Product catalogue management

As a catalog management, management of electronic product catalogs and the associated catalog data is understood. In some cases there is also the term catalog data management. Catalog management is particularly important for the electronic shopping is important because here mainly indirect goods are procured, which can be well described in catalogs.

Key process steps in the catalog management are the testing and release of the transmitted from the supplier product catalogs. Only when this release is the product catalogs will be redirected to the company's internal purchasing systems. There, the company's employees to order their material directly to the shared conditions.

Areas of application

Articles and product data are currently usually maintained in PPS and ERP systems, but only to the extent that they are required for the respective production and were economic relationships. In other systems, illustrations, sketches and photos are kept.

The layout, design and creation of the classic print catalog is done elaborately in DTP programs. Ensured by explicit business processes, the respective information snippets about the products of the required quality are maintained in the individual systems. However, a consolidated and secure base with central access to all product information is not available. This gap between the ERP and CRM systems is closed by a catalog management system ( eCatalog ) system.

The term "content supply chain " wins here more and more important as the market regularly for product catalogs must be published in order to provide the customers with the purchasing decision information. This not only often done under time pressure - the "new series " nor necessarily correspond to the catalog to appear for trade fair - but especially interdisciplinary between marketing, product management and sales. The business process in the company is characterized by manual steps, unreliable and not reproducible. Contrast, however, is the importance of product catalogs for sales representation for the company.

Another aspect has emerged with the spread of the Internet and e-commerce in recent years. Product data must be made available for display in a variety of media. For the more traditional paper catalog CD catalogs, internet stores and also individualized electronic catalogs customers have come.

The integration and alignment of each published there products and ranges is again often by hand - and organized error-prone and labor-intensive. At the same time results from the globalization, the issue of wanting to also provide foreign-language markets with information. In addition to English, it is often useful product catalog or at least excerpts from it to create in the local language. Usually, this too is done manually through translation agencies and must be done again and again. The translation work was done once for the basic range must be maintained and adjusted for other catalogs and media.

Based on the print catalog, which still represents the starting point in producing and often longer active already in the wholesale business, the technology is mature, but not yet represented in the area, to create artwork from the maintained data base out. The previous classical pathway is the transfer of the product information to a marketing agency that consuming means of DTP tools designed layouts and created artwork. This leads on a regular basis, due to the extensive manual work at the agencies to costs, additional time delay and a further disturbance of the fragile business process. The actually necessary for the market relevance of the catalog is thus prevented.

The challenges described can be treated effectively only if item and product data only once maintained, quality assured and are published repeatedly for a variety of media and distribution channels. It must be ensured a very individual mapping of the respective products, product lines and processes and effective integration into the existing system and organizational structures.

Catalog data

In the electronic exchange of product catalogs, various standard formats have been established.

• Economic computer science
• Classification
• Product classification
• Product labeling
• Material Management and Warehousing