Product Information Management in Retail en Wholesale
Retailers and wholesalers often have to deal with many different suppliers. These suppliers all offer price lists or product sheets with product information in their own way. To make it even more complex, the frequency of delivery differs per supplier, some suppliers work with gross prices and others with discounts. There are also suppliers who indicate the product status (new, end of life, etc.) and others do not. It is up to the retailer and wholesaler to respond to this again and again. Which takes a lot of time and energy. This in turn is at the expense of the “time to market” of new products or of the time available to improve product information.
In this situation, a Product Information Management system can provide the solution. It is important to ensure that the PIM system is prepared to process raw product information from multiple suppliers. Below are eleven tips on how to deal with these more complex situations:
1. A standard product sheet for providing product information?
We regularly encounter organizations that plan to send all suppliers a standard (Excel) product sheet, which they must use to provide product information.
At first glance this seems like a good idea. This means that all suppliers provide product information in a uniform manner. The practice is more difficult. Not all suppliers will cooperate with this request.
Still, it is worth investigating whether suppliers are willing to cooperate. Particularly in a situation with many small suppliers, they may be willing to work with a standard product sheet that can be read into the PIM solution.
2. Adhere to an industry standard
In an industry where an industry standard (such as GS1 or TecDoc) is used, you have the advantage that you can start with this standard. So always investigate whether the industry in which you operate has a standard for recording and exchanging product information.
3. Let suppliers do the work
If suppliers can provide more product information than just a price list, it is wise to use this and read it in the PIM system. It's work that you or your colleagues don't have to do. It is important that product properties (attributes) can be created for importing in the PIM software, or that additional attribute values can be automatically added to a product property for importing.
4. Requirements for the PIM solution
Not unimportant, of course, are the requirements for a PIM solution that is suitable for this situation.
5. Avoid manual work as much as possible
The key to success is to avoid manually entering product content. This saves time, money and errors. In a situation where you have to access many suppliers, it is important to work with a PIM system where product content from suppliers or other sources (such as CNET, GS1, etc.) can be read automatically.
6. Easily add new suppliers to PIM
In the case of many suppliers, it should be easy to create a new supplier. And the product sheet used by this supplier must be easy to read into the PIM solution.
There are PIM systems that are suitable for onboarding many different product sheets, and there are PIM systems that are less suitable for this. It is important that the PIM system you use has a flexible mapping mechanism, allowing you to easily link the different product sheets used by suppliers. And where necessary, you can adjust in the future. For example, in the case that a supplier adds an extra column to a product sheet.
When you use a PIM solution in which adding new suppliers is easy, you will see that you quickly gain control over a large group of supplying suppliers.
7. Automate
Make sure you choose PIM software that is able to automatically optimize new product content. Consider the option to automatically classify new products, automatically convert field values based on reference tables or validate field values and properties for “product completeness” and correct field notation. This saves a huge amount of manual input and checking work.
8. Processing updates
It is important that the PIM software can also automatically process product updates for existing products in the PIM system from suppliers. This ensures that the managed product portfolio in PIM is and remains up to date. Moreover, it saves a lot of time in manual additions and corrections.
9. Reporting
Use PIM software to report which product content from which supplier has or has not been successfully uploaded or updated in PIM at what time. This provides insight into available new products and updated products at any time. This can be combined with a workflow in the PIM system in which new products are enriched by various departments and approved for publication in the connected sales channels.
10. Be able to deduplicate product data
In many situations it happens that multiple suppliers supply the same product. It is then important that the PIM software recognizes this. So that there are 2 suppliers for a product, and the product is not included twice in the PIM solution. It can also be useful to determine which supplier is leading for the inclusion of descriptions, product properties, etc.
11. Work together
Many hands make light work. So finally, work together with the teams and professionals within your organization to optimize product content of new products as efficiently as possible. Also view the tips in the blog: How do you organize product content creation for a larger range?
Want to know more about the ConnectingTheDots PIM system and how we can add value to your business? Please contact us or request the demo!
