Utilising a PIM for Shopify product management

How a PIM tool improves product management in Shopify

If managing product data means jumping between spreadsheets, Shopify, marketplaces and internal systems, it doesn’t take long for things to get out of hand. As product ranges expand and you introduce more SKUs, variants, attributes and regional differences, keeping everything accurate and in sync becomes increasingly difficult.

Small errors creep in easily. A missed update, an outdated spec or a wrongly mapped variant can quickly surface on your live store. Product launches slow down, fixes pile up and confidence in the data starts to drop. The admin effort grows, but the risk of mistakes grows with it.

This is where a Product Information Management (PIM) system becomes useful.

A PIM tool gives you a single place to manage all product information, from descriptions and specifications to imagery and regional variations. Instead of maintaining multiple spreadsheets and manual imports, product data is structured, controlled and distributed from one central source.

If your website is built on Shopify Plus (or if you are considering migrating to the platform) this can fundamentally change how product updates are handled. Rather than relying on repeated CSV uploads or individual channel updates, PIM keeps product data aligned across Shopify and connected platforms as changes are made.

Using a PIM tool isn’t just about convenience. It’s about keeping product operations manageable as complexity increases. When teams across marketing, merchandising and operations are working from the same data set, launches are smoother, localisation is easier and expanding into new channels becomes far less disruptive.

In this article, we’ll explain what a PIM tool is, how it integrates with Shopify and why it’s often the missing layer in large scale product management. If managing products is already slowing things down, or future growth is on the horizon, understanding how PIM fits into your setup can help prevent problems before they become entrenched.

What product information a PIM stores

A PIM tool is designed to handle much more than just product titles and SKUs. It stores every piece of structured and unstructured data that defines a product, including technical attributes (dimensions, materials, compatibility), marketing content and localisation details (translations, currencies, region-specific variants).

Many PIMs also allow for complex relationships between products, such as bundles, accessories, and configurable options, which makes managing larger or more varied catalogues far easier. The beauty of PIM is its flexibility: you can tailor it to match your catalogue’s structure, no matter how complex your product range becomes.

How data flows between PIM and Shopify

When integrated with Shopify, a PIM tool acts as the master data source that feeds accurate, enriched product information directly into your store. Updates made in the PIM automatically sync to Shopify, meaning there’s no need to manually upload CSVs or make repetitive edits in the Shopify admin.

This ensures that your store always displays the latest product information, pricing, stock levels, media, and more, without the risk of human error. The integration can also flow both ways, with inventory and order data returning from Shopify to help keep your PIM and other systems (like your ERP or warehouse software) aligned in real time.

Differences between PIM and ERP

While a PIM and an ERP both manage product-related data, they serve very different purposes. An ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system focuses on operational data, such as stock levels, procurement, logistics, and finance, whereas a PIM specialises in the customer-facing product content that appears online.

Your ERP knows how many products you have and where they are, whereas your PIM knows what those products are and how they should be presented. The two systems complement each other beautifully, with the ERP managing backend operations and the PIM powering rich, accurate product experiences on your eCommerce store.

The limits of spreadsheet-led product management

For many retailers, managing product data starts simply enough, a few spreadsheets shared between teams, maybe a CSV import into Shopify now and then. But as the business grows, so does the complexity. More products, more attributes, more channels, and suddenly, that once-manageable spreadsheet becomes a bottleneck. Version control issues, overwrites, and missing data start creeping in.

What once worked for a small team quickly becomes a source of friction, delays, and costly errors. This is the natural point where many retailers begin looking for a more scalable, centralised solution, and a PIM (Product Information Management) system becomes the logical next step.

Expanding product lines and variant complexity

As catalogues expand, so does the amount of data to manage. New product lines bring more SKUs, colours, sizes, and specifications, all of which need to be stored, described, and kept consistent across every channel.

Spreadsheets simply weren’t built for this kind of complexity. They’re prone to human error and lack the structure to manage relationships between products (for example, linking parent items with multiple variants). A PIM tool, by contrast, handles these complexities natively, ensuring product accuracy at scale.

Selling across multiple storefronts or regions

eCommerce growth often means selling on more channels, such as secondary Shopify storefronts, marketplaces like Amazon, or regional sites with different currencies and languages. Managing those variations manually in spreadsheets is time-consuming and error-prone.

A PIM streamlines this by letting you manage all versions of your product data in one place. You can maintain core information globally while tailoring specific details, such as translations, pricing, or imagery, for each market. That means faster launches and consistent product data everywhere your brand appears.

Adding more team members and needing workflow controls

When product management moves beyond one person, spreadsheets quickly show their limits. Multiple users working in the same file can lead to conflicts, lost updates, and confusion over which version is correct.

A PIM tool introduces workflow controls and user permissions, giving each team member clear responsibilities and approval steps. Whether it’s marketing adding descriptions or product managers enriching attributes, everyone works from the same central source. This not only improves efficiency but also ensures accountability and transparency across teams as your eCommerce operations scale.

Benefits of integrating PIM with Shopify

Integrating a PIM system with Shopify is all about boosting efficiency, accuracy, and speed to market. It eliminates the repetitive manual tasks that slow teams down and replaces them with streamlined, automated data flows.

For growing retailers, this integration becomes a foundation for reliable, scalable product management, where updates are faster, data is cleaner, and every channel reflects the same accurate information.

Centralised data reduces errors and inconsistencies

When product data lives across multiple spreadsheets, systems, and user folders, mistakes are almost inevitable. A typo or missing field in one file can quickly cause inconsistencies across your Shopify store and other channels.

By connecting Shopify to a centralised PIM, every product record is managed from one source of truth. 

Updates are made once and automatically synced across all touchpoints, ensuring that titles, descriptions, images, and specifications stay accurate everywhere. This not only reduces costly data errors but also builds customer trust with consistent, reliable information.

Faster product launches and updates

Preparing new products for launch can feel like a race against time. Gathering images, writing descriptions, and uploading data manually into Shopify often slows things down. A PIM integration speeds up this entire process. 

With product data already structured, enriched, and ready to go in the PIM, teams can publish new items or update existing ones in just a few clicks. This allows for quicker seasonal launches, smoother catalogue refreshes, and far less downtime between product approval and go-live.

Improved multichannel consistency

Many retailers operate multiple Shopify storefronts, regional sites, even additional marketplaces. Maintaining consistent product information across all of them is a huge challenge, unless a PIM is in place. 

Integrating your PIM tool with Shopify ensures that every channel receives the same accurate, brand-aligned data. You can also adapt product content for specific regions or audiences while maintaining control over your core data. The result is a unified product experience across every sales channel.

How to choose the right PIM tool for Shopify

When it comes to selecting the right PIM for your Shopify-powered business, you’re really choosing the backbone of your product-data infrastructure. You want a solution that not only supports your current needs, but also scales as your catalogue, channels and team grow. 

Below are some of the key criteria to keep in mind, and how they map to real-world Shopify workflows.

Compatibility with Shopify and ecosystem apps

Your PIM system must integrate cleanly with Shopify, ideally through a native connector or well-supported app, with minimal custom development. According to Shopify’s own guidelines, one of the most important selection factors is how easily the PIM connects smoothly with your existing systems like your eCommerce platform, inventory management, and marketing tools.

You should check:

• Does the PIM support Shopify’s metafields and variant structure?
• Does it handle updates automatically (rather than forcing manual CSV uploads)?
• Does it play nicely with other Shopify apps you already use?

To summarise, look for a PIM that integrates directly with Shopify and supports your existing apps. Tools like Jasper PIM for Shopify Plus, Salsify and Catsy PIM and DAM offer strong connections with Shopify’s API, making data flow effortless between systems.

Workflow and collaboration features

As your team grows, so too will the number of stakeholders touching product data: operations, marketing, localisation, governance. A good PIM should have built-in workflow controls, role-based permissions, approval steps, change logs, versioning, so you can manage who edits what, and when. As one vendor guide puts it, look for customisable workflows for different departments and parts of the supply chain.

From a practical standpoint: you’ll want the PIM to support:

• Bulk editing (for fast updates)
• Scheduled publishing (for timed launches)
• Digital-asset collaboration (images/videos) too

According to feature lists, automation and bulk edits are must-haves when you’re managing large catalogues.

Data modelling flexibility for collections and variations

The third key area is how well the PIM lets you define and manage your product structure, attributes, variants, hierarchies, regional variants, translations. Shopify’s native product model is flexible but can run into limitations if you have large numbers of variants, complex bundling, or multi-region needs.

A PIM tool should let you model your catalogue in the way that matches your business, not force you to conform. Shopify’s own guide emphasises features like “customisable fields for item information: product descriptions, product attributes, sizes, etc.”

In practice, ask: 

• Can you create category hierarchies (or at least flexible taxonomies) even if Shopify uses “collections”? 
• Can you enrich each variant (e.g., images, specifications) rather than just parent-level only? 
• Can you support multi-language, multi-currency, region-specific content? 

These modelling capabilities make the difference between a PIM that works now, and one that will grow with you.

Implementation tips for inventory management

Rolling out a PIM or inventory management system with your Shopify store may feel daunting, but the right implementation approach makes all the difference. 

A well-planned rollout maintains data integrity, and helps your team adapt with confidence. The goal isn’t just to go live quickly, it’s to go live smoothly, ensuring every product record, stock level, and data feed continues to work seamlessly as you transition from spreadsheets or older systems to a centralised, automated setup.

Start with your highest-value product categories

Instead of tackling your entire catalogue at once, begin by focusing on your most important or complex product categories, the ones that generate the highest revenue or require the most manual effort to manage. 

This targeted approach to PIM allows you to refine your setup, identify potential data gaps, and build internal best practices before scaling up. Once your key categories are successfully running through the PIM–Shopify workflow, you’ll have a proven foundation for expanding to the rest of your inventory with minimal risk.

Define data ownership across your team

A successful PIM or inventory management rollout isn’t just about software, it’s about people and processes.

Clearly defining who owns each type of product data (e.g., pricing, descriptions, stock levels, images) ensures accountability and prevents confusion. For example, your operations team might manage stock data, while marketing owns product descriptions and imagery.

Establishing these roles early on avoids duplication and ensures that updates flow through the right hands before being published to Shopify.

Test sync workflows in stages before full migration

Before flipping the switch on a full integration, test your PIM-to-Shopify syncs in controlled stages. Start with a small batch of products to validate data accuracy, variant mapping, and attribute alignment. 

Make sure stock updates, pricing changes, and media uploads behave as expected across systems. Once you’re confident in the process, gradually expand until your entire catalogue is connected.

This phased testing approach reduces risk, ensures data quality, and helps your team build confidence in the new workflow, so when you do complete the full migration, everything runs smoothly from day one.

Getting expert help with setting up PIM for Shopify

Setting up a PIM (Product Information Management) system for Shopify is a strategic investment, and getting it right from the start can save your team countless hours of rework later on.

At Absolute, we’ve helped countless retailers implement and optimise their PIM–Shopify integrations to achieve greater accuracy and speed to market. Whether you’re still evaluating options or ready to begin implementation, our team can guide you through the process step by step.

With deep expertise in Shopify Plus, Shopify B2B and long-term Shopify support, we can help you choose the right PIM, configure it for your needs, and integrate it seamlessly into your workflows. As a trusted Shopify Partner, we help you simplify your eCommerce operations with a PIM system.

If you’re ready to simplify your product management and scale with confidence, book a discovery call.