What is PIM and when is it worth switching on?

PIM is one place where you keep your product data: descriptions, attributes, images, prices and stock. Instead of fixing the same product separately in every sales channel, you fix it once.

PIM has four screens in the panel menu:

• Product list — every product with its status, stock level, catalogue, category and manufacturer. From here you open a single product card.
• Statuses — your own product statuses, which you can arrange into groups (for example Public, Draft, Private).
• Automated actions — rules that react to changes in products.
• Settings — module configuration.

When is it worth switching on? When you sell the same product in more than one place, or when descriptions and images start drifting apart between channels. With a single sales channel PIM changes little.

PIM mostly triggers and rarely executes. It reacts to changes in products but performs little itself — it can change a product status and its stock. That is deliberate — publishing offers is OmniChannel's job and shipping is WMS's. PIM is the source of truth about the product, and signals flow from it to the other modules.

PIM is the data source for OmniChannel. Offers are built from what sits on the product card — description, images, parameters, category, price. So you make a correction once, in PIM, instead of separately on every offer in every channel.

The trigger list in PIM also contains an OMS group — triggers shared by the orders module. That is how Easyitem Sync works.

What PIM will not do on its own: it will not list an offer (that is OmniChannel), ship a parcel (WMS) or handle an order (OMS). The link to them comes from Easyitem Sync — only then can a change on the product card start publishing an offer or updating warehouse data by itself.