Product information management (PIM) is software that keeps every product's description, photos and specifications correct in one place, and sends them to every retailer, distributor and marketplace that sells the product. It is used mainly by manufacturers and brands, and by large distributors.
Here is the problem it solves. A manufacturer may make 4,000 products. Each product has dozens of details: its name, size, weight, material, ratings, certificates, photos, user manual and list price. Each place that sells the product wants these details in its own format. One marketplace wants five photos on a white background. A distributor wants the specifications in a spreadsheet with its own column names. A large retailer wants a file in a fixed electronic format. Without PIM, the details sit in spreadsheets, emails and shared folders. They soon differ from one place to another, and nobody knows which version is right.
A PIM holds one master record for each product. Each detail is stored once, in a fixed field with fixed units. The manufacturer's teams fill these fields. The engineering team adds the specifications, the marketing team adds the descriptions and photos, and a quality team checks them. A place that sells the product is called a channel. The PIM creates a version of the record for each channel, following that channel's rules, and sends it out automatically.
Consider a maker of electrical switches and circuit breakers in Vadodara. It launches a new 32-amp circuit breaker. An engineer enters the ratings, the dimensions and the BIS certificate number in the PIM. BIS is the Bureau of Indian Standards, which certifies electrical products in India. A marketing executive adds photos and a description in English and Hindi. Within a day, the PIM sends the listing to 25 distributors, to two marketplaces through marketplace management software, and to the company's own B2B ordering portal. One large retailer receives it as a file in a standard format, through electronic data interchange (EDI). A week later, the engineer corrects one dimension. The PIM sends the correction to every channel on the same day.
Product text is now often written with AI. AI product descriptions software reads the specifications and drafts the description for each channel. A person still checks the draft before the PIM sends it out.
How is PIM different from master data management (MDM)? MDM keeps one correct record of a company's core data, such as customers, suppliers and materials, for all its internal systems. PIM focuses on the product content that buyers read, such as descriptions, photos and specifications, and prepares it for each channel that sells the product.