Jun 16, 2022 | 8 minute read

Elastic Path Product Experience Manager (PXM) Q&A with David Stover and Julie Mall

You may have seen that last week we announced EP Product Experiences Manager (PXM). We are thrilled to bring this new product to market! If you missed the announcement, EP PXM centralizes commerce PIM, product merchandising and Catalog Composer capabilities into one place for merchandisers to unleash their creativity and bring the unique product experiences their business requires to life.

These reimagined capabilities are giving merchandising teams the control to create and launch differentiated products across every route to market (multiple business models, brands geographies, touchpoints) without heavy reliance on IT. I sat down with our Senior Director of Product Management David Stover and Vice President of Global Solution Engineering, Julie Mall to learn more about EP PXM. Check out what they had to say below.

Q: What is EP Product Experience Manager (EP PXM)?

Q: Why Did We Build This?

Q: How is the Architecture of EP PXM Different from Other Commerce Tools?

A: To summarize, the architecture of EP PXM is differentiated because it is completely decoupled, meaning that products, prices, categories, and catalogs are totally separate services. This unique architecture gives merchandisers the control to bring their complex requirements to life, without reliance on IT for custom workarounds.

More specifically, there's no tight coupling between categories (known as nodes in EP PXM) and product types, which gives merchandisers the flexibility to market specific products in their own unique categories. For example, creating a “Pink” category for Breast Cancer Awareness month which includes all different types of products from t-shirts to sneakers.

There’s also no tight coupling between prices and products which allows for multiple prices, in the same currency, to be assigned to a single product. This enables use cases like B2B account-specific catalogs, tiered or loyalty pricing, or simply the testing of different pricing based on geography or experiences. Oftentimes in other commerce platforms brands are forced to hack these use cases by using promotions which becomes incredibly complex to manage over time.

Another example of this total control is found in our variation builder, which is part of our Commerce PIM capability. With variation builder you can build up to 10,000 variations per product in seconds. Most commerce platforms in the market today limit you to around 200 variations per product. This saves merchandisers time and gives them the freedom to merchandise a wide range of child and parent products separately. This flexibility supports use cases like shop-the-room experiences or placing only a certain size or color product on sale.

Lastly, this decoupled architecture directly powers the unique value of both catalog composer and product merchandising capabilities. Learn more from David:

Q: Do I Have to Replatform to Use EP PXM?

A: No, you do not have to replatform to take advantage of EP PXM. Since EP PXM is a headless, API-first product, you can integrate it with your existing commerce platform and frontend to power product data and catalog management.

However, if a replatform is in your plans, you can migrate to Elastic Path Commerce Cloud and still reap the benefits of EP PXM, as it is included in that product.

Ready to Start Your Unique Product Experience Management (PXM)?

Elastic Path PXM combines re-imagined Commerce PIM, Product Merchandising, and Catalog Composer capabilities into one central place for merchandisers to create the complex product experiences that drive conversions and loyalty.

Go to Elastic Path PXM

Q: What Does This Mean to Merchandising Teams, Specifically What Are the Potential Benefits?

Q: What Does This Mean for Brands Overall?

A: Overall, this completely unlocks brands to bring unique and complex product experiences to life- at speed. If brands can access decoupled products and pricing, that means they can actually try out and test different pricing strategies, even A/B test different price points for products really seamlessly and again at scale without having to submit a ticket to IT…So, imagine a scenario where you want to understand if a slightly elevated price works better than a sale price.

Being able to dynamically swap a price book without having to write any code immediately unlocks knowledge for an organization about where products are going to sell, at what price, and into what target customer and so on.In addition to unique pricing strategies, EP PXM also unlocks a brands ability to power unique experiences. Learn more from Julie: