BOSTON, August 21, 2024 – Salsify's, latest white paper suggests that traditional Product Information Management (PIM) systems may soon be outpaced by Product Experience Management (PXM) as the solution to power the future of digital commerce. The comprehensive report, “PIM vs. PXM: Which Will Power the Future of Digital Commerce?”, explores how PXM’s robust capabilities extend beyond PIM to meet the evolving demands of today’s omnichannel marketplace, enabling brands, distributors, and retailers to excel on the digital shelf.
Thirty years ago, simply having a central, digital product database was a win — but this is no longer the case. The report states, “The architecture of a classic stand-alone PIM solution isn’t designed to support digital commerce. In fact, it may impede success. While a PIM solution can still accomplish its classic use cases around creating an internal ‘golden record’ of product information, this use case is entirely insufficient in today’s world…The architecture of classic PIM solutions was designed to avoid constant schema revision, while digital commerce requires it.”
According to author Rob Gonzalez, Salsify co-founder and chief marketing officer, “PXM is a new and distinct category of technology specifically created to centralize and connect product information at scale to any channel on the digital shelf. While classic PIM solutions tend to be internal, back-office data management systems, PXM solutions are a blend of PIM back-office data management functionality with front-office, market-facing capability. The goal of PXM is to optimize every touch point on the digital shelf — everywhere.”
A recent IDC report echoed these statements. In their 2023 SaaSPath study, IDC shared that “80% of commerce professionals surveyed indicated that they agree or strongly agree with the statement, ‘Does your company consider PIM to be part of a broader PXM platform?’ This is a big step in the evolution of PXM implying that vendors have truly created a new category of commerce software.”
“In a world where retailers continually change their attributes to drive their own unique shopping experiences and search algorithms, one single schema for a product in an old-world PIM simply won't support this,” said Carla El Gawly, Global Head of Digital Shelf Solutions at ICP. “We believe that for those brands just starting their digital commerce journey, or those ready to mature beyond their legacy technology solutions, PXM is the right solution."
PIM vs. PXM is a companion piece to “What is the Next Gen PXM?: The Past, Present and Future of Product Experience Management”, outlining in detail the use cases a PXM for the next decade must address. Taken together, Salsify hopes to provide IT and business decision makers at brands, retailers, and distributors with a clear road map as they prepare themselves for the highly personalized, highly automated future of digital commerce experiences.
Read the complete white paper here and visit www.salsify.com for more information.
About Salsify
Salsify helps thousands of brand manufacturers, distributors, and retailers in over 140 countries collaborate to win on the digital shelf. The company’s Product Experience Management (PXM) platform enables organizations to centralize all of their product content, connect to the commerce ecosystem, and automate business processes in order to deliver the best possible product experiences across every selling destination.
Learn how the world’s largest brands, including Mars, L'Oreal, Coca-Cola, Bosch, and ASICS, as well as retailers and distributors such as DoorDash, E.Leclerc, Carrefour, Metro, and Intermarché use Salsify every day to drive efficiency, power growth, and lead the digital shelf. For more information, please visit: www.salsify.com.
1 IDC, SaaSPath 2023: Examining the PIM/PXM SaaS Buyer’s Journey, IDC_P44535_082, August 3 2023.
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