Reps see everything or nothing.
Giving a rep the full catalog shows products outside the customer's agreement; giving them nothing means PDFs from marketing.
Use case · Illustrative scenario
01 · INDUSTRIAL & ELECTRICAL COMPONENTS
One gate for the rep, the dealer shop and the search engine.
A manufacturer of industrial and electrical components sells through about 400 dealers and a field sales team. PIM Gate gives each rep a view scoped to the customer's agreement, feeds dealer shops with deltas, and publishes a public, machine-readable catalog.
“The rep walks in with last quarter's PDF — and the dealer's shop still shows last year's data.”
02 · Today
Three audiences, one catalog, no shared door.
The company makes terminal blocks, connectors, relays, sensors, enclosures and cable glands — around 60,000 articles with detailed technical attributes, CAD references, approvals and data sheets. Product data lives in a PIM; agreements, assortments and customer price lists in the ERP; the rep-to-customer relationships in the CRM.
About 45 field sales reps and key account managers look after OEMs, panel builders and installers. Each customer has an agreement with its own assortment and price list. Before a meeting, reps ask marketing for a tailored product overview; it takes days, and it is outdated by the next price change.
Around 400 dealers resell the range, many with their own web shops. Some receive a quarterly full export, others copy data from the manufacturer's website by hand. Meanwhile buyers increasingly search on the open web and ask AI assistants — and find dealer pages with incomplete data instead of the manufacturer's.
| Who needs what | needs | today |
|---|---|---|
| Field sales | Customer-scoped range, prices, export | PDF on request |
| Dealers | Browse, download, shop data | Quarterly full export |
| Dealer shops | Machine-readable updates | Manual copy |
| Search · AI assistants | Structured public data | HTML only |
03 · Challenges
Where indirect distribution loses data.
Customer-specific documents take days.
Tailored overviews with the customer's assortment and prices are built by hand, one customer at a time.
Dealer shops run on full exports.
Quarterly dumps of 60,000 articles are too big to process often and too rare to be current.
Dealer integration is one-off every time.
Each dealer shop needs slightly different fields, formats and languages.
The manufacturer is invisible where buyers search.
Product pages carry no structured data; comparison portals and AI assistants take their answers from third-party pages.
04 · The setup
Same data. Three doors. Each scoped.
PIM Gate combines product data from the PIM with agreements and price lists from the ERP and rep assignments from the CRM. Reps see their customers' agreements. Dealers see the dealer range and pull changes into their shops. The public sees what you decide to publish — structured for machines.
Diagram. PIM, ERP, CRM and assets feed PIM Gate. PIM Gate serves a Sales Portal scoped by rep, customer and agreement, a dealer portal, dealer shops via REST API and delta sync, scheduled feeds for small dealers, and an Open Data layer for search engines, comparison portals and AI assistants.
Dealer shops get only what changed
What one rep sees for one customer
05 · Workflow
From agreement to rep, dealer and search result.
- 01
Read PIM, ERP and CRM.
Product data from the PIM; agreements, assortments and customer price lists as a daily ERP export; rep-to-customer assignments as a daily CRM file.
- 02
Turn agreements into catalog views.
Each agreement becomes a rule-based selection — product groups, exclusions, price list reference. Changes in the ERP update the view on the next sync.
- 03
The rep opens the customer.
In the Sales Portal a rep sees only their customers, and for each customer only the agreed range and prices — on a laptop or a phone in the meeting.
- 04
Customer-specific PDF or XLSX.
One click creates an overview in the customer's language with the customer's range and prices. Or the rep sends a share link with expiry date and download limit.
- 05
Portal for people, API for shops.
Dealers browse and download in the dealer portal. Dealer shops pull changes through the delta endpoint or receive webhooks; smaller dealers get a scheduled CSV or XLSX feed.
- 06
Findable by machines.
A public subset — technical attributes, approvals, images, data sheets — is published as schema.org JSON-LD, versioned feeds and a read-only API, including an endpoint for AI agents.
06 · Modules & portals
What this setup uses — and what is live today.
- LIVE
PIM connector · scheduled SFTP ingestion (ERP, CRM files)
Product data, agreements, price lists, rep mapping
- LIVE
Catalog selections (manual + rules) · saved filter templates
Agreements as catalog views
- 2026
Sales Portal (rep → customer mapping, customer-specific PDF/XLSX)
Field sales and key accounts
- 2026
Share links with expiry and download cap · collections
Rep shares a scoped selection
- ROADMAP
Activity log per shared link
See what a customer viewed or downloaded
- LIVE
Customer Portal as dealer portal
Dealers browse and download
- LIVE
Versioned REST API /v1 · delta endpoint · signed webhooks · scheduled delivery
Dealer shops and feeds
- 2026
Open Data module
JSON-LD, feeds, public API, AI-agent endpoint
- ROADMAP
Standard ERP / CRM connectors
Direct connection instead of file exports
07 · Expected effects
What typically changes.
Indicative
Reps wait for PDFs from marketing → Reps create customer-specific PDF or XLSX themselves, scoped to the agreement.
Indicative
Reps see the whole catalog → Reps see only their customers' agreed range and prices.
Indicative
Quarterly full exports to dealers → Dealer shops receive field-level deltas
about 95% smaller payloads than full exports
Indicative
Each dealer integration is custom → One API and a small set of feed profiles for all dealers.
Indicative
Invisible to structured search → Public product data as JSON-LD, feeds and an AI-agent endpoint.
Indicative
Seats for every rep → Reps and dealers are portal users — unlimited, no seat cost.
Qualitative expectations for this scenario, not measured results.
08 · Typical configuration
Version M, two portals, Open Data.
Product data, sales operations and marketing need 11–25 internal seats; 60,000 articles fit the ≤ 100k band; six languages fit Version M's eight. The two included portal modules are the Sales Portal and the dealer portal. Forty-five reps and 400 dealers are portal users — unlimited. Daily or hourly delta pulls from dealer shops stay well within M's 2 million API calls per month. Indicative list price €16,200 per year.
Options
- ETIM & BMEcat (≤ 100k) for electrical wholesale: + €7,200 / year
- Stage/test tenant, half capacity: + €2,550 / year
- All three data modules (Open Data, ETIM, DPP) together: −20% on the modules
| Item | € / year |
|---|---|
| Version M — 11–25 seats, ≤ 100k SKUs, 2 portal modules, 8 languages, 5 connectors | €10,200 |
| Sales Portal + Customer Portal (dealers) — both included in M | incl. |
| Open Data module · SKU band ≤ 100k | €6,000 |
| Indicative list price | from €16,200 |
09 · Rollout
Dealers first, then the field, then the open web.
- 01
Weeks 1–2 · Scope
Weeks 1–2Agreements and audiences. Which ERP fields define an agreement, which dealer tiers exist, which data is public.
- 02
Weeks 3–6 · Dealers
Weeks 3–6Dealer portal and API. Connect PIM and ERP export; dealer portal live; delta API for ten pilot dealer shops; CSV/XLSX feed for the rest.
- 03
Weeks 7–12 · Field sales
Weeks 7–12Sales Portal pilot. CRM mapping, agreement views, PDF/XLSX templates in six languages; pilot with one sales region.
- 04
From week 13 · Open Data
From week 13Publish. Define the public subset; JSON-LD on product pages, feeds for comparison portals, AI-agent endpoint.
Indicative plan. Sales Portal and Open Data phases start when these modules are available for your tenant.
10 · Next step
Recognize your field? Book a scoping call.
Bring one real agreement and one dealer's feed requirements. We show how the agreement becomes a catalog view and what the dealer shop would receive.
11 · Keep reading
More on this scenario
2026
Sales Portal
A view scoped to the customer's agreement.
LIVE
API, feeds & delivery
One API and a small set of feed profiles for every dealer.
2026
Open Data
Findable by search engines, marketplaces and AI agents.