Salesforce PIM: product data for Salesforce Commerce Cloud

Salesforce B2C Commerce (the platform many still call SFCC or Demandware) knows six product types: standard products, base products with variation groups and variation products, product sets and product bundles. A base product cannot be bought itself; shoppers buy its variations. Products in a set can be bought together or separately, while a bundle is only sold as a whole.

Salesforce recommends two catalogs. The product catalog mirrors your external system of record and is not assigned to a site. The storefront catalog holds the categories shoppers navigate, and each storefront has one. In Salesforce's words, most customers import product data from their PIM or other system of record into that product catalog and then enhance it in Business Manager.

Catalogs are imported from XML (schema catalog.xsd) or CSV in Business Manager, where CSV only works in MERGE mode. Localized values use xml:lang, and a value for a locale that does not exist on the instance is skipped with a data error. Custom attribute definitions cannot be imported through the Business Manager catalog import; they need the ImportCatalog pipelet with attribute definitions switched on.

For API access, Salesforce has moved to the Salesforce Commerce API (SCAPI). Its Admin Products API adds products to catalogs and edits attributes, variations, images, catalog assignments and product options. The older OCAPI is labeled legacy and is in maintenance-only mode, so new integrations should use SCAPI. For data coming from an external PIM, Salesforce points to its MuleSoft Accelerator.

B2B Commerce (and D2C) on the core Salesforce platform uses standard objects: Product2 for products, ProductCatalog and ProductCategory for the catalog, and ProductAttribute and ProductAttributeSet objects for variation attributes. Salesforce documents limits that shape your data model: 200 variants per parent product, one catalog per store, a soft limit of five attributes per attribute set and five category levels, and nine images per product.

Products can be loaded through a CSV import of up to 10,000 products per file. Any updateable Product2 field, custom fields included, can be a column. Each row needs a SKU, product code, product ID or external ID, the SKU cannot be changed by import, and files must be UTF-8. Larger catalogs and continuous updates usually go through the API.

Salesforce offers Product Catalog Management as part of Revenue Management (formerly Revenue Cloud). It manages a product portfolio with attributes, product classifications, simple and bundled products and rules. Its purpose is product setup for quoting, ordering and billing, not writing and translating product content for storefronts and marketplaces.

The other route is the AppExchange, where a search for "product information management" returns many listings, including PIM apps that run on the Salesforce platform. Whether a native Salesforce app or an external PIM fits better depends on where your other channels live: if Commerce Cloud is the only storefront, staying inside Salesforce is simpler; if you also sell on marketplaces and other webshops, an external PIM keeps channel logic out of the commerce platform.

Salesforce's catalog design already assumes a system of record upstream. A dedicated PIM in that role is most useful when:

Agree ownership first: usually the ERP owns SKU, price and stock, the PIM owns content and attributes, and Commerce Cloud owns merchandising such as storefront categories, sorting and promotions. Our PIM vs ERP guide explains the first half of that split. Then pick a pattern:

WISEPIM does not have a native Salesforce Commerce Cloud connector, and it does not write catalog XML for B2C Commerce out of the box. If a ready-made connector is a must have for you, that matters, and we would rather you know it now.

What works today: import products from your ERP or supplier files (CSV, Excel, XML or JSON) with saved mappings, then enrich, translate and check them in WISEPIM. For B2B Commerce, export products to CSV with a template in the Product2 column layout for the CSV import. For B2C Commerce, an export or the WISEPIM API feeds a transformation step, in your middleware or a small service, that writes catalog XML or calls the SCAPI Admin Products API. Webhooks report when a product is created, updated, enriched or translated, so that step can run on changes instead of on a timer.

If you sell on other channels next to Commerce Cloud, WISEPIM connects natively to webshops such as Shopify, WooCommerce and Magento 2 and publishes marketplace feeds through Feed Hub. See all PIM connections.