5 Signs it’s time to upgrade your PIM software

1. Your teams struggle to respond when market demands change

Consumer behavior shifted after COVID-19 and has not returned to pre-pandemic patterns. Online shopping now occurs more frequently and at more times of day. McKinsey reports that more than 90% of consumers in the United States and China, and over 80% in Germany and the UK, shopped with an online-only retailer. Alongside that shift, expectations around speed and ease during digital buying journeys have increased.

Additionally, pressure increases as more consumers research products digitally. McKinsey reports that 32% of consumers use social media to research products before buying, which increases the need to update and align product information across platforms.

If your older PIM systems struggle in this environment, it’s because updates depend on release cycles and coordination rather than continuous change. Keeping product information current becomes harder, and response time starts shaping how your products perform in the market.

2. Your PIM upgrades take too long and cost too much

Upgrade cycles often reveal how expensive older PIM setups have become to maintain. If your systems rely on heavy configuration or custom development, you treat routine updates as planned initiatives, pulling in IT resources, adding testing cycles, and coordinating across teams.

The impact shows up in how work gets prioritized. Feature updates are delayed, improvements are postponed, and changes get bundled together to justify the effort involved. As a result, upgrade planning becomes cautious rather than strategic because every change introduces costs and risks that extend beyond the platform itself.

At the same time, budget pressure builds quietly. Ongoing maintenance, technical dependency, and upgrade effort start to outweigh the value the system delivers day to day. Your teams begin questioning whether continued spend still supports growth, or whether the original PIM investment is being locked into keeping the lights on rather than advancing product data.

If you see that upgrades demand more effort than progress, the conversation changes. The focus shifts from timing the next update to whether the platform continues to help maximize the value of the PIM investment as business requirements expand and channels multiply.

3. Your data model can’t adapt as your business grows

Product data models often get locked in early, long before the full shape of the business is clear. Categories, attributes, and relationships reflect what you sold at the time, not how your assortment expands over the years. Growth introduces new product types, additional data requirements, and more complex relationships that the original structure was never designed to support.

As the expansion moves beyond the original design, structural decisions carry more weight. Supporting new product structures feels uncertain because changes to the foundation are hard to reverse. Your data model begins shaping what is possible instead of adapting to what the business needs.

Modern PIM platforms take a different approach. Adaptable data models allow product structures to evolve as requirements change, without rebuilding the foundation each time. Smarter content onboarding supports mapping and validation as new data enters the system, helping your structure stay aligned as the business grows. Upgrading PIM becomes a practical step once the data model no longer reflects how your business actually operates.

4. Your PIM can’t support cross-team collaboration

Product information no longer sits with a single team. Product, marketing, compliance, e-commerce, and regional teams all rely on the same data to do their jobs. As that group expands, gaps in ownership and visibility become harder to ignore.

You start to see the strain in how work moves forward. Product updates depend on side conversations, approvals happen outside the system, and teams keep their own copies of information to stay productive. Collaboration happens around the PIM rather than within it, increasing reliance on meetings, files, and follow-ups.

Modern PIM platforms are designed for shared ownership. Configurable workflows clarify responsibilities and move product information from onboarding through readiness without manual coordination. Broader access through shared views gives teams visibility into the exact source of truth, reducing the need for exports or parallel systems.

Collaboration problems often get framed as communication gaps or process issues. Platform limitations are the real constraint. A PIM that cannot support shared ownership treats coordination as extra work rather than built-in behavior.

5. Your teams can’t see how products perform on the digital shelf

Product content continues to influence visibility and conversion long after it goes live. Rankings, pricing, reviews, and availability shift constantly across e-commerce platforms, yet performance feedback often sits outside product information workflows. Content gets published, reviewed later in separate tools, and adjusted after results slip rather than while conditions are changing.

Digital shelf visibility has become a priority because brands need to understand how product content performs as shoppers actively browse and buy. Tracking changes in visibility, pricing, and customer feedback as they happen allows your team to respond while performance still matters, not after results slip. Product information management plays a central role here, since updates only have an impact when your team can act quickly and with confidence.

If you want your product information to compete online, your brand needs a PIM platform that can work with evolving digital shelf performance data. Visibility, pricing, reviews, and content quality shift constantly across e-commerce platforms, and acting on those signals only works when product information can be updated as conditions change, not after performance has already declined.

Take action when your PIM shows its limits

Legacy PIM platforms were not designed for continuous change, shared ownership, or performance-driven product data. Cloud-native, multi-tenant SaaS PIM gives you a foundation that scales with your business, adapts without disruption, and keeps product information ready for every channel and market. 

Inriver supports the whole product journey with built-in syndication and digital shelf performance capabilities, so your team stays aligned and in control as requirements and regulations grow. 

If your current PIM feels restrictive, upgrading becomes a strategic move toward faster execution and stronger commercial results.

See how Inriver’s cloud-native PIM supports the entire product journey in a live demo.