MDM Vs PIM: Choosing the Right Platform for Your Business

The digital universe is increasing and more than ever before we are flooded in a sea of data.

The IDC predicts that our digital universe will double in size every two years and by 2025 will reach 163 trillion gigabytes.

With this statistic in mind, how do you manage your data within your business or organisation? For many, Master Data Management (MDM) will come to mind that offers to manage your customer, operational and transactional data. Perhaps you use a PIM solution that provides a central source of product data that can be used across different channels. Or maybe you don’t use a data management solution.

It is essential for retailers and digital brands to have the right systems in place to collect, organise and leverage their valuable consumer and product data.

In this post, we explore two main ways to effectively manage your product and consumer data using PIM and MDM.

What is PIM and MDM?

PIM

PIM or Product Information Management is a solution that centralises product data that allows team members to enrich and publish data across multiple channels. In short, a PIM helps to integrate product data across channels, collect relevant data and better reach consumers with their content.

Purpose

A PIM solution helps retailers achieve cross-channel integration as well as collect and manage the data needed to create better customer experiences by enriching product data and descriptions.

PIM solutions such as Akeneo are easy to connect to eCommerce channels and are useful for marketers and eCommerce Managers. Generally, PIM projects are faster to deploy, require fewer resources and deliver business value much sooner than MDM projects.

Benefits

Improve product data quality and accuracy
Improve overall catalogue and product information management processes
Decrease time-to-market
Easily expand into new markets and locales
Maintain brand identity across multi-touch points
Increase sales conversions
Reduce returns

MDM

Master Data Management (MDM) is a type of software infrastructure that determines the acquisition and management of key data such as customers, products and suppliers.

As the amount of data grows over time, it can get more challenging for businesses to maintain the quality of this data. This can have negative consequences for key business processes that rely on accurate data.

Purpose

MDM systems manage data across multiple data domains including employee, customer, financial, location and vendor information. This means that as a result, MDM projects are usually very broad and need a lot of resources to implement and maintain.

Benefits

Decreasing the complexity inherent in globalisation and expansion
Reducing data inconsistencies that can have major impacts on business operations
Allowing organisations to make edits to data in one area and ensure that those edits are reflected in all appropriate areas
Providing cleaner data for analysis
Supporting consistent data across multiple platforms and tools
Helping meet compliance regulations

Which platform is best for your business?

MDM and PIM systems do provide very similar capabilities which can be used to organise product and provide a single source of information. This helps to create a stronger basis for making major business decisions whilst keeping everyone on the same page.

If your main aim is to increase sales, adding more product SKUs or enter new markets or channels, then you need a PIM. According to Akeneo, a PIM solution is a dedicated, business-centric marketing solution that provides a much faster deployment and ROI compared to a MDM solution. PIM tools also have more robust connecters to eCommerce, print, mobile and POS systems, which are the main consumers of accurate product data for marketing and sales.

On the other hand, if you manage other data domains including customer, financial or location data and you have enough resources and time for deployment, MDM may be better suited to your business needs.

As an Akeneo PIM gold partner, iWeb can help you consolidate all of your data into one easy to use solution. Better product information means more purchases and fewer returns.