A practical way for B2B companies to split responsibility between systems, so the same product stops existing in four versions.
Ask a B2B manufacturer where the "real" version of a product lives and you often get three answers. The article number and price are in the ERP. The marketing text sits in the e-commerce platform. The latest datasheet is in someone's inbox. Each team is doing its job, but nobody owns the product as a whole.
The result is familiar. A customer portal filters on a dimension that is missing for half the range. A reseller receives an image of the wrong variant. A new market cannot launch because the translation was never approved. None of these are technology failures. They are ownership failures.
The fix starts with a simple question asked field by field: which system is allowed to change this value?
What the ERP should own
The ERP is the system of record for anything that affects money, stock or delivery:
- Article numbers and the basic article master
- Prices, customer-specific price lists and discounts
- Stock levels and availability
- Orders, invoices and delivery status
These values change because of business events, not because someone edited a web page. If the web shop is allowed to overwrite them, you will eventually sell something at the wrong price or promise stock you do not have. The ERP should push them out; other systems should read them.
What PIM should own
A PIM (Product Information Management) system owns the sellable, channel-ready description of the product:
- Marketing and technical descriptions in every language
- Structured attributes per product family (dimensions, materials, ratings)
- Images, datasheets, manuals and certificates linked to the right variant
- Rules for what each channel needs before a product may be published
The important word is structured. A good PIM model defines, per product family, which attributes are mandatory, which units they use and who approves them. That turns "is the data complete?" from a feeling into a check. If you are evaluating a PIM implementation, ask to see how a single change travels from entry to approval to publication.
What the e-commerce platform should own
The e-commerce or portal platform owns the customer experience:
- Navigation, search and category presentation
- The cart, checkout and order flow
- Customer accounts, self-service and saved lists
- Campaigns and content around the products
It should consume product data from PIM and commercial data from the ERP, not become a third place where product facts are maintained by hand.
Draw the line per field, not per system
The hard cases sit on the border. A product name might be created in the ERP but enriched in PIM. A price is owned by the ERP, but a portal may need to show it only to logged-in customers. Write these rules down field by field: source system, who may edit, where it is published. A one-page table with twenty rows will settle more arguments than any architecture diagram.
Make the integrations boring
Ownership only works if data moves reliably between the systems. That means:
- One direction per field. A value flows from its owner outwards and is never written back by a consumer.
- Clear triggers. Decide whether changes sync in real time, on a schedule or on approval.
- Visible errors. A failed sync should land with a named person, not in a log nobody reads.
- A plan for upgrades. ERP and platform versions change; the integration needs an owner after go-live, not just a project team that has moved on.
This is where many projects get expensive. Teams build custom ERP integrations from scratch, and then pay again every time the ERP or the platform is upgraded. Pre-built, tested connectors with a named owner after launch are usually cheaper over the life of the solution, even when the first price looks similar.
Three questions to ask before you choose
Whether you are replacing a web shop, adding a customer portal or introducing PIM, these three questions reveal most of the risk:
- Who owns each field? Ask the vendor to show the split between ERP, PIM and platform for your own product data, not a generic slide.
- What happens after go-live? Who fixes a broken sync on a Friday afternoon, and is that included or billed separately?
- What happens at the next upgrade? Are integrations kept compatible with new ERP and platform versions as part of the agreement?
Start small
You do not need to model your whole range on day one. Pick two or three product families, follow them from the ERP to the web, the portal and a reseller, and note every place a value is retyped or overridden. That map is your business case, and it usually shows that the problem was never the number of systems. It was that nobody had decided which one was in charge.
Glanser is a Litium Premium Solution Partner in Jönköping, Sweden. We build B2B e-commerce, customer portals and PIM solutions from a library of pre-built functions and ERP integrations, at a fixed price. More at glanser.com.
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