AI is raising the stakes for product information. The 2026 ISG Buyers Guides™ for PIM and PXM highlight the growing importance of integration, governance, automation, and AI capabilities. Akeneo’s performance across these areas offers a window into what modern enterprises should expect from their product data foundation. Discover why the next generation of product experiences starts with connected, governed, AI-ready product information.
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For years, product information management could be treated primarily as an operational discipline: centralize the catalog, improve data quality, and make sure accurate information reaches the right channels.
Recently, that job has become much bigger.
Product information now supports everything from eCommerce and marketplaces to internal operations, partner ecosystems, customer experience, and increasingly, AI-powered discovery and automation. As those environments become more connected, enterprises need product information that can move between systems and teams without losing the governance, context, and control the business depends on.
In other words, product data is becoming infrastructure for how modern businesses operate, engage customers, and prepare for AI.
That changing role is reflected in two recent evaluations published by ISG Software Research: the ISG Buyers Guide™ for Product Information Management Platforms 2026 and the ISG Buyers Guide™ for Product Experience Management 2026.
ISG Research defines PIM around managing and using product information across front- and back-office applications and processes. PXM extends that focus to managing customer experiences through systems that support product-related activities.
Together, the two guides reinforce an increasingly important point: modern PIM and PXM decisions are also decisions about integration, governance, automation, and AI readiness.
The ISG Buyers Guide™ for Product Information Management Platforms 2026 evaluated 21 software providers. Akeneo was placed in the Exemplary category, while the Buyers Guide Insight highlighted strengths across both core platform requirements and emerging AI capabilities.
ISG Research specifically highlighted Akeneo’s performance in Integration, an increasingly important consideration when product information has to flow between PIM, commerce platforms, ERP systems, supplier ecosystems, marketplaces, and customer-facing channels. It also identified License, Use and Audit as an area of differentiation, alongside Privacy and Technology Administration capabilities that support enterprise oversight.
When product data touches more systems, processes, teams, and automated workflows, enterprises need to know that information can move without sacrificing control or transparency.
At the same time, ISG Research highlighted Akeneo’s capabilities in Generative AI and Platform Support for AI, connecting the traditional role of PIM with a rapidly emerging enterprise requirement: preparing product information for AI-enabled use cases.
View the Akeno ISG Buyers Guide Insight for PIM Platforms here.
Managing product information, however, is only part of the equation.
Customers never see your taxonomy or data governance model. They see the outcome: the description on a product page, the specifications on a marketplace, the search result that helps them discover an item, or the answer an AI assistant gives when they ask for a recommendation.
That is where PXM comes in.
The ISG Buyers Guide™ for Product Experience Management 2026 evaluated 14 software providers, and Akeneo again was identified as an Exemplary Provider.
ISG Research highlighted Akeneo’s performance across several areas, with what it described as its most pronounced advantages in Generative AI and Intelligent Automation. Integration, Privacy, Technology Administration, and Investment were also called out in the Buyers Guide Insight. That combination matters as product experience becomes more complex.
Teams are being asked to manage expanding catalogs, more channels, more content variations, localization, changing marketplace requirements, and increasingly personalized experiences. Intelligent automation can help teams handle that complexity more efficiently, but only when the information underneath those workflows is reliable and connected.
View Akeneo’s ISG Buyers Guide Insight for Product Experience Management here.
This may be the most important connection between the two Buyers Guides.
AI-powered commerce introduces a new consumer of product information: the machine.
Generative AI applications, conversational interfaces, intelligent automation, AI-powered search, and emerging autonomous agents all depend on the information available to them. If that product information is fragmented, inconsistent, inaccessible, or poorly governed, adding AI does not remove the underlying problem.
It can simply make the problem move faster.
That means AI readiness cannot be separated from product data readiness.
Before organizations can scale AI-powered product experiences, they need confidence in the foundation underneath them: accurate information, integration across the enterprise, appropriate governance, operational oversight, and workflows capable of supporting automation.
The two ISG evaluations reflect that changing requirement. Across its assessments of Akeneo, ISG Research highlights capabilities spanning Integration, Generative AI, Platform Support for AI, Intelligent Automation, Privacy, and Technology Administration.
Enterprises increasingly need to govern product information across the organization and transform it into accurate, compelling experiences across every customer touchpoint. Treating those as separate challenges makes it harder to create the connected foundation that modern commerce (and increasingly AI) depends on.
That is the role Akeneo Product Cloud is designed to play: helping organizations make product information governed, connected, intelligent, and ready to support experiences across channels, systems, and business processes.
Because as AI becomes more deeply embedded in how products are managed, discovered, evaluated, and purchased, one principle becomes increasingly difficult to ignore:
The next generation of product experiences will only be as reliable as the product information behind them.
Our Akeneo Experts are here to answer all the questions you might have about our products and help you to move forward on your PX journey.
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