CMS vs PIM: Key differences and how they work

Providing easy access to accurate product information is key to helping customers make confident purchasing decisions, whether they're buying a new pair of shoes or complex industrial equipment.

50% of consumers reported abandoning an online purchase in the last 6 months because they couldn't find sufficient product information, according to a 2024 survey from the PIM company Syndigo. While 74% of B2B buyers say they would switch suppliers if another B2B web store offered a better experience, according to a 2024 survey from Sana Commerce.

Getting product data out of disparate systems and spreadsheets and into a modern, searchable catalog isn't always easy, but it can have major business benefits. In our recent survey on the state of digital content:

• 92% of tech leaders say that it's a challenge to serve data and content from multiple sources to multiple devices or channels.

• 77% agree that the difficulty of exposing data and content restricted the revenue opportunity of their organization.

Content Management Systems (CMSs) and Product Information Management platforms (PIMs) are two types of software solutions that can be used to centralize and manage product data. This article takes a look at the key differences between them and when it makes sense to use a PIM, CMS, or a combination of both to modernize your product catalog.

#CMS vs PIM: Definition

Product Information Management (PIM)

A PIM is used to gather, store, and structure raw product data.

Key PIM functionality:

• Store and manage product data. Advanced database capabilities help teams organize structured product data like SKUs, product descriptions, images, attributes, technical specifications, pricing, and other documentation.

• Define the product catalog model. Create the product hierarchy, manage variations and configurations, and establish relationships between products, parts, and components.

• Consolidate product information from multiple sources. A PIM is able to ingest product data from a variety of sources (eCommerce platform, ERP, suppliers, etc) and standardize it to fit your catalog model.

• Manage data governance. Data validations, user permissions, and audit logs can ensure that product information is complete and compliant with regulations and industry standards.

• Ensure product data is consistent across channels. Product information lives in a central database and can be syndicated for use across the website, customer portals, print catalogs, dealers, distributors, etc.

Content Management System (CMS)

A CMS is used to create and publish content across websites, mobile apps, portals, and other digital touchpoints.

Key CMS functionality:

• Store and manage multimedia content. Manage the many different types of content needed for digital channels, including text, videos, interactive rich media, downloadable files, metadata, and UI components like buttons, banners, and forms.

• Define the content model. Create a blueprint of the content types in a project, the relationship between types, and how each type will be accessed and used.

• Enable non-technical teams to create and update content. A user-friendly UI allows marketers and product owners to publish changes and build new pages without developer assistance.

• Manage content lifecycle. Workflows, user permissions, versioning, and scheduled publishing help teams efficiently manage product launches, marketing campaigns, and seasonal updates.

• Ensure content is consistent across channels. Modern CMS solutions make it possible to reuse content across any digital channel, allowing teams to ''update once, update everywhere''.

#CMS vs PIM: Key differences when managing product catalogs

PIM

PIMs are specifically designed to handle large and complex catalogs. They organize product information in a highly structured database, which allows teams to centralize product data from multiple sources, make bulk updates to the catalog, and automate tasks like data transformation and enrichment.

Being a very targeted solution also means that all the platform's features revolve around making product management easier. Depending on the vendor, there may be prebuilt integrations, business logic, or product model templates that can be especially useful for companies in the early stages of digitizing their catalog.

A PIM is great for organizing product data, but that's really all it's intended for. You'll still need a CMS to manage how that data is used on product pages, as well as for all the other content that goes into making a digital catalog usable (company information, use cases, marketing content, rich media, contact forms, banners, buttons, etc), and for the overall content model of your website and other channels.

CMS

CMS is a much wider category of software than PIM, with solutions designed to cover a range of digital content needs - from SEO to eCommerce to complex content-driven applications. So, naturally, there is a pretty big variety in how well different CMSs can handle product data.

For the sake of simplicity, this article is going to talk about the catalog management capabilities of two overarching groups of CMS solutions, traditional and headless. Even within these groups, however, there is still quite a lot of variation in the ability to manage product data easily and at scale.

Traditional CMS

With a traditional CMS, content is created for specific webpages using page templates and a drag-and-drop editor. In general, this type of CMS lacks the data structure needed to handle complex product catalogs. The content model is tightly linked to a website theme and templates, and it isn't easy to integrate data from other systems into the CMS. So, keeping product data consistent between channels, or even between webpages, is often a manual process that can lead to duplication and human error.

CMSs in this group include no-code page builders (Squarespace, Wix), along with open-source (WordPress, Joomla) and enterprise (Sitecore, Adobe Experience Manager) platforms that were built back when a website was the only digital channel a business needed so it made sense to tie content to a webpage.

Headless CMS

A headless CMS detaches backend content management from frontend presentation (the head). Instead of being locked to a particular theme or templates, content is stored in a neutral way and can be delivered via API to any frontend. Content can be reused across channels, and companies are free to use their preferred frontend frameworks to design each touchpoint.

For this to work, content data has to be highly structured so that it can be shared via APIs. This makes a headless CMS a viable solution for catalog management, as product information can be treated as just another type of structured content data.

The major advantage of a headless CMS is flexibility. You can define your own content model, integrate content data from any system, and add new channels and features without having to make major changes to the underlying content structure. There's complete freedom to build a product management solution that's tailor-fit to your use case, but it does take development effort to set it up. Whereas a PIM is going to offer more out-of-the-box features and templates for managing product catalogs.

#Which approach is best for managing your product information?

Relying on a PIM alone

Relying solely on a PIM to handle your product content can be a good option if you want to give your internal teams, partners, and customers easy access to up-to-date catalog information, but your website is not a primary lead generation channel. The site may offer a way for existing customers to place orders online, but you don't need marketing content aimed at acquiring new customers, like product comparisons, industry guides, interactive elements, or promotional campaigns.

As mentioned earlier, even if your product catalog is fully managed within a PIM, you'll still need a CMS (or, in very simple cases, the storefront capabilities of an ecommerce platform) to handle the overall content model and any non-product content on your site.

Using a PIM alongside a CMS

Some companies choose to manage certain parts of the catalog in each system. For example, managing the product hierarchy and attributes in the PIM and using the CMS to manage product media like images, videos, user manuals, spec sheets, and other downloadable files.

This can be a great combination or a frustrating one, and it largely comes down to the CMS you're using. Trying this with a traditional CMS that lacks the structure to support integrations, or a homegrown content system that only a few people know how to use, often leads to slow, manual processes that make it hard to keep information consistent between systems.

When the Marketing team wanted to upload a video, they had to send it to the agency. They would upload it to a platform and send it back with an ID for insertion into the previous CMS. It was very time-consuming.

Integrating a PIM with a headless CMS is a much better option. Complex product data can live in the PIM, and the CMS can fetch it in real time so there is never any duplication. Content editors can work with product data directly in the CMS, enrich it with rich media and editorial content, and easily manage how products are showcased on each digital channel.

This is an especially beneficial approach if you already have a PIM you like. For example, Komax Group, a wire processing company, was happy with their PIM, but their legacy CMS was slowing the team and the website down. They switched to a headless approach and set up a GraphQL integration layer to connect the data from all their systems. Product data still lives in the PIM, but the marketing team can now work with it directly in the CMS UI and spin up new pages without the help of a developer.

Using a headless CMS to manage both content and product data

With an advanced headless CMS like Hygraph, which offers a very flexible content model and uses GraphQL to efficiently fetch data from remote sources, it's possible to fully handle the product catalog in the CMS.

This gives teams a single source of truth for all product and content data, the convenience of managing it all from one system, and a lot of control over how product information is used across channels and localized to different markets.

Initially, we started using Hygraph just to handle product content for our website. Today we also use it almost as a PIM - where Hygraph provides all the shipping estimates, customer notifications, and product variations.

Using a CMS to manage both products and content can be a particularly good solution for manufacturers that want to create a modern, searchable catalog without the complexity of eCommerce features.

#The benefits of using a headless CMS like Hygraph to manage your product catalog

Advanced data management with GraphQL

Hygraph CMS is natively built with GraphQL, a query language that was developed by Facebook engineers in 2012 when they needed a more efficient way to fetch data in order to scale their mobile app. Unlike REST APIs, which return a full set of data with each request, GraphQL gives data a structure and hierarchy that makes it possible to request just the information needed - no more, no less.

Hygraph leverages GraphQL to make it easy to integrate the CMS with other platforms and business systems. Data can be fetched from multiple sources, unified without migration or duplication, and delivered to any frontend with a universal API. All without having to build and maintain custom middleware.

The highly structured way that GraphQL handles data, along with Hygraph's flexible content modeling, makes it possible to use Hygraph instead of a traditional PIM to manage complex product catalogs.

Better editing experience for teams that manage product catalogs

Combined with the convenience of having a single source of truth for all product and content data, Hygraph offers an easy-to-learn editing UI that lets non-technical users quickly update product information, add new content, or even build new pages without the help of a developer. With advanced user permissions, workflows, and data validations to help teams confidently manage the catalog.

When it's easy to create and add content, there's also a lot more possibility to add content like user guides, product comparison, and marketing materials that can attract new customers and help them make purchasing decisions.

Scale and adapt as business needs change

With a headless CMS, the backend content structure is independent from the frontend presentation. This means that if you want to change how product information is displayed, or build custom features, or expand to new markets and channels, you can do so without having to rebuild the underlying product and content models.

Hygraph's API-centric design also supports an overall composable approach to technology. Where companies are able to ''compose'' their own tech stack of best-of-breed tools that are specialized in different parts of business and designed to easily integrate with other platforms. This modular architecture gives companies the flexibility to quickly add, remove, and swap out the tools in their stack as business needs change.

#Go beyond a digital brochure

Centralizing and structuring product data is a major step in modernizing the product catalog, and a PIM or a headless CMS are both a good option to do this.

Going beyond a searchable catalog, and delivering digital channels with rich content and custom features, can make product discovery even more convenient and drive new business. A headless CMS, whether on its own or integrated with an existing PIM, is more suited to manage this type of experience.

Ready to take advantage of a fully digital product catalog? See why Hygraph's easy to implement solution is the fast and flexible way to modernize your catalog.