The Challenge Of Product Information Management

OBSTACLES TO DELIVERING PRODUCT DATA INTEGRITY

In today’s dynamic business environment, suppliers, distributors and retailers alike are facing constant competitive demands to improve supply chain efficiency. Product managers and category managers are under increasing pressure to get their products to the right place, at the right time, and in the correct quantities. To this end, electronic trading is becoming an essential part of distribution logistics.

However, to achieve the full benefits of electronic trading, both internal and external uses of product data need to be managed properly. Without accurate and consistent product data, all that is achieved through electronic trading is the ‘acceleration of errors at the speed of light’. Hence, product data synchronization has become a prerequisite of successful e business.

Most organizations today experience a variety of impediments to efficient Product Information Management. These challenges include:

• Manual re-keying of data into internal business systems from paper based forms.
• Data that is not synchronized across transaction processing systems or business processes.
• Data that is not synchronized with trading partners, or not in a format that they can readily use.
• Disparate and incomplete product databases maintained in Microsoft Excel spreadsheets.
• Reliance on costly outsourcing of catalog publication processes (to advertising agencies or printing companies).
• Employees managing many different versions of the same product data across the enterprise - lacking ‘single source of truth’.

As a direct consequence, what may otherwise be simple management tasks of sales analysis, reporting, pricing, advertising, promotions, product ranging and so on, can become major challenges that consume enormous amounts of staff resources and time. This complexity is often caused by product data that is inaccurate, incomplete, or inaccessible. Of course it is one thing to make product data accurate and accessible, but another to make it ‘relevant’ for business transactions.

For more information look at Standardization vs. Customization