What Is the Difference Between PIM and MDM?

What Is the Difference Between PIM and MDM?

PIM stands for Product Information Management while MDM meaning is Master Data Management system. A PIM solution is most often used to centralize the management of product information, which includes digital assets and product data. An MDM solution also centralizes information but includes a more broad scope of information about your organization. In other words, an MDM will provide your company with a singular source for all information across your entire business, going beyond just product data alone. In addition, an MDM solution will most often include enterprise-wide, or company-wide deployment, meaning its implementation is quite extensive. Conversely, a PIM is a much easier and more useful implementation for the sales and marketing teams, based on product information primarily.

What Is the Difference Between PIM and CMS?

Again, the PIM stands for a Product Management solution, which is a centralized management of integral product information as well as digital assets like a product information PDF and other product data. Consequently, this product information is used throughout many avenues from online to printed products, including sales materials, product catalogs, product packaging, websites, and more. CMS, which stands for Content Management System is instead used to create, publish, and edit online content. As a result, a CMS solution will often be used to manage website content.

How Do I Choose a PIM?

There are many types of PIM solutions on the market today. If you are trying to determine which PIM option is right for your brand, then consider the following five key questions listed below. Answering these questions will help guide you toward the right PIM solution for your individual organization’s needs: 

• What functionality do you need? (If you are needing primarily product information organization, then a PIM will likely be the best solution). 

• What other systems do you need to integrate with? (What company-wide systems are you already using that will have to be considered?) 

• How will the product information be used? (Is this information for customers, the sales team, the marketing team, all of the above? How will you use the information and how does it need to be accessed?) 

• What type of budget is defined for this initiative? (Money is always a consideration, so you want to find something cost-effective and efficient.) 

• What is your timeline for implementing a solution? (Time is money, so you want a solution that will be easy to implement and not require a great deal of technical know-how.)

As a noteworthy aside, it’s helpful to know that Lumavate is often the best choice for a wide variety of businesses. As a way to outline why, consider that Lumavate offers a robust Product Experience Management (PXM) platform. This means when you choose Lumavate, then you will have access to a PIM solution and PIM software that will help you centralize and manage all product data. It’s also good to know that of the many PIMs on the market, Lumavate is the only solution that offers this immense scope of functionality. In addition, as another advantage, Lumavate is only 75 percent more cost-effective than competitive solutions, even those that have less functionality than Lumavate.

What Is the Best PIM Software?

There are many types of PIM solutions or PIM tools in market available today, including Catsy, Salsify, Plytix, Inriver, Pimcore, Lumavate, and more. Each of these solutions offers a type of centralization and management of product data. However, many of these solutions do require additional functionality to utilize all these elements. Lumavate is the preferred and best PIM software due to its robust functionality, as it offers a PIM, DXP or Digital Experience Platform and a DAM or Digital Asset Management solution all within one solution.

Why Choosing a PIM Solution Is So Important to Your Marketing Team?

Product information is immensely beneficial to customers, and the easier this information is to find, the better experience a customer will have with your brand and your product. Product information can include anything from the product's name and description to the size options, the brand, the SKU, the price, the category it falls in, the color options, and more, along with product photos.

Therefore, a PIM solution will most often help your marketing team streamline their work as they know exactly where all the product information is found and it’s all in one central location. Having this information readily on hand can easily make the difference between a customer inquiry and a customer purchase. In addition, having a PIM solution incorporated within your sales team and company means that all friction can be removed between the sales team members as resources are readily available to every sales member, with no need for one person to beat another to needed resources. Of course, it also greatly reduces the time spent on tracking down product information for customers.

A Practical Example of Product Information and How It Can Help Close a Sale

Customers often walk into your place of business with a preconceived idea of what they want to buy, this includes the brand and features of a product. If you imagine this customer finding two products that they feel meet these requirements and are otherwise identical but one has just a printed card with basic information listed above the product, nothing more. The other has a QR code that enables the buyer to research more information via their smartphone. Which product do you think the customer will choose? This is the power of a PIM solution in one short example.

Which Is Better, a PIM or MDM Solution?

Just to sum up, PIM software and an MDM platform both centralize company-related information including product data. The single biggest difference is that a PIM does this for product information alone and provides ease of use since marketing teams, customers and sales team members can all access all the product information easily. An MDM, which again stands for Master Data Management, instead organizes many types of information for a business. This can include company-wide information like vendor information, data about customers, and employees, and of course product information. An MDM solution, because its scope is so broad, is also much harder than a PIM to implement and it is much more cost-effective than the hefty price tag that often comes along with MDM.

Therefore, while MDM has its place when your company needs to organize and access data better about products for your customers or sales team, then a PIM solution like Lumavate is a much more appropriate and affordable option. It’s also much easier to integrate and does not require a great breadth of technical knowledge. Therefore, if you are ready to learn what Lumavate can do for your organization, book a demo today to see the difference it can make.