When we surveyed 100 industrial manufacturing leaders about product data, PXM, and AI readiness, we expected to find shared pain points. We found them, but we also confirmed that the specific pain (and how it shows up) varies based on where you sit in the business.
The overall statistics in ‘The PXM Gap’ capture the industry-wide picture. But the cross-sectional breakdown by function tells a sharper story about where the product data problem lives for each team, and what to do about it.
Channel teams: governance is the headline problem
Channel professionals report the highest rate of data security and governance concerns among any functions in the study. Of that group, 81% reported experiencing data security or governance risks due to ungoverned product content in the past 12 months.
Makes sense, since channel teams sit closest to the point where inconsistent or ungoverned product data reaches the customer.
“Product information should be consistent across all channels in which customers interact with us.”
Director, Channel, Semiconductors Manufacturer
SURVEY RESPONDENT
For channel leaders, PXM is a risk management priority. When product information differs by channel, it creates compliance exposure. It damages distributor relationships and erodes customer trust. In fact, 28% of respondents cited friction in dealer or distributor relationships due to poor data quality as a challenge in the past 12 months.
Digital teams: technical debt is the blocker
Of digital leaders, 65% cited technical debt as a challenge. That’s the highest rate of any function.
When legacy platforms cannot be integrated with modern tools, digital teams end up doing the manual work. They build workarounds and maintain feeds that should be automated. They become the bottleneck for launches that need product data to be in the right place at the right time.
Of all respondents, 52% cited legacy technology as a top barrier. For digital leaders, it’s both a barrier and a daily operational reality.
IT teams: structural problems require structural solutions
IT leaders consistently identify structural issues as their biggest challenges. Nearly half (47%) cited inconsistent product information across channels, a lack of executive leadership priority, and data security or governance risks. These are all symptoms of product data management that has grown without governance.
IT is typically responsible for the integration layer, i.e., the systems that move product data between PIM, DAM, ERP, PLM, and downstream channels. When those integrations are manual or brittle, IT absorbs the support burden. But if leadership hasn’t prioritized product content as a strategic initiative, IT won’t have the support to invest in fixing it.
For IT leaders, the case for PXM is about governance and automation at the infrastructure level. It’s much more than just a platform decision, and it requires top-down support of PXM as a strategic initiative for the business.
Marketing teams: the problem starts upstream
Half of marketing respondents cited supplier frustration with manual or error-prone product data as a challenge. This is the single highest challenge cited in this group, which is a revealing signal. Their pain starts upstream, before product data ever reaches the systems marketing uses, and it compounds over time.
“Finding information quickly should not require too many steps or too much effort.”
C-Suite, Marketing, Construction Materials Manufacturer
SURVEY RESPONDENT
When suppliers deliver incomplete or inconsistent product data, marketing teams compensate manually by enriching content, chasing down specs, and rebuilding assets that should have been right from the start. For marketing teams working with complex supplier networks, it is a chronic drain on resources with little return.
When suppliers deliver incomplete or inconsistent product data, marketing teams compensate manually by enriching content, chasing down specs, and rebuilding assets that should have been right from the start. For these teams working with complex supplier networks, it is a chronic drain on resources with little return.
Ecommerce and product teams: the downstream cost of upstream gaps
Ecommerce and product leaders both need visibility into content readiness. They’re the first to feel the pain when fragmented product data delays a product launch.
When product content is not ready at launch, ecommerce teams cannot publish complete PDPs. Customers can’t find what they need. Search and discovery tools return poor results. And AI tools—which increasingly power product recommendations and guided selling—can only work with whatever data is available, whether it’s accurate or not.
Only 19% of respondents say they are very effective at launching new products within target timelines. For ecommerce and product teams, that number reflects a daily operational reality.
The cross-functional fix
The specific pains differ by function, but their source is the same. Fragmented product data environments create compliance exposure for channel teams, slow digital operations, overwhelm IT, complicate marketing, and cost product and ecommerce teams at launch.
PXM is the integrated, governed system that connects PIM and DAM to the rest of the stack and addresses these problems at the root.
The full report, including the complete cross-sectional analysis by function, is available free here.