What Is the Difference Between PXM and PIM?
by Michelle Lawrence | Last Updated: Aug 3, 2023
Your product data is essential to your business. But if you’re not properly managing your product data and ensuring it has a designated place, you’re not in danger of only adding frustration to your employee’s plates, but you risk losing customers due to inaccuracies
What Is a PIM Used For?
Everyone has a junk drawer in their homes. It's where items that don’t have a home go to temporarily live. But it’s messy, unorganized, and usually, a headache to find what you’re looking for.
That’s what it’s like for manufacturers when they don’t have a Product Information Management System (PIM).
Think of a PIM system as the result of an episode of Marie Kondo’s show or after a shopping spree at the Container Store. There are containers for everything that are properly labeled and you’ll wonder how you lived like this before.
A PIM solution is a centralized location where you can neatly store your product information into various categories spending on what makes sense for your business.
You can store various things in a PIM like:
Pricing
SKUs
Product Descriptions
Related Products
Product Categories
What Is an Example of a PIM?
Now that you know that a tool like a PIM exists, you want to know what PIM tools in market might be a good fit for your business. Luckily, there are several solutions
PIM Software Examples
Lumavate PIM
Akeneo PIM
Acquia PIM
Plytix PIM
Salsify PIM
Pimcore PIM
But there’s one product information management software solution that’s better than the rest.
Lumavate’s PIM software functionality reigns supreme over the others for several reasons.
The other players don’t have as flexible or robust of a solution as Lumavate. With Lumavate’s platform, not only can you store all of your product data, but you can create dynamic product experiences tied to this data.
With the other platforms, you can store the data, you just can’t create a front-end experience for them to interact with the data, you would need to purchase a different solution.
What Is Product Experience Management
Does your brand pride itself on its customer experience? Customer experience is what can make or break a brand. Consumers report that after just two bad customer experiences, they would be willing to ditch a brand they’ve been loyal to for another brand.
Customer experience should be taken seriously and have all the necessary resources possible.
Did you know that a product experience is an extension of customer experience?
For example, if a customer is viewing a product catalog and can’t find the information they need with ease, that’s a lousy customer experience.
Product Experience Management (PXM) provides an engaging and accurate product experience to customers. A PXM company can help manufacturers deliver on this.
What Does a Good Product Experience Look Like?
A good product experience delivers the content and information the customer needs at that very moment. But more importantly, it doesn’t inundate the customer with information they don’t need at that point in time.
In order to create a good product experience, you need to put yourself in the consumers' shoes and ask yourself the following questions.
What? - Let’s say you’re in the market to purchase a new lawnmower. You’re viewing a brand’s digital catalog (because all product experiences should be digital at this point 👀). You would be overwhelmed and confused if each product displayed troubleshooting tips and other irrelevant product information for that point in time for the catalog.
Who? - Put yourself in the customer's shoes. Who is going to be engaging with this product experience? Is it a consumer? Is it an attendee at a trade show? Is it an employee who needs to take this information back to their boss?
How? - What’s the context of how the customer will access the product experience? What we mean by that is a PXM like Lumavate provides various ways the experience can be accessed. For example, a link to a digital product catalog can be sent out via email. A QR code for product information can be placed on product packaging. A near-field communication (NFC) chip can be placed on an in-aisle floor talker for shoppers to learn more information. Or a customer can text an activation code to pull up a warranty registration form for their new product.
What Is the Difference Between PXM and PIM?
We’ve arrived at the question of the hour, What’s the difference between PXM software and a PIM solution?
Product experience management tools are worth the investment because they encompass a ton of functionality. For instance, PXM solutions are made up of components like a PIM. PXMs also comprised additional functionality like a Content Management System (CMS) or a Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution.
In order to create an engaging product experience, manufacturers need access to all of this functionality.
Let’s discuss why.
The CMS and DAM functionality of the PXM is what enable manufacturers to store all of their product images, manuals, owner’s guides, product videos, etc. These are the digital assets needed to help support the story within the product experience.
The PIM functionally as we’ve discussed is where manufacturers store vital product data customers need in order to make an informed purchasing decision and can help sway their minds if they are between two brands.
A PXM encompasses all of this and makes it possible for manufacturers to create product experiences that dynamically pull in content and product information. Within a few hours, manufacturers can have an interactive product experience that is always accurate and engaging for customers to engage with.
Don’t waste another second having your product information thrown into a metaphorical junk drawer. You owe it to yourself and your customers to give Lumavate's PXM with PIM capabilities a try.
Schedule a demo with one of our product experts, or take an on-demand tour to see for yourself.