Catalog Management: Challenges, Solutions, and Best Practices

If you sell more than one product, you have a product catalog. And if you have a product catalog, you need solid catalog management skills.

The good news is that catalog management has come a long way from yesteryear's filing cabinets and Excel sheets. Armed with the right resources and software, you can build a world-class catalog management process that truly kicks your business into high gear.

Looking for a crash course on effective catalog management? Keep reading for a breakdown of the key components, tools, and case studies—or use the table of contents below to jump to a specific section.

What is catalog management?

Catalog management (aka product catalog management and product information management) is all about managing the catalog of your products and services online. 

As we all know, great management doesn't happen by accident.

And leaving catalog management up to chance could jeopardize your bottom line.

5 key components of a product catalog

Whether you offer digital services or sell physical items to customers, you need an online catalog that conveniently displays all key information. 

Here are the basic components you would normally find in a product catalog:

1. Categories

Product categories are groups that organize and classify products. Are you selling an armchair? You could put this in a 'furniture' category. What about a chessboard? 'Games and Entertainment' may be an option.

Just know the actual categories you create for your business heavily depend on your products. Remember, categories are designed to help users navigate your product catalog and find exactly what they're looking for.

2. Attributes

Now let's turn our attention to product attributes. A product attribute is any detail about a product, like its color, size, brand, or material—basically, any information or data that helps describe what the product is and what it offers. Size and color are some of the most popular of these, although you could also quantify weight, dimensions, and construction materials if applicable.

Keep in mind that the number of attributes depends on the product in question. The more complex the product, the more information about attributes you should provide.

3. Digital assets

A whopping 85% of shoppers say that good product information and product pictures matter when deciding which retailer to use. That's why providing high-quality digital assets—like thumbnails, images, and blueprints—is an invaluable piece of the catalog management puzzle. 

Of course, you need to keep your assets organized so that you can easily access them whenever you need them. Keeping all these assets in the same place as the rest of your product information is a great way to do this.

Not sure how to start designing great digital assets? Check out our guide to optimizing product images for beginners.

4. Pricing and discounts

You need to list pricing on all your products so customers can make more informed decisions. The same goes for product discounts, clearance items, and holiday sales (and any other time you want to lower or raise your prices). 

If you’re managing a smaller product catalog, prices might be manageable with a spreadsheet or cloud document. But if you’re dealing with much larger ecommerce catalog management, you may not want to skimp on software (we’ll chat more about this later).

5. Inventory and availability

How much of an item do you have in stock? How much is available to customers right now?

Some businesses use the terms ‘inventory’ and ‘availability’ interchangeably, but they don't mean the same thing in every situation. For example, you might have 100 items stocked in your storefront (aka inventory), but only 60 are available for online orders (aka availability).

A product catalog should list both inventory and availability so customers know whether or not they’re stocked up. It also helps them make better purchasing decisions—especially if you list when expected items should be back in stock.

Best practices for catalog management

So now you know the basic components of a product catalog.

What you're dying to know is, how do you do catalog management right?

Here are some practical tips to get you started:

Establish data ownership (aka who does what)

A foundational question, but an important one nonetheless. Who is going to own this process? 

You? A coworker? Multiple members of your team?

It's a good idea to decide on this well in advance and then communicate expectations before securing a catalog management tool. Catalog management software can help you do many things, but it can't magically fix poor communication in your business (we’ll talk about this in a bit).

Set quality standards and validation rules for ease of management

Human error is a major enemy of effective catalog management. That's why you should create a system with checks and balances: it reduces your risks of something going wrong.

For example, you could have a member of your team perform routine quality checks. That way, there's always someone keeping an eye on changes and updates. If you choose to consider catalog management (or product information management) software, you might have access to change logs and user histories so you can quickly nip discrepancies in the bud.

Another idea is to reduce the time you spend manually managing your catalog. Automated systems, workflows, and APIs can work wonders in moving data around.

PIM software also offers completeness tracking—a feature that helps you see if each product has all its necessary information. This can be useful whether you’re a startup or a massive business, as all important details are housed in the same space.

Centralize your data into the same simple system

Here's the big secret of successful catalog management: you need to have a central source of truth where it’s easy to find what you need. Managing disparate spreadsheets and multiple systems will only add to the complexity (read: make management messy and time-consuming).

It's a good idea to centralize your data into a single platform or system (such as PIM software). That way, you have a one-stop shop for all your critical data touchpoints, and making updates and edits will be trivially easy.

While we're on the subject of updates and edits…

Keep your data up to date and don’t let it fall behind

A messy catalog is an inefficient catalog, and it certainly won't win you any favors with customers. You need to set up a process for updating inventory, availability, and prices so you don't run into trouble down the line.

If you want to do this manually, you can assign weekly or monthly audits to your team. You may want to assign this work in pairs to outdated data from slipping through the cracks.

If you have multiple platforms and databases to manage, you may want to consider integrating with PIM software. This can help you automatically update inventory levels, write detailed product descriptions, and sync pricing information across multiple sales channels.

Focus on data accuracy and avoid human error

The less you interact with your data, the less you'll have to worry about data accuracy. That said, it's still a good idea to perform regular audits.

Here are some suggestions to get you started:

• Leverage bulk imports as much as possible. This means fewer tiny edits (or opportunities for accidental backspaces).
• Tap into data enrichment and validation tools. Error detection and completeness checks could save your bacon in a pinch.
• Sync inventory and pricing to your catalog. That way, you don't have to worry about 'the error that got away.'

Use high-quality media assets as often as possible

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: humans are inherently drawn to visuals. This means when it comes to organizing product data, you can’t skimp out on high-quality images. 

If you can't do this in-house, consider hiring experts to help. Remember: products with higher-quality images sell around 1.25 times more often than lower-quality images.

Optimize for SEO (humans and robots!)

Since product catalogs are internet-facing databases, you'll want to make sure they look good for people and robots. This includes both content and your technical specifications, like your metadata, product schema, site categories, and more.

It's best to think about SEO in the initial planning stages, such as when planning product categories, so you don’t have to redo something later on and waste time, money, and resources having to do things twice.

Product page SEO can get terribly complex, so you're encouraged to do more research whenever you're ready.

Ready to dive in? You can learn more about product page SEO in our comprehensive guide.

Set up automations with triggers and workflows

Automation is the name of the (cataloging) game, especially as your business grows. You also don't need to be an enterprise brand to get started: automations are available at any level of growth.

For example, you should:

• Set up basic workflows that push data or send notifications to internal platforms
• Look for catalog management software that can set up automations on your behalf
• Automatically sync your product prices and inventory so you don’t have to

Benefits of effective product catalog management

Catalog management is more than just 'getting organized.' It's a crucial part of keeping your business in-line, maximizing your profits, and building better relationships with your customers.

All of this requires effective product catalog management: which means building a step-by-step process that connects with catalog management tools so you can keep a close eye on your products. 

So whether you're managing a brick-and-mortar store, selling your online products, or managing a variety of sales channels all at once, you'll reap the benefits of catalog management in more ways than one.

Just take a look for yourself:

You’ll give a better customer experience

Poor catalog management can lead to bad customer experiences, which leads to poor online reviews and frustrating interactions.

Good catalog management means you’re using all best practices to avoid situations like these. Following the pointers listed above, you can help ensure a better customer experience overall and work wonders on your brand reputation.

Enjoy year-round operational efficiency

It takes the average person 16 hours per week to perform inventory management without automation in place. This is dangerously close to half the work week and costs thousands of dollars over the course of the year.

Now imagine the power of an updated catalog management approach (like using multiple tools connected in your tech stack) to supercharge ecommerce product catalog management. You’ll find it’s much easier to tap into real-time data, integrations, and custom triggers so you can automate the process and save 800+ hours of time per year.

Find more multichannel management opportunities

It's tricky enough to manage one online store, let alone manage multiple sales channels. Throwing inaccurate product catalogs into the mix can make things 10 times worse. Mismatched data across multiple channels can make your errors more serious, add hours to monthly maintenance, and put a damper on the customer experience to boot.

Thankfully, establishing data ownership and centralizing it in a PIM can help you standardize all products across multiple sales channels and online stores. This means all your customers can access the same items, prices, and product descriptions.

Increase your sales without even trying

Poor catalog management can stomp the brakes on business growth by reducing sales and increasing product returns. Inaccurate product information, for example, is one of the biggest drivers of returned products. You also have to worry about incomplete catalogs because, thanks to human error, there's bound to be one or two items missing.

That's where the magic of modern catalog management comes in—it's never been easier to keep products accurate and up-to-date. If you choose to use software, it will be quick and efficient to sync multiple systems with a single set of product data, which means you can rest easy knowing there's consistent pricing across all your digital sales channels.

Boost your brand reputation with consistency

Maintaining consistency matters more than you might think, especially when it comes to growing your business. Being scattered or disorganized could cost the trust of your customers, generating subpar reviews and negatively impacting your brand reputation.

Of course, fixing this is easier said than done. Managing your product catalog effectively can help you minimize the risk of damaging your brand. Consistent product details can help to protect customer trust, which generates positive online reviews and boosts your overall public perception.

Reap the compliance and legal benefits

If you sell products internationally, you know how complicated cross-border regulations can be. You may have to follow unique labeling requirements, data handling laws, or pricing regulations affecting items in your product catalogs.

This is yet another year-round headache that proper catalog management makes easy. Using a catalog management system such as PIM can help keep track of all your product information and ensure all products have the necessary information, from VAT tax to Digital Product Passport (DPP) and everything in between.

Challenges of product catalog management

Regardless of how you choose to manage it, catalog management comes with its own challenges. 

There are plenty of challenges you need to consider, including:

Handling large volumes of data

A well-managed catalog might contain hundreds if not thousands of product lines. The more products you have, the more information you'll have to track—and the more opportunities there might be for errors.

Data quality and consistency

Human error exists at every level of catalog management, so with hundreds of SKUs to track, you can expect at least one or two errors to crop up in your work. You also have to worry about keeping data consistent across multiple channels, especially when there are regular updates to pricing, new products need to be added, or changes to existing products.

The key is knowing how to minimize these errors and check for discrepancies before they cost you down the road.

Managing product variants

Most products come in a few different variants, from TVs with different screen sizes to jackets with various color schemes.

The difficulty lies in deciding how to catalog and track these products. Should you write different product descriptions for each variant, or create a single parent product and track the rest with your PIM system?

Integrating all your inventory tools

Proper catalog management practices suggest integrating all your inventory sources. However, this could get tricky with more than one online store. If you already manage multiple inventory management systems, it might be a challenge to create an all-in-one database.

Integrating all your database tools

Perhaps the hardest part of managing your catalog is managing the tech stack that comes with it. You may want to connect all your databases to the rest of your catalog and inventory—including your order management system or warehouse management system—which will require a steep learning curve.

Product catalog management tools: features, pros, and cons

There are lots of different options for product catalog management software. Some are ultra-specific and designed specifically for product data, while others offer more utility with multichannel and omnichannel commerce tools.

You have four basic options:

Enterprise resource planning (ERP)

You can think of your ERP platform (aka enterprise resource planning tool) as a centralized database containing lots of different databases. This could include finance documents, analytics, and HR reports, among other things.

However, ERP systems were designed for internal-facing data—not necessarily customer-facing product catalog data. That's why most people connect their ERP with catalog management tools so they can keep vital inventory data in the same centralized location.

Ecommerce platforms

If you're already selling products through Shopify, Wix, or Squarespace, you're probably using built-in catalog management tools to manage your product lines. There are several benefits to using this method, including the fact that it's convenient and sometimes even free. 

That said, you usually get what you pay for in ecommerce, and many tools aren’t built alike. Plus, things can get complicated if your ecommerce site is your primary catalog management system—especially if you want to use more than one sales channel.

Not all ecommerce platforms provide catalog personalization tools, custom data management filters, or the ability to sync data across different sales channels. You may need to switch platforms if this is your preferred method of management or consider integrating your platform with a PIM system.

Automation tools

Automation has become a buzzword for sure, but that doesn't make it any less significant. In catalog management, it's one of the most efficient ways to push mission-critical data from one platform to the next.

Some tools provide access to customized webhooks that update your product catalog after specific actions or triggers (i.e. someone buying something off your website). You can also connect with PIM tools offering built-in automations.

Speaking of PIM software. . .

PIM software

A PIM (otherwise known as a product information management system) is designed to store essential product details so they're easier to track, edit, and retrieve.

But you’ve already guessed that much, so let’s get down to brass tacks: what can PIM software actually do?

Here are just a few features of a PIM tool:

• Design a white-label catalog with branded colors, pictures, and more
• Integrate with ERP tools, marketplace apps, ecommerce websites, and social media platforms
• Export sell sheets for offline use or physical product catalogs
• Manage product data with multiple members of your team
• Handle hundreds of SKUs without compromising data quality

There’s lots of quantitative evidence showing how strong PIM software can be. Studies show it can boost business revenue by 50% and reduce time to market by 400%.

Features to look for in product catalog management software

Not all product data platforms are built alike.

You should keep an eye out for the very best platforms:

• Integrations with third-party apps
• Access to a DAM (aka digital asset management system)
• No extra pricing per user per month, unless you don't mind the extra bills
• AI tools for automations, product descriptions, and more
• Customer support through multiple channels

So how do you know which platforms don't pass muster? For one thing, ask plenty of questions. You should also sign up for a trial or book a demo so you can experience the platform before signing on the dotted line.

Case studies in catalog management

It's one thing to read about the benefits of catalog management, and quite another to see it in a practical context.

Let's take a look at one distribution brand that was struggling to manage its catalog of 16,000+ SKUs.

Improvement leads to increased benefit

Universal Components is a truck and trailer parts distribution company managing tens of thousands of individual products for customers across the US. At the time, employees managed these disparate products across literally thousands of Excel sheets and a single legacy ERP system.

Marketing manager Daniel Dixon said they spent nearly the entire year trying to update catalogs and correct errors in their listings. This eventually slowed their time to market, weakened their data systems, and led to messy internal communications.

The company decided it needed a single source of truth: an all-in-one PIM system to consolidate product information. They could get rid of old files and spreadsheets, store and search product data, and print offline catalogs with up-to-date information.

Over the next 12 months, Universal Components saw impressive changes:

• Products reached the market 2x faster than before
• The company increased its product range by several hundred components
• Saw a return on their investment within one year of purchase

Increased efficiency and better data management empowered Universal Components to stand out from the crowd. All it took was an updated catalog management process—plus dedicated PIM software—to push their brand into the 21st century.

Making catalog management your ultimate mission

Making products isn't the hard part of ecommerce: it's keeping them organized in your store's online catalog. But with great management practices, plus the help of practical software, you can create an automated system that works while you sleep.

If you're looking for a tool to help you get started, you can try out some PIM tools for size. Most modern PIMs are designed for businesses big and small, whether you have years of experience in the ecommerce space or are just dipping your toes into catalog management.

Curious to see how PIM can take your catalog management to the next level?

Learn more about Plytix PIM software here.