How Much Is PIM Software?

Whether your organization offers one product or tens of thousands, chances are that your company engages in some sort of product information management operations. Product information management is necessary to be able to sell and market effectively: after all, if a customer asks a question or communicates a need, your organization needs to be able to answer it quickly and effectively. Without a product information management (PIM) solution product data is scattered across various storage solutions and prone to errors.

What Is the Meaning of PIM?

Simply put, product information management (PIM) is the process of managing all the types of product information necessary to market, sell, and service products. This information might be used by inside and outside sales teams, advertising agencies, marketing personnel, partners, resellers, and more. To ensure that all product information is up-to-date, relevant, and readily available, companies strive to centrally store all product information in a single location, so it can be effectively managed and accessed across the organization.

In the past, product information management was often managed using large, cumbersome spreadsheets that were always in some different version, leaving users to wonder if they were passing on the most up-to-date and relevant information to customers. These spreadsheets were seldom centralized and generally existed in several versions that may (or may not have) been correct. It was difficult for employees to work collaboratively using these spreadsheets, and it was easy for them to become riddled with errors.

Increasingly, forward-thinking companies are using product information management solutions, which is software designed to centralize product information and allow stakeholders to use it, update it, adapt it, customize it, and share it. Users can add or alter product data in a matter of minutes with no IT or development support required, making it easy to ensure that all stakeholders are using the latest and the best information.

What Does a PIM Solution Do?

PIM software is designed to be a central repository for storing and managing all types of product data, including customized product descriptions and features, SKU numbers, pricing, benefits, dimensions, user manuals, marketing materials, and technical information. Coupled with a Digital Asset Management (DAM) component, PIM solutions can also act as a repository for digital assets such as photographs, videos, customer testimonials, social media content, and more, making it easy to build omnichannel product information experiences.

The utility of a well-crafted PIM solution is that it serves as a single source of truth for all stakeholders, whether they are marketing employees, sales teams, product managers, partners, advertising agencies, and more. When the data is altered or updated centrally through the product information management software, there is no danger that employees are communicating outdated information to customers.

Companies seeking PIM capabilities should ensure that the solution they choose connects to their existing tech stack and offers out-of-the-box integrations with commonly used software solutions.

What Are the Largest PIM Software Companies?

PIM solutions are available today from a variety of software companies, large, small, and everything in between. These solutions vary greatly in product capabilities, cost, integration, functionality, and user-friendliness. PIM solution providers with the largest market share include Pimcore, Akeneo PIM, and Salsify. While these companies may boast the most customers, their solutions are often large, expensive to integrate, and complicated to manage.

Lumavate, a product experience management (PXM) platform, does not boast as much market share as Pimcore, Acquia PIM, or Salsify PIM, but it is in a unique position as the company releases new product functionality every two weeks to meet market needs. Larger and less agile PIM companies release product updates only a few times a year, which can significantly limit their functionality. For a company with dynamic product information management needs, the best PIM software is not the biggest PIM software.

Smaller and more agile companies such as Lumavate are also better positioned to offer the type of personalized and proactive customer support that larger companies do not find profitable: a reality that every company that has worked with a software mega-giant has faced when seeking an urgent response to a pressing need. When it comes to access to the best PIM tools in market today, backed by the type of hands-on customer support that is necessary for day-to-day operations, companies with pressing product information management needs should emphasize customer support when choosing PIM software companies.

How Much Is PIM Software?

The cost of a PIM solution can vary a great deal depending on the functionality and the way the solution is delivered (premise-based, cloud-based, or hybrid) and used, so the extent of a company’s product catalog or the number of employees might affect the final costs. Some PIM solutions are priced based on the number of SKUs stored in the PIM, while others are priced based on the number of times the product data is used.

Lumavate takes a different approach to pricing to ensure our products are affordable for companies that require a comprehensive product experience management (PXM) platform but do not have the kind of budgets necessary for the larger, more expensive solutions, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars annually.

With Lumavate, users can reap the benefits of a highly functional PXM platform for as little as $499 a month, making our solution as much as 75 percent more cost-effective than competitive solutions. This pricing includes coverage for an unlimited number of products unlimited Digital Asset Management storage, and unlimited unique digital experiences each month. For companies looking for a free PIM software experience, we offer a 14-day free trial of our Starter Plan so companies can see for themselves how easy Lumavate’s PIM, DAM, and Digital Experience Platform (DXP) are to use to quickly build digital product experiences tied to their product data and digital assets, including product catalogs, product data sheets, sales resources, events, videos, and the company website.

To learn more about Lumavate, take a product tour on our website, or schedule a demo to learn about how to choose the pricing structure and features that are the best fit for your business. Our solutions experts will help you see how easy it is to centralize your product data, manage digital assets, and create digital product experiences that will turn prospects into customers.