Who should own product data?

Product data ownership belongs with the business teams that create and understand the data, organised per attribute group. IT owns the platform, the integrations and access control, and should never become the default owner of content it cannot judge.

A workable ownership model has 4 layers:

1. A data owner per attribute group, accountable for definitions and quality, for example product management for technical specifications and compliance for regulatory attributes.
2. Data stewards who create and enrich records daily, often in product, e-commerce or category teams.
3. A product data governance lead who sets rules, quality targets and the change process.
4. IT and the platform team, who run the system and keep integrations stable.

This model follows the PIMvendors sequence of Data, Process, People, Tooling. Ownership is settled at the People step, before tooling, because workflows and user roles in any PIM are configured from it. In PIMvendors selections, a missing owner for one attribute group is a frequent reason why demos look good and go-live stalls.

Write the ownership matrix into the requirements as a RACI per attribute group. Vendors can then show their workflow and permission model against your real organisation.