Legacy PIM system vs. headless PIM system

In today's digital business world, the efficient management of product information is essential to remain competitive. Product information management (PIM) systems play a central role in how companies organize, manage and distribute their product data across different sales channels. Providing consistent and accurate product information is not only a technical advantage, but also a strategic advantage that contributes significantly to improving the product experience. An optimized product experience leads to increased customer satisfaction, higher conversion rates and ultimately stronger brand loyalty.

Companies are faced with the choice between two main approaches in the PIM area: the traditional, monolithic PIM system, also known as legacy PIM, and the modern headless PIM system.

Both approaches have their pros and cons, and choosing the right system can be critical to how well a company meets the growing demands of the market. In this article, we explore the differences between these two approaches and look at which is better suited to meet the needs of modern businesses.

• Limited flexibility: The tight integration of components makes it difficult to adapt the system to specific business requirements. Changes or extensions often require extensive development work, which leads to long development cycles.
• Difficult scalability: Since the entire system functions as a single unit, the entire platform must be scaled, even if only a sub-area requires more performance. This can be inefficient and expensive.
• Technical debt: Legacy systems are often based on older technologies that lose relevance over time. Maintaining and updating such systems can be difficult and costly, limiting the company's ability to innovate.
• Difficult integration: One challenge of legacy systems is connecting to other systems, often due to the weaker focus on APIs. As there are no standard interfaces, this integration often has to be developed individually, which is time-consuming and costly.

A modern headless PIM system is a flexible solution for product information management that is designed to offer companies greater adaptability and scalability. In contrast to legacy PIM systems, they are often based on the MACH architecture, which stands for microservices, API-first, cloud-native and headless. This architecture enables companies to develop highly scalable and flexible systems consisting of independent microservices. Each microservice fulfills a specific function and can be scaled or updated independently of each other.

The API-first approach, one of the most concise differentiators, ensures seamless communication between the microservices and enables easy integration of third-party providers. The cloud-native component ensures that the system runs on modern cloud platforms, which increases scalability and availability. Finally, the headless structure separates the backend from the user interface, allowing companies to develop customized frontends for different channels.

• API-first architecture: A modern PIM system uses an API-first architecture that enables seamless integration with other systems and tools. This makes it easier to adapt to new technologies and the existing infrastructure can be expanded efficiently.
• Agility and innovation: The decoupled structure of headless PIM systems enables companies to react more quickly to market changes and integrate new technologies such as AI. The front end and back end can be developed independently of each other, which shortens development cycles and reduces the time to market for new functions.

• Lack of an all-in-one solution: As headless systems are modular, they often lack the all-in-one convenience of a legacy PIM. Companies have to get used to the integration of different components, but these offer greater flexibility. There are software manufacturers who offer additional modules that enable a modular, quasi all-in-one solution. These modules are designed to work together seamlessly and combine the benefits of modularity with the convenience of an integrated solution

A practical example of the use of a headless PIM system is a retail company that operates both a web store and a mobile app. With a headless PIM system, the same backend that manages product information, pricing and inventory can serve both front ends. While the development team introduces new functions and a modern design for the mobile app, the web team can adapt the user interface of the web store in parallel without having to change the backend or the data structure. Thanks to the API-first architecture, both front ends access the same up-to-date data, which ensures a consistent user experience. This flexibility allows the company to respond more quickly to market trends without downtime or system conflicts.

The decision between a headless PIM and a legacy PIM depends largely on a company's individual requirements and objectives. Legacy PIM systems offer a stable and comprehensive solution that can be particularly suitable for companies with manageable requirements or limited IT resources. These systems are ideal for organizations that prefer an integrated solution that combines all basic functions in one package. However, legacy PIMs often reach their limits as organizations grow and requirements change. They are also often more costly to operate as they incur higher maintenance and infrastructure costs. Implementing new features and updates can also be more complex and expensive with legacy systems.

In contrast, headless PIM systems offer a flexible, scalable and future-proof alternative that enables companies to adapt quickly to a dynamic market environment. Thanks to their modular architecture, companies can expand, integrate and optimize their technology as required. This not only increases the ability to innovate, but also helps to reduce operating costs and increase efficiency.

Another key advantage of headless PIM systems is their ability to significantly improve the product experience. As user interfaces can be developed independently of the backend, companies have the ability to offer personalized and consistent experiences across all channels. At a time when customer expectations are continually rising, this offers a significant competitive advantage.