5 Main Challenges of PIM Integration with eCommerce Platforms
The word “integration” is so commonplace in technology now that it seems like all software can be integrated. You can integrate your Garmin watch with a long list of social accounts to synchronize your workout and biometric data. You can integrate your Slack channel with your Google Drive, email, calendar, and dozens of other software. And you can integrate your business or personal spending apps with any number of bookkeeping solutions.
Most integrations use APIs to link apps and software together. In general, integrations connect user-facing front ends with related back-end functionality apps.
Without a doubt, integrations are handy. Adding integrations to your product information management process, specifically, could boost company performance on top of the increased accuracy of the data you manage.
However, in the ecosystem of software that your company requires (from your ERP to your CRM to your PLM to your PIM), some integrations make more sense than others. As it turns out, there’s a reason—or five—why not every integration is offered.
Today, we’re starting the conversation at ecommerce, because just about every brand is working online sales into their new normal. Recent Amber Engine research found that 10 years of ecommerce growth took place between March and June of 2020, and every market sign says that it will continue to grow faster than ever.
As you manage your digital storefronts and launch new products, the question arises—can you integrate your PIM directly with your ecommerce platforms to upload product data in one click?
The Short Answer:
A PIM radically changes your capacity to manage each product push to ecommerce. With your product data currently spread out between multiple software, not to mention all those spreadsheets you can hardly keep track of, your product information quickly becomes tarnished with out-of-date, inaccurate, and missing data. A PIM simplifies your data management and eradicates most manual work by aggregating product information, so you can simply clean it up and keep it 100% accurate moving forward.
Then, that anticipated moment comes…you’re ready to load your catalog to an online marketplace or update existing products or launch new ones!
It’s then that you wonder, “will some API work its magic and send the product information to each platform automatically?”
There are some PIM/marketplace integrations available. Though, in most cases, the PIM solutions with this capacity have a fairly short list of marketplaces they can integrate with. This means that you could tap into an integration if you have one of those PIMs that offer the feature and if you’re uploading product data to one of the specific ecommerce marketplaces that PIM offers integrations for. That turns out to be a lot of “ifs,” and no matter what, you will still need a process in place to upload to all your other channels.
In addition, any PIM integration with an ecommerce platform opens cans of worms you probably don’t want to scourge your operations with.
The good news? All PIMs are still designed to optimize your product data for any platform, and even without an integration you’re still a click away from exporting your data in the required format for each ecommerce marketplace. Then you upload the exported product information to the marketplace yourself (with one more easy click), and you’ve magically avoided those cans of worms. Keep reading to learn about the 5 main challenges when integrating a PIM with ecommerce platforms.
1. Weak Data
The success of your overall ecommerce strategy is tied directly to the strength of your PIM solution, and your PIM is only as strong as the data you prepare within it.
There are businesses, for instance, who adopt a PIM but don't use it optimally. The best use of a PIM is not just aggregating your data, but polishing it. (The right PIM, by the way, will walk you through each step of this process.)
The year 2020 flipped the script on the market when it came to product sales. Businesses that were previously just dabbling in ecommerce (or disregarding it all together) had to rush to sell and distribute their products on multiple online channels. It's natural that the topic of a PIM integration with online marketplaces came up. However, this kind of integration will be inherently flawed for any organization whose product data is not 100% correct, complete, and cleaned up for every channel.
Before entertaining the idea of a PIM/ecommerce integration, focus first on stronger data. Then you’ll be positioned to decide whether these other challenges from a PIM/ecommerce integrations are worth it for you.
2. Multiple companies in play
If your organization is multi-tiered with more than one company operating under it, then there are probably multiple local infrastructures feeding into your overall product development and distribution.
Ask yourself: is now the time to require all those local offices to use the same PIM and the same product data management processes? That’s exactly what would be required to feed all those silos into the same data pool to later upload it to market via an API integration.
Especially for companies whose operations are spread out across multiple countries, this major shift isn’t always a practical solution in the short-term. We look forward to a future where integrations are easier and don’t carry the challenges we’re sharing with you here, but for now, this particular challenge is insurmountable for most multi-tiered organizations.
3. It makes PIMs more expensive
PIMs are the liberators of time and the champions of ecommerce strategy for businesses that struggled through the manual slog of product data management. They are superb tools designed to aggregate product information and identify holes and inaccuracies for quick and measurable optimizations.
As soon as you start stacking new features on that core functionality, however, the price for your PIM goes up.
According to “The State of API Integrations” by Cloud Elements, a development team takes an average of 41 days to build a new API integration for an existing software. This means that the cost for the PIM software company goes up with every API that’s added; and that hike in cost is passed on in higher prices to the brands who purchase the PIM solution.
This explains why 56% of software providers were charging for their integration options in 2019, up from 44% in 2018.
The more cost-effective option for a business on multiple marketplaces today (who therefore would need multiple integrations) is to use their PIM solution for what it was designed to do and avoid stacking on unnecessary and complex features.
Keep reading for more on that in the next challenge…
4. An overly-complex PIM is an ineffective PIM
Not only does an overly-complex PIM get pricier, it also becomes inefficient.
Older PIM software solutions can be feature-rich, but they’re also outdated, expensive, and not agile enough for ecommerce. This is why the market has shifted to newer, simpler PIMs to manage their product information.
From a user perspective, the user interface required for a PIM-to-ecommerce integration would clutter your PIM and detract from what it was designed to do. Your PIM needs to be simple and flexible or it risks falling into the trap of “one-size-fits-none.” Integrations that seem important now will change tomorrow. Ecommerce didn’t just grow 10 years’ worth in a single quarter, it also changed—and it will continue changing. A simper PIM will keep you flexible to roll with the punches.
5. Memory and speed
Not only does an overly-complex PIM mean a messy user interface, it also requires the use of a lot more memory. Even if that’s memory stored in the cloud, it will be cumbersome for the PIM (which means cumbersome for you).
Just think about that too-big document that takes several minutes to boot up on your computer, or that website that loads slowly in strips despite all the tech available to the contrary. The source of the slow load is always the amount of memory the document or page requires.
By using a PIM to simply export your product data to the file format you need for a specific marketplace, you spend a few seconds and a couple clicks of your energy instead of waiting several minutes for a slower PIM to load.
You know you need a PIM. After all, none of your operational software solutions are going anywhere, because they’re each so specific to the departments that use them. Your data is used repeatedly across all of them, which is why your PIM acts as the hub to ensure consistent, complete and conversion-optimized product data.
If your PIM is to work its magic like it’s supposed to, you’ll have to take a hard look at the integrations you thought you wanted. Think twice. Integrations are sometimes a twinkle in our eye that don’t pan out in practical terms.
The right PIM will provide you an easy path to 100% optimized product data, leaving you a click away from any marketplace-specific exported file of the data you need. The cost-benefit of PIM/ecommerce integrations (with the challenges they bring) won’t be worth it for most businesses. This means the notion of these APIs can remain in the sandbox of ideas for another day.
Alex Borzo
Writer at Amber Engine
A brand can only communicate with messaging behind it, and that's where Alex Borzo comes in. A digital content marketer with a decade of experience, Alex's expertise shines in the research and writing she does for dozens of clients. When she connected with Amber Engine, it was a natural fit—AE had ambitious plans to provide their audience with even more valuable content to win in ecommerce, and Alex's background working with SaaS innovators positioned her to jump right in. The result? Brands and distributors are now discovering AE and all the best tactics to get to Amazon and other online marketplaces in weeks instead of months.