If you’re like most industrial manufacturers, your ERP is the nerve center of your business. It tracks inventory, manages finance, handles procurement—and you probably store product specs in there too.
But if you’re using your ERP to manage product content? You’re likely hitting a wall.
Because while your ERP might know what you sell, it doesn’t know how to sell it.
And that gap is costing you speed, accuracy, and ultimately—sales.
ERP Systems Weren’t Built for Content
ERPs like NetSuite, Linnworks, SAP, or Sage were designed for operations. They handle:
- Stock levels
- Order processing
- Supplier relationships
- Financial reporting
What they don’t handle well?
- Detailed product descriptions
- Spec management across variants
- Channel-specific content (like eCommerce or distributor exports)
- Rich assets like images, datasheets, certifications
- Translation or localization
So when marketing or sales needs launch-ready product content, they’re forced to extract partial info from the ERP, copy-paste it into spreadsheets, clean it manually, and reformat it for every single channel.
That’s a recipe for inconsistency, burnout, and errors.
The Real Cost of Using the Wrong Tool
When ERPs are stretched to manage product data, here’s what happens:
- Specs are incomplete or outdated
- Teams duplicate work across spreadsheets and folders
- Distributor uploads get rejected due to missing info
- Launch timelines drag out while content is patched together
This isn’t just an internal pain point—it shows up on the outside too:
- Poor SEO performance
- Confusing product pages
- Lost deals due to missing or inaccurate information
And let’s not forget the human cost—your engineers, product managers, and marketers spending more time retyping than actually innovating.
What PIM Was Designed to Do
A Product Information Management system picks up where your ERP leaves off.
It’s built to:
Store and structure thousands of product attributes
Manage relationships between parent and variant SKUs
Centralise assets like images, PDFs, and compliance documents
Handle content enrichment and validation
Syndicate product content to your website, distributors, and partners
It becomes the single source of truth for product content—while your ERP remains the source of truth for inventory and transactions.
Together, they work better. But they’re not interchangeable.
A Practical Example
Let’s say you’re launching a new line of panel-mount sensors.
Your ERP holds:
- Product name
- SKU
- Internal price
- Supplier
But to go to market, you also need:
- Technical specs
- Short and long descriptions
- Certifications (CE, UL, ATEX, etc.)
- Application examples
- Bullet-pointed features
- Images and dimensional drawings
- Channel-specific exports (BigCommerce, RS Components, etc.)
That’s where PIM shines. It collects, validates, and publishes this data—at scale.
The Bottom Line
Your ERP keeps your operations running.
But if you’re relying on it for product content, you’re leaving revenue on the table.
PIM isn’t a replacement for ERP. It’s the missing link that turns scattered product data into structured, enriched content that sells—across every channel.
Ready to reduce duplication, launch faster, and get your content working for you?
Let’s talk about how to layer PIM into your existing ERP stack the smart way.