM systems support all these methods, and it is always reasonable to inquire the PIM vendor which integration method they support.

You can also use specialized software data integration platforms, middleware databases or data warehouse systems to implement the synchronization between your ERP system and PIM, if direct integration is not possible.

For example, AtroPIM supports all three integration methods – REST API, DB Queries and File ExcFhange.

Best Practices for Effective PIM ERP Integration

Data synchronization between system can be very complicated and require a lot of attention, as making data to be consistent cross different system is much more complicated as making them consistent within only one system.

Define your data sovereignty rules

It is important to ensure that after a synchronization certain data can be altered in one of the systems only. For example, the size is the characteristic that was created within ERP and therefore ERP comes first here. So, after synchronization of this kind of data into PIM system, this data can be viewed but should not be altered within PIM. The general rule is that master data that comes into PIM should not be changed within PIM.

You can also define some data to be created and managed in PIM, which should be synchronized back from PIM to ERP. Also, in this case it is important to ensure, that no one can change this data in ERP. The alternative, although a less common approach, is to create a new product within PIM system initially with this product appearing in ERP only after being purchased.

Define your data sync time schedule

Different data types can be synchronized according to customized time schedules to fulfill specific business requirements. Important information may need to be synchronized instantly, whereas less crucial information can be transmitted periodically, e.g. on an hourly or daily basis.

Using event-based synchronization is also an option, with updates automatically happening based on certain triggers. Defining a well-planned data synchronization schedule helps improve productivity, uphold data accuracy, and provide stakeholders with up-to-date information.

Ensure data sync monitoring

Effective monitoring is a key to effective data synchronization, therefore the system’s ability to alert system administrators about synchronization errors is so crucial. For example, the admin might receive notifications that outline specific errors individually or categorize them according to certain characteristics. For instance, the administrator may get notified about the completion of a specific number of jobs with errors. Furthermore, using dedicated widgets on the dashboard to track synchronization statistics and errors can significantly improve supervision.

Why Choose AtroPIM for Your PIM ERP Integration

AtroPIM is based on AtroCore, which is data integration platform. Thus, with AtroPIM you can a modern and efficient Product Information Management and Data Integration Platform in one solution.

AtroPIM is a unique solution on the market, that can not only perform bilateral product data synchronization, but also synchronize order, customer, contract data, etc. While standard PIM-ERP integration typically involves data sync in one direction, from ERP into PIM, an integration platform like AtroPIM enables bilateral data synchronization with multiple source and destination systems, also allowing orders and customers to be pulled from your e-commerce marketplaces (like Amazon, Otto etc.) and your online stores and be pushed directly to your (even multiple) ERP systems.