On almost every industrial project I’ve worked on, the same question shows up three weeks in: “why don’t we just store all that in the ERP?”. The answer isn’t ideological — it’s about the right tool for the right job.
What the ERP does
An ERP handles transactional flows. It answers: who buys what, at what price, with what stock, billed how, shipped when. It has a tight data model, strict business validation processes, and a culture of accounting traceability. It’s built to never lose a transaction.
What it doesn’t do well:
- store 60 heterogeneous technical attributes per SKU,
- manage 8 languages on a single product record,
- version a marketing description,
- distinguish the value exposed on marketplace A from the one sent to distributor B’s EDI.
What the PIM does
A PIM handles product knowledge. It answers: what does this reference look like, how is it described per family, per channel, per market. Its model is deliberately flexible: each family can have its own attributes, each attribute can be required on one channel and optional on another.
And most importantly: it’s built to be used by people who are not accountants — product teams, range managers, translators, photographers.
The rule we give our customers
If the data changes when there’s a transaction, it lives in the ERP. If it changes when there’s a new channel, a new language, or a marketing decision, it lives in the PIM.
Price, stock, availability → ERP. Description, photos, technical specs, translations, certifications → PIM.
The two talk continuously through APIs. It’s the PIM’s job to know when to ask the ERP — not to store the ERP’s data.
The trap everyone falls into once
Starting by putting product records in the ERP because “it’s already there”. Three years later, you end up with a twisted data model, custom fields everywhere, a product team that no longer understands the tool, and no way to open a new channel without a six-month IT project.
The ERP is good at what it does. The PIM is good at what it does. The boundary between them is not a technical line — it’s a business line.