The Enterprise Guide to Salesforce Commerce Cloud PIM

Key takeaways:

• Commerce Cloud needs clean product data to deliver ROI. B2B and B2C Commerce Cloud are strong selling engines, but they’re only as effective as the product information you feed them—spreadsheets and siloed systems quickly create errors, delays, and lost revenue.
• Product data problems grow as catalogs and channels scale. Commerce Cloud isn’t a full product information management system, so relying on manual uploads or patchwork tools becomes a bottleneck for teams managing large, fast-changing catalogs.
• A Salesforce-native PIM creates a true single source of truth. Housing specs, copy, pricing, assets, and relationships in one centralized, Salesforce-built system keeps data accurate and consistent across storefronts, teams, and regions.
• Native PIMs outperform “connected” third-party tools. Many so-called Salesforce PIMs still depend on middleware and partial syncing, which leads to unreliable integrations and incomplete product listings—true native solutions avoid this friction.
• Pimly enables enterprise-scale, AI-ready product operations. Built directly on Salesforce, Pimly eliminates integration overhead, supports massive SKU updates quickly (e.g., Flash), streamlines cross-team workflows, and provides high-quality data for Agentforce and other AI automation.

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Growing a digital commerce presence is a no-brainer for many enterprises. After all, the world runs online. It’s not a question of if they should expand. The challenge is how they're supposed to manage growing product catalogs across multiple digital storefronts and marketplaces.

Salesforce Commerce Cloud is the starting point for many brands. 

For businesses selling directly to customers, B2C Commerce Cloud (which evolved from the Demandware acquisition) is the go-to platform. For those selling to other businesses, Salesforce offers B2B Commerce Cloud, a separate engine built from the CloudCraze acquisition.

While both platforms provide plenty of features to help businesses sell their product lines, they're only as good as the data you feed them. 

This is where many businesses run into trouble. Many don’t have an easy way to get their product info into these platforms, let alone keep it updated. They rely too heavily on spreadsheets, manual updates, and a patchwork of disconnected systems that lead to outdated product listings, pricing errors, slow or inaccurate service case resolutions, and lost revenue.

To maximize your Commerce Cloud investment, you need to solve this data problem.

Why product data challenges intensify in Salesforce Commerce Cloud

Salesforce Commerce Cloud does a fantastic job of helping B2B and B2C brands grow their business by launching new sites and tapping into new markets.

But while it's a powerful ecommerce platform, it's not a product information management (PIM) system. Unfortunately, many companies miss this key difference.  They prioritize their ecommerce initiative, believing (or hoping) that implementing Commerce Cloud will magically clean up their product data.

While Salesforce gives you basic functions, like a product record object, it’s not a dynamic database designed to manage large, expanding catalogs. When they run into this limitation, many companies opt to store product information in spreadsheets and upload it manually — which quickly backfires. 

All those manual updates, siloed systems, and inconsistent data become a massive bottleneck. Product data owners then have to painfully navigate through complicated catalogs spread across multiple product lines and sales channels. This not only costs time but also places even more stress on teams that are already under tight deadlines.

What is a Salesforce product information management (PIM) solution?

A PIM solution is a single source of truth where all your product data lives. This includes technical specifications, marketing copy, digital assets, related products, pricing information, and any other necessary details to sell your products online.

But unlike external spreadsheets and integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, a Salesforce-native PIM like Pimly comes built directly onto the same platform you use for commerce.

This means no extra integrations and no complex connectors to siloed systems. You can seamlessly sync your product data directly to Commerce Cloud.

Key benefits of a Salesforce PIM

Housing all of your product information in a Salesforce PIM delivers a range of benefits, including:

Centralized product data

When you use a PIM, all your product information becomes centralized and organized into a hierarchical data model. This makes it accessible and accurate across your entire Salesforce ecosystem.

You get a strong foundation that helps you create more consistent purchasing experiences for customers. But it also empowers your internal teams to make faster, smarter decisions.

Faster time-to-market

New product launches don’t always go smoothly. There's always a rush to complete assets and then transfer them from departmental databases to digital storefronts.

A Salesforce-native PIM streamlines product launches by replacing that manual effort with automated, centralized workflows.

And since native PIMs operate directly within Salesforce, all of this automation happens without needing to set up complicated APIs or middleware. So you can launch products faster and stay competitive in new markets.

Streamlined cross-team collaboration

As your business grows, keeping your teams on the same page isn't always easy. When marketing teams have one version of product data and sales teams have another, it often leads to inaccurate product listings, misquoted prices, and service errors.

Centralizing all this data creates a single source of truth for product data and enables a much more collaborative environment for teams who rely on detailed, accurate product information.

A native PIM solution creates a familiar environment for all your teams to work in, right inside the Salesforce platform. No more data siloes or uncertainty around the accuracy of product data in a spreadsheet.

Instead, you can build structured workflows that give you true governance. With the ability to audit and track listing changes and set designated user controls, you can establish real accountability within your teams.

Make your product information AI-ready

Salesforce Agentforce is a powerful tool that lets users build, deploy, and manage AI agents to automate workflows across the platform. But to get real value from any AI solution, you need strong data quality.

A Salesforce-native PIM helps you avoid the "garbage in, garbage out" trap. Solutions like Pimly deliver a clean working structure where you can easily centralize and update your product data, helping you leverage the full capabilities of solutions like Salesforce Agentforce. 

While a PIM creates smart product links to assets like warranty manuals or pricing sheets, Agentforce combines both natural language search and asset discovery, allowing AI to do much more than just locate files. 

By vectorizing unstructured data across your digital assets, Agentforce can extract valuable business insights buried deep in PDF manuals and spreadsheets, providing your sales and service teams with highly technical answers for each of your products in real time.

Why most PIM integrations with Salesforce fall short

Not all "Salesforce PIMs" are truly native. Even if they look connected, many are actually external systems that need extra software (middleware and APIs) to push data into Salesforce.

The issue is that third-party integrations can be unreliable. They break, cause delays, and need constant maintenance just to keep them running. So while these tools have potential, setup can be a nightmare, and they often hurt more than they help.

Even worse, to prevent errors, these connectors often only sync some of your product data. That means your Commerce Cloud storefront only gets part of the information it needs. Some data gets pushed, but crucial things like detailed specs or digital assets, such as technical manuals or marketing assets, get left behind.

This is why a truly native PIM solution is a must-have. It gives you real-time accuracy and a single, trustworthy source of truth for product information, removing the constant headaches that come with third-party integrations.

Pimly: Salesforce-native PIM, purpose-built for enterprise scale

A Salesforce-native PIM built for enterprise scale eliminates the data management hassle that many third-party integrations cause.

Pimly’s truly native design keeps product data in sync across your digital ecosystem, even as it grows more complex over time. And since Pimly is built right on Salesforce, you don’t need any extra APIs or infrastructure maintenance costs to run it.

Not only does this lower your total cost of ownership, but it also gives you access to faster, more accurate data management features. For example, the "Flash" feature lets you update thousands or even hundreds of thousands of SKUs in seconds.

Pimly also lets your teams manage all their workflows directly from the Salesforce interface. No need to juggle different logins or learn a separate platform. Your PIM scales effortlessly with your business as you add new catalogs, regions, and channels, and you can power it all with AI-driven automation through Agentforce.

Unify and activate product data with Pimly

Commerce Cloud is a powerful sales platform to help you build your business. But to scale effectively, you need the right data management solution.

A management system that relies on spreadsheets or third-party integrations can quickly break down and lead to increased costs over time. A Salesforce-native PIM solution with enterprise scalability and real-time activation is the more sustainable path forward.

Pimly delivers all three, eliminating the integration friction and creating a centralized hub for all your product data. It helps you to turn your Commerce Cloud into a single source of truth, providing every channel, team, and AI solution with accurate and accessible data.

Ready for a better ROI on your Salesforce investment? Schedule a free demo of Pimly today.