One is exclusively built for managing customers’ data; other is tailormade for products aimed towards customers. One manages products and through that offers customer experience; the other facilitates customer relationships. Both aim towards easing the lives of sales and marketing professionals, and both put customers at the center, while helping businesses scale and grow. Sounds like a riddle? Well, probably. While there can confusion over usages of PIM and CRM software, upon scratching the surface, a clear distinction emerges between both. And there are businesses successfully using both too. This insight aims to clear the air around their uses, benefits, differences and how both have proven to be revolutionary platforms in their own special ways.
A CRM is a system that manages detailed information about every customer and meticulously administers customer touchpoints to maximize consumer loyalty. Its advanced functionality and analytical tools combine customer information from all sources, analyze it deeply and apply outcomes to build stronger customer relationships. They integrate everything that an organization’s sales, marketing, and service teams know about specific consumers and offer a unified 360° view of the relationship with the customer.
As a result, CRMs help organizations understand customers better, provide higher levels of customer engagement and forge long-lasting customer relations. Organizations use CRM to pinpoint high-value customers, target them more effectively, cross-sell their products, and create offers tailored to specific customer requirements.
A PIM is a system that aids businesses in managing their product associated information primarily for the purpose of marketing and sales by overseeing the consolidation, enrichment, and completion of product data such as product specifications, digital assets, rich media, technical specifications, product metadata, and product information collected from every internal or external source in the organizational ecosystem.
This correct, consistent, complete, single version of information is then handed to the marketing and sales units and routed to every customer touchpoint. Thus, PIM enables organizations to organize and harmonize product information by making it more compliant and valuable through a continuous flow of trustworthy product data from the supplier-manufacturer chain into customers’ reach.
Need for PIM: The need for a PIM system is quite distinctive and can be mainly attributed to the organization’s long-term usage of legacy or homegrown systems that are no more equipped to manage neither the rising number of SKUs nor the increasing variety of selling channels. On top of that, when incorrect product data seeps into other departments’ and adversely affects their performances through flawed processes, and start showing up in the form of inconsistent, inaccurate, or late product updates, leading to higher number of product returns, delivery discrepancies, customer complaints, even abandoned carts. These are some of the signals that a specialized product information management product is needed. Internally, if product managers, marketers, salespeople are clueless about the ‘right’ data and teams at other regional or international locations are having a hard time—it means the time for a PIM has come.
Need for CRM: CRMs are required to build excellent customer relationships, understand their needs and choices, track and trace their behavior. All this arises out of a need to strike a chord, bolster the relationship, and earn their loyalty and trust to retain them for a long and beneficial association. The trigger for bringing a CRM could be as simple as lack of understanding or weak relationships with the customers, resulting in low retention or low repeat sales. It happens due to legacy means of handling customer data, leading to inconsistencies between departments. Marketing and salespeople can’t scale relationships and have to look for new customers every single time— impacting revenue numbers. If that’s the dilemma an organization faces, a CRM is what they need.
Despite a vast amount of difference, PIM and CRM do share certain similarities, mainly in terms of the end objectives they achieve for businesses:
| Task | Data Type | Importance | |
| PIM | PIM is a specialized software exclusively designed to consolidate, store, enrich product data and digital assets into a single repository from a variety of sources like ERP, CRM, OMS, WMS, internal systems, hard drives, external partners, etc. This data is then distributed to consumer-facing touchpoints for consistent customer experiences. | PIM’s data purview consists of every possible element of product-related information, ranging from product details and specifications, technical descriptions, pricing details, product lifecycle information, metadata information, and all kinds of digital assets, for as many regions or geographies as required. | This data directly affects the product’s selling performance. Hence, the accuracy, precision, and consistency needed for product data visibility to concerned departments, accurate and timely promotions—avoid time-consuming, ineffective processes and interdepartmental coordination discrepancies, and finally, ensure the best possible customer experience. |
| CRM | The core task of a CRM system is to manage interactions with customers by keeping updated customer information via not just tracking sales and providing customer support services but maintaining 360-degree communication with customers across devices and channels including reminders, feedbacks, apprising customers of latest offers and discounts. They also aid targeted marketing, sales, and entire business management. | CRM’s data purview consists of customer’s identity (name, date of birth, identity/nationality proof, physical address), email, social media profiles, job type, family information, lifestyle information, communication history (telephonic, email, in app), help desk support (chats, calls, chatbots), average order size, website or app visits, customer satisfaction index, and customer financial information (mode of purchase), etc. | CRMs importance emerges from the fact that entire sales performance hinges on it. They aid in continuous tracking of customer activity and feedback. They also help in accurate sales predictions and assist customer service teams in responding quickly. They keep the complete focus on customers by engaging them relentlessly and improving customer experience. And finally, CRMs help business leaders analyze product performance and sales strategy. |
As providing exceptional customer experience, higher sales and growth turn into long-term goals of organizations, a PIM and CRM integration can work as an ultimate means to achieve higher customer retention, and brand loyalty. Lowering product data inconsistencies, bolstering customer relations, enhancing product data dissemination, and personalized attention to customers can be a shot in the arm for businesses in more ways than one. A few of the most significant advantages of PIM and CRM integration are:
A few years back, a Gartner survey claimed that sometimes even costly and talented resources are misaligned in organizations. In this regard, PIM and CRM integration can mean a lot to B2C and B2B commerce, as consolidated, streamlined product data and customer data can contribute to a high degree of efficiency and collaboration. A PIM-CRM association is the best possible solution to that, as every single piece of data about products and every single customer communication is unified at a central place.
Pimcore PIM is compatible with every prevailing CRM software and ensures a bidirectional flow of information as well as real-time synchronization of data belonging to products, catalogs, digital assets. It allows for scheduling and batch processing alongside complete automation, including complicated business logic, and saves time and effort. Pimcore PIM, when teamed with a CRM, can help businesses with:
Explore the Features and Benefits of Pimcore PIM Platform
The retailing major struggled to get a higher ROI and was facing several challenges in their sales efforts. Their product information was being managed by a legacy software. And though they had a CRM in place, they could not get the best out of it, as whatever customer data and insights they got through the CRM, it could not be utilized in the sales process due to a lack of efficient data management practices.
Pimcore PIM replaced their legacy application. Consolidated product data from various sources and enriched it. This way, PIM extracted customers’ purchase and demographic data from the CRM system, performed customer segmentation, and mapped it with the PIM system.
Following this, intelligence about customer’s purchase preferences and inclinations were shared with sales and marketing for highly targeted campaigns. By achieving consistency with regards to product information and pairing it with the CRM data, the retail enterprise could unlock a cache of insights earlier hidden from them.
As an Impact, the enterprise ROI saw a significant jump within months. This helped the enterprise streamline many gaps, prepare for the future and build foolproof scalability plans.
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