Panasonic Connect Unifies Product Data to Power Customer-First Experiences with Centric PXM

“We chose Centric PXM because we could build and iterate rapidly. During the PoC phase, we reached a production-ready setup instead of validating concepts and rebuilding from scratch.”

Akihiro Sekiguchi, Head of Digital Customer Experience at Panasonic Connect’s Design & Marketing Division, knew the company needed to move fast. Product information scattered across business units and regions left customers unable to find critical specifications and documentation. Today, Panasonic Connect operates a unified global platform for product data and digital assets, delivering faster customer access while building an AI-ready foundation.

About Panasonic Connect

Panasonic Connect was established on 1 April, 2022, as part of Panasonic Group’s transition to an operating company structure. It is a core company responsible for Panasonic Group’s B2B solutions business. Guided by its mission to ‘Change Work, Advance Society, Connect to Tomorrow,’ Panasonic Connect combines 100 years of manufacturing expertise with software to deliver solutions and highly differentiated hardware. The company connects customers across supply chain, public services, living infrastructure and entertainment, helping teams on the front lines operate more efficiently through innovation.

Product data as a core customer experience priority

Panasonic Connect had already strengthened its customer data foundation through initiatives such as a Customer Data Platform (CDP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM). However, in B2B operations, decision-making also depends on accurate specifications and supporting documentation. When product content is difficult to find or inconsistent, customers face delays, receive conflicting answers and spend more time going back and forth with teams.

Internally, product data was separated by business unit and region, leading to inconsistent data quality, duplicated work and slow updates. Concurrently, security and compliance requirements increased the effort needed to manage and distribute digital assets correctly.

In customer-facing environments, product information becomes the content customers depend on to evaluate solutions, deploy them and maintain operations.

For this reason, Panasonic Connect reframed product information as a strategic business asset alongside customer data. The objective was to establish a global foundation enabling product marketing, digital marketing and relationship marketing to work from shared, governed and reusable content.

Panasonic Connect decided to implement Centric PXM™, an integrated Product Information Management (PIM) and Digital Asset Management (DAM) platform, to unify product data and digital assets globally. The result is a trusted single source of truth that drives customer-first marketing, improves customer experience and lays the groundwork for future AI-driven initiatives.

“In customer experience, customer data and product information are equally important,” says Sekiguchi. “By centralizing product content in Centric PIM™ and Centric DAM™, customers access what they need when they need it, while we create structured, machine-readable data that AI can efficiently read, analyze and use.”

Why Centric PXM

Three factors drove Panasonic Connect’s selection of Centric PXM: speed, cultural fit and executability. The platform’s agile delivery approach aligned with the company’s “Fail First” culture of testing quickly and learning fast. For a global foundation requiring broad stakeholder confidence, the ability to move from proof of concept to production in a short timeframe was critical.

Centric Software’s visioning and simulation-based proposals also accelerated internal decision-making by showing what the future state could look like.

Building a global framework with regional fit

Panasonic Connect approached global rollout as an organizational transformation, not a systems project. Different product portfolios, customer expectations and workflows across regions meant a one-size-fits-all approach wouldn’t work.

The company established an ongoing dialogue with regional stakeholders, using early discussions to surface distinct requirements and pain points. Cross-regional conversations gradually clarified shared essentials: what customers request most often, which documents are most critical and where daily work consistently slows teams down.

Panasonic Connect appointed local leaders who understood regional culture and operations, combining a global foundation with local ownership to build a PIM environment that fits everyday work and sustains beyond go-live.

From a single source of truth to better self-service

Panasonic Connect now operates on a unified global platform built on Centric PXM, integrating PIM and DAM. The approach reduces fragmentation between business units and strengthens governance across regions.

• With Centric PXM in place, Panasonic Connect is confident in achieving the following goals to align customer needs with execution:
• Unify product information and improve data quality across regions
• Build a global-ready foundation for product information management
• Strengthen customer self-service access to CAD files and numeric data
• Improve compliance and asset governance with centralized DAM
• Reduce maintenance effort by consolidating fragmented systems
• Enable smoother data exchange with partners and customers
• Structure product data to support AI and automation
• Automate catalog creation and speed up digital delivery across web and PDF

These priorities were designed to reduce rework, cut manual effort and simplify how product content is activated across touchpoints, regions and teams.

Centric PXM as the launchpad for AI

Panasonic Connect positions Centric PXM as the starting point for AI, not the endpoint. “It is important to build a machine-readable data foundation so AI can efficiently read, analyze and use the data,” Sekiguchi explains.

By unifying product information and digital assets through Centric PXM, Panasonic Connect delivers consistent customer experiences today while building toward AI-enabled product experiences and sustained brand value growth.