PIM and E-Commerce

03.06.2025 | Thomas Kern

The more standard products are sold, i.e. items that are produced to stock and are subject to high competitive pressure, the more important it is to be able to provide retail partners with the necessary product information, also known as e-catalogs. Of course, this also applies to your own website, but the leverage for sales via retail partners can be many times greater.

Data, data, data - in what form should it be provided?

Let's assume that your data is nicely organized in a PIM. Then you need a way to prepare the data specifically for the retail partner and an exchange format.

Important functions for data preparation are

• Determining the specific range of articles, the so-called sales assortment
• Specify the information fields (attributes, image categories, document types, text types, product relationship types, keywords)
• Select language and country
• Optionally define a classification (own classification or standard classifications such as ECLASS or ETIM)
• Define the price list

It must be possible to specifically configure the exchange format with these contents. In BMEcat, for example, two text fields can be filled, the so-called shorttext and longtext, and additional text fields can be extended (so-called UDX User Defined Extension). Excel is completely flexible, but not standardized.

Typical exchange formats are:

• BMEcat (formats 1.2 or 2005) is a very well-known exchange format, especially in D/A/CH, and an absolute MUST(https://www.bme.de/services/bmecat/downloads_BMEcat/)
• Our popular Excel tool (with all its known advantages and disadvantages) is often requested, even by large portals. More on this later.
• In other countries there are other well-known exchange formats, e.g. FAB-DIS in France or EZ-base in the Netherlands.

BMEcat

BMEcat 2005 is the newer standard and can contain several languages (BMEcat 1.2 only one language). However, BMEcat 1.2 is still widely used.

Standard classifications are also often required. These can be integrated in the BMEcat format. In some cases, there are even specific BMEcat versions, e.g. BMEcat/ETIM Version 5 for the electrical industry(https://www.etim.ch/de/downloads/downloads/2-bmecat).

Excel

Excel is a very flexible exchange format, but this must always be agreed with the trading partner. In some cases, the trading partner specifies which columns are to be filled and how, and possibly even the article numbers from their system, which you as the manufacturer must then map to your article numbers.

Tips

To begin with, ask your trading partners which formats and standard classifications are required. Ideally, you should be able to fulfill all requests and satisfy your customers. In my opinion, it would be a mistake to try to agree on a common denominator of formats. Why not offer BMEcat in both versions and ECLASS and ETIM in the required versions? Why not offer Excel files in all facets? The attempt to persuade the trading partner to switch to one format may succeed, but as a market-leading company, you should also be the market leader in data provision.

On the system side, there are basically two approaches. Either the PIM masters the required formats and classifications, i.e. it is fully integrated, or a third-party tool is required to process data exports from the PIM. The former is of course ideal, because then you don't have to leave your familiar software and all correlations are stored in one system. If a third-party tool is required, you should make sure that the connection to the PIM is as smooth as possible, otherwise you will have a lot of work with data synchronization, mapping, new configurations and data exports.

Organizationally, you should have at least two employees who are familiar with the process. If you have tools that require less manual work and more mental work, this is also an exciting topic. And it can't be compared with the procedure without a tool, where you spend days laboriously preparing lists by copying and pasting, collecting and converting images and documents.

Conclusion

It is unacceptable that lists for important trading partners have to be compiled by hand by specialists who spend days copying. This costs too much time that you don't have in competition, too many resources that you don't have and too much joyless work.

Conversely, if the employees responsible for providing data are asked whether they are happy when a retail partner requests product data, then the goal has been achieved:

• All required product data, images, texts etc. are available centrally and up-to-date in the PIM
• All translations are available centrally in the PIM
• All required formats and classifications can be set specifically for the retail partner
• Data is provided at the touch of a button