I'm CJ and I'm a PIM guy I've been part of hundreds of PIM implementations and one question keeps coming up over and over and that is can I connect our ERP system to the PIM or can I import data from our ERP system to the pen or we like this PIM system that you're showing us and can we take the data we're going to maintain in the PIM and push it back into our ERP system so I figured I'd take a moment and put a quick video to answer all these questions to go over the strengths of each system and talk through the logistics of how such an integration uh will look like if it makes sense to you let's take a step back and try to put these two systems side by side and evaluate their um their strengths what what is each system built to do why do these systems exist then let's proceed with why to integrate these systems and the scenarios when it doesn't make sense let's go through why not to integrate step three let's walk through the logistics of what such an integration entails what what are the options available and how to go about these options and what option makes sense in which sport scenario step four let's go through instead of Erp data being pushed to pin let's go through when it makes sense to push the data back from P from the pen to the Erp system and finally let's put it all together and let's see what that work for looks like and what the whole system looks like the number one objective of an Erp system is to focus internally and be an internal system for most organizations the purpose of an Erp system which is by the way also referred to as an inventory manage management system is to look within the organization and to say in the organization let's get all our data together centralize the data ensure there is a with workflow across all the teams and all the individual contributors in the company so in eurp system primarily handles operational data it also handles Human Resources finances as a whole bunch of different modules in an Erp system but within the but within the context of this conversation it's mainly operational information for example this includes item information like the SKU in all the a few other attributes that go with the skew it includes inventory information as in what are the warehouses that are involved and where the products are stored it may have some warranty information repair information ETC number three Erp systems also have financial data this includes pricing information along these skus and these products that have been sold also includes accounts receivable and accounts payable and finally uh creating statements and balances etc etc number four it also includes a lot of customer related data this includes information around invoices payment terms and also includes shipping and building app add es and payment information um so this from a high level this is the function of an Erp system is to have all this information and connect with different departments so the operations team the finance team and the uh sales customer service team and in general the purchasing operations all of those activities are within the within the organization are maintained in an Erp system Pim on the other hand the primary function of a pin is to Syndicate the data out and to share the information outside outside the organization it is the customer facing content so all information maintained in the pin directly or indirectly somehow is facing the customer this includes syndication as in syndication to e-commerce syndication to Distributors to retailers also includes sharing this information with the sales team and the customer success team and marketing team for creating PDFs and spec sheets and sell sheets also includes agencies or any third parties that rely on this product the third thing if does is it pulls together data stewards these are individuals or teams with within the company who maintain the data so if this is our pin system they the the data steers are responsible for maintaining the information such as someone in product management may be in charge of maintaining the specifications of the product and someone in marketing maybe adding the bullets features benefits so the different teams like product managers marketing teams these are the different teams that will that often maintain the DAT P along with also with some Logistics team as well as operations team because they have information on product Dimensions oer information regulatory data safety information warrant information all that information um is maintained by these different teams so a Pim facilitates this data maintenance number four a Pim offers topnotch data quality tools this includes controlling who is maintaining the data so it has controls around data as in the access levels who has right access who has read access to what type of information and properly putting this data in Choice list or the pro proper data domains so we know the lengths of product titles the images Etc and last but not not the least it helps in um the pin is built to capture digital assets that go along with the data so from a high level as a pimp is built to maintain and share the content that's customer facing in nature it's built to facilitate syndication across multiple channels it's builts to help data STS capture data the right user Capt the right information with a set of controls that are built into it a Pim is built to improve data quality by adding the right data domain so data is captured in the right format the right lengths with the right validation rules and finally the Pim helps in connecting all the digital assets together with the product data so it can be syndicated out or it can be shared online by the way this also includes websites can't forget websites and the difference between websites and e-commerce is websites maybe just information only and they're kind of like store uh like a show room to showcase the products that are being sold or being offered by the organization and e-commerce sometimes overlaps with it which is more for B2B or b2c purchasing and placing orders so far what we covered is the primary purpose of each system and how these systems have different capabilities and they're built for completely different purposes next let's take a quick look at the scenarios where an integration makes sense why should these systems be pulled together when to pull these systems together and when it doesn't make sense to pull the systems together so let's start with why the number one reason for an integration between uh in Erp and a pin is to increase speed to Market let's take an example example let's say item 101 is an approved item but it's not in stock so let's say that it is in draft status but let's say you received stock today and the wehouse is ready to ship this item and now it went from draft to active if an integration is in place then this change of status of the item can be directly communicated through an integration to the pin so in the pin 101 is now active across all channels such as your distribution channels your retailers and your Ecom and website this automation of going faster to Market and not having to depend on manual steps uh um and to to turn around this product from the ER to basically go live with this item faster can be achiev the integration so in other words number one reason is communicating across the entire content ecosystem for this item going from draft to active across all channels can be achieved with integration the second reason is the second reason for an integration is reducing errors if these systems were not integrated or connected the change of status of 101 from being a draft item to active has to be done manually across and communicated across each channel so we have to go from D to a distributor one distributor 2 retailer one store one if you're running shop fire Bomer store 2 Etc so this entire process can have holes in it if it's all done manually so the a better approach would be to connect these two systems and let the Pim handle all the syndication so this data that's once pushed from Erp to Pim is fully automated in all Downstream systems and folks and people uh and Ecom platforms are aware that this item is discontinued um not only is it faster but it's also it also you'll also have fewer errors because um someone may not may forget doing this entirely or miscommunicate an item easily you could have a different part number maybe there's a confusion down the road so it's not as accurate as a system had like does so that's the second reason is to reduce errors the third reason is for streamlining workflow this relates to speed to Market but in a lot of scenarios from Erp the Pim receives that uh the status change from draft to active then the pin can trigger a series of events like it can send a notification to marketing to check if all images are attached and marketing can Branch this workflow into creative for approval and then go to copyrighting to get all the descriptions approved and after that check with Logistics to make sure that all the safety and Regulatory data is in place and once both of these are approved get the final check and then deploy this data into the channels this workflow is only possible if uh this automation is only possible if this integration is in place or the integration facility is there so there is no lag between the Erp system saying this item is active and you can start marketing and go to market with this um and between the rest of the creative team starting to take control of the process so that workflow can be seamless and a lot of companies like that workflow to be in place and finally the last reason for integration is access to additional information additional info for example Erp systems have warehousing information let's say I can 101 is stored in multiple locations and you could have location one you have 12 items on hand same 101 location two you have 15 items 101 location 3 you have 50 items because this information is in Erp a lot of companies operate the channels without taking advantage of this but if you have this integration in place just store one store two store three all of them can carry the location and inventory information and they can leverage that and show customers what the shipping times are going to be or they can uh calculate the shipping fees so companies we help can take advantage of all of these um other data points that are available in the Erp system also the other data point is product group code or UPC codes with that information with UPC codes we could also use other tools to enrich content in a much more effective way so content enrichment is the last thing uh is content enrichment is a little easier when we have additional information like unit of measure UPC codes country of origin material information why because with tools like Ai and with tools like existing data out on the web a lot of scenarios where this information can be put to use but if that's all in the Erp system then the pin is kind of Blindsided with you know one of the pem is not at the not taking advantage of that information with AI being such an important part of content enrichment it's important to take advantage of all those other attributes in the Erp system like unit of measures material UPC codes so we can go out there and cases in some cases enrich that content so that's last benefit is content enrichment can benefit from integrating the two systems next let's go through the reasons why not to integrate not every company is set up the same way so there are many scenarios where integration does not make any sense the reason number one for why not to integrate is you're a new business let's say you're new business and and you have no Erp and you don't want to complicate things too early before you start generating Revenue then that's a perfect reason you can start with the pin and you can start with your Ecom platform and that brings us to number two is many Ecom platforms are built to handle a little bit of light Erp as in they have uh customer data in them they have some financial information enough in the beginning early days they also have some amount of inventory management tools or apps that can be purchased in their App Store to help with inventory management and finally they have a little bit of uh um Outreach and other marketing capabilities so a lot of companies who are e-commerce driven e-commerce first DTC companies that are getting started don't need this kind of integration so either if new or if you um are just using an Ecom platform and it has enough capability for now then this integration makes no sense but you may still have multiple stores so you can even put some of this data in the P like you can manage pricing in and you can manage inventory in him by creating additional attributes on the SKU so that in that case since you don't have an Erp system there is no need for it number three reason number three often is that you're in the middle of of or planning to replace your planning to replace your Erp system or in the process of upgrading I'm surprised how often we run into this scenario where a company we're working with is going through an Erp implementation or next year they are rolling out a new Erp and they don't want to put in the effort and understandably that makes perfect sense so in that scenario just get the data d to the Erp load it in to the pep and you're good until your new Erp takes shape so that's the third reason and last reason is that you're using the PIN for syndication only and it's a syndication P what it basically means is that you're not enriching any content in the P there is no real enrichment you're just using it as a method to feed multiple channels so your channel one which could be your distribution Channel your retail Channel your Ecom Channel and website so in this scenario it's continuously receiving one file and this file may be coming from another internal pin or PLM system and we have seen scenarios where there's multiple pin systems one for internally maintaining the product data with very rich workflows and it's been there for a long time and the company is literally looking for a way to quickly go to Shopify or e-commerce or um Amazon Walmart or Distributors like Ranger fast and the goal is just to spread information and to Syndicate the data so sending data to all these different channels is what you're looking for so in that case connecting to an Erp doesn't make any sense next let's talk about logistics what is the best way in which we can send the data from the Erp to P what are the options available and what option makes sense as we discussed so far Erp systems have skus or items in them the hero of this SL is our item and the skew that's maintain or items are maintained in the Erp system usually have a set of attributes obviously they have the skew number or the item ID or the item number they also have a very short description in this description the main purpose of this description is not to be customer facing but it's very short because it has to print on invoices and shipping labels it's cryptic but it serves the function serves the purpose what is meant for next there is a status attribute and this attribute is very important and I'll cover why that's so critical there's also a handful of other attributes like product group codes there is UPC code uh unit of measure country of origin Etc and all of these attributes are important and we call them Foundation attributes and the reason we call them foundational is because we can connect to the Erp system and pull that data out there's three ways primarily that this can be achieved number one using an API and as the name indicates is a it's an interface that's run between Systems computer to computer server to server no human intervention but it requires a lot of setup and programming in a lot of cases reques programming unless you're using something like next we and the pin comes out of box with that on this other side we have our pin and this is the integration between the two systems I say it as a dotted line because it requires some work but this is one method to connect these two systems this is ideal when the pin or the Erp has a connector built pre-built that's when this makes the most sense the second scenario or the second method in which these systems can be connected is through a CSV the way CSV works is we simply write a report on the Erp and the report is run on a schedule so this schedule can be a 7 by7 schedule or seven days a week or it can be twice a day and this CSV file is often pushed into is often pushed into a FD P site and in the FTP the file is dropped on the schedule and this file often is a very simple file it basically has the skew in it the skew number it has one header row and remaining rows in this are just data rows the skew the item status short description and a handful of all these other attributes we have listed here and the pin consumes this and generates a dashboard this data the last option is you always have manual export and import and this manual export can either be XLS or it can be CSV in this approach what we're doing is we're taking the data file periodically and importing it P it looks the same but it's manual this process however is automated and this automated process is of Maximum this is majority of cases this approach works and this is the most efficient and if you have Erp partner they can implement this you know in 6 to 8 hours or maybe even four hours in some cases now there are a few things to note when it comes to Logistics of this file into this CSV process so our recommendation often is if you feel that integration is key then go with CSV but here are some notes number one always include the status attribute and the reason you want to include the status is because if an item let's say item 101 goes from active to discontinued and you include all items in this file all statuses in this file then we can automatically mark this from active to discontinu to the pin but if you only include active items then the pin will never know what change the status so number one is include all statuses that's the key include all statuses in the file number two if your short descriptions have let's say a comma in them make sure you double quote the file so you call this you know include short description like this so this is also called escaping the data so anytime you suspect that there can be a comma in the file then make sure that that the whole data is included in a double in double quotes number three this file that we are sending try not to change the name or keep the same name so if let's say this is called P export. CSV keep it Pim export. CSV every day same file name that way the pro program that picks up this file can always look for the same file name in a predicable way number four make sure you set the right ownership or controls on the attributes in the pin ownership of attributes what we mean by that is in the pin you may say that short description status is a readon attribute so in the pin you can't change them that that way you're not you don't end up with conflicting information there are many scenarios when they can these two systems can fall out a sync and one reason is that you're allowing dual maintenance so the key is to understand which system owns what attribute and ensure that we're not allowing dual maintenance