The cross with product data

Many companies do not approach the task of revising product data systematically, too late or not at all. In the long run, however, companies with a consistently integrated product data process save unnecessary costs, improve their image and shorten the time-to-market phase.

Increasing product complexity

In the 1970s, you could choose between the telephone model "FeTAp 61" in gray, green or orange. One telephone unit cost 23 pfennigs. Today, Deutsche Telekom offers countless terminal devices, dozens of rate options, Internet access and even television. All products can be combined with each other. Today, a luxury-class vehicle is highly networked; the reverse gear communicates with the outside mirror and the rear window wiper; hundreds of equipment options are offered that did not even exist a few years ago: lane departure warning systems, blind spot assistants, traffic sign recognition and much more. Until recently, the product of energy suppliers was easily described: 1 kWh of self-produced electricity. Thanks to the energy transition, new business areas, products and services are emerging, such as smart grids, smart homes, public charging stations, etc. Even muesli can now not only be ordered on the Internet, but configured yourself. These are all examples of how companies are developing more and more products that are becoming increasingly complex.

More complex product data

The challenge now is to efficiently manage the associated product data, because today it includes not only typical technical data such as size, weight or price. Rather, it also includes technical descriptions, marketing texts, videos or images, which are furthermore adapted for the individual marketing channels. And even this is not enough. Especially with complex products, there are dependencies among the individual product data. One example of this is the configurators used by car manufacturers. If the customer puts together a vehicle according to his wishes, he can only select certain equipment features under certain conditions. And of course, at the end of the configuration process, the customer would like to have a picture or even a video of the vehicle with its special features. This already shows the complexity that product data can take on.

Increased susceptibility to errors

The complexity of products and product data often leads to errors and inconsistencies: The offer contains a different text or even price than the invoice. Or in the configurator on the car manufacturer's website, the pictures of the rims are missing for the hotly sought-after new model because the image generation process could not be completed in time. Especially internationally operating companies feel the importance of data maintenance when nationalizing their products. The conversion from "liters per 100 km" to "miles per gallon" can by no means be solved by a rule of three, but national laws for determining gasoline consumption must be taken into account.

With such problems, one does not immediately look for the solution in the product data, because an obvious, causal relationship is not necessarily apparent at first glance. There are several reasons for this: On the one hand, the product data has grown steadily with the company. The portfolio has grown and diversified, and the products have become more complex. On the other hand, companies have a variety of marketing channels at their disposal that place different demands on product presentation. Digital channels, for example, allow interaction with the customer, but it works differently on a PC than on a tablet or smartphone.

Many participants

Due to the various marketing channels and the growth of the company, more and more employees and organizational units deal with product data: Marketing, Development, Purchasing, Production, Sales, After Sales - they all deal with this data on a daily basis. The processes in which product data are involved are therefore becoming more complex. Accordingly, the importance of product data for the success of the company is also increasing. It is precisely the large number of people involved that is the cause of unclear tasks and responsibilities. Things are often done twice, which in turn is a source of inconsistencies - or there are process gaps. Responsibilities are also often shifted to other organizational units.

Handle product data

"The cross with product data is that we are moving in a fog quadrangle for whose solution it is difficult to find a sponsor," explains Ute Nause, Managing Director and Chief Strategist of the consulting and software company eXXcellent solutions. The problem is difficult to grasp and convey to top management: "Product data simply has to exist. No thought is given to efficient maintenance," says the IT expert. This is also due to the fact that they do not belong to the core processes of a company. In addition, only an indirect business benefit is generated. The benefit cannot simply be described in terms of higher sales, new markets or better margins. The path to a solution is usually arduous and lengthy because of the complex products and the many people involved. It requires an extensive process analysis, often followed by a reorganization across the entire company. In the end, the effects of the process changes are far-reaching, as they affect diverse parts of the company.

Who is affected?

"Many companies only address the problem when there is no other way. In the automotive industry, this has now been recognised," says Nause. Other industries, such as energy suppliers, are still at the beginning, in her opinion. Increasing competition, the growing variety of products and tariffs, and new fields of activity will also force other industries to tackle the problem of product data.

A few simple check questions can tell you how much pressure there already is to act:

• Do your products and product descriptions have the same name in all sales channels (print, online, price lists, offers, invoices, ...)? 
• Do your products meet all national legal requirements at the start of sales? Are national images and documentation available?
• Does the retailer have all the necessary information about the product at the start of sales?
• Is there obvious duplication of product data maintenance (e.g. between head office and wholesale)?
• Are there auxiliary solutions (lists, tables) to bridge process gaps? 
• Have processes, organizations and systems grown with the increasing variety of products?

The way to the goal

The challenge lies in optimizing the structural and process organization and adapting the IT systems to support the process chain end-to-end. However, many IT products (product data management systems) have a strong focus on product development, which is due to the fact that the majority of product data is created here. As a result, subsequent processes in other organizational units are neglected. An adequate IT landscape must include all affected processes, both across all affected company divisions and across the entire product lifecycle.

The goal of such a project is to get the right data to the user quickly with as little effort as possible. To this end, the aim is to achieve the highest possible degree of automated processes in order to reduce the sources of error caused by manual intervention. This ensures that product data does not unnecessarily delay the time-to-market phase and that all information is consistently available in a timely manner. "For one company that was having problems with incorrectly issued invoices, restructuring the product data process reduced the error rate by 95 percent while still reducing effort, " Nause gives a practical example.