Analysis of Catalog Management

A requirement and a challenge of sorts to most companies of today is the accurate and detailed management of product information.

Customers these days prefer their product to display all the content one needs to know before making a purchase. In recent times, customers are preferring to flock to online shopping to buy what they require.

Not just limited to customers or rather because of them, the online shopping business hit a significant boom with almost a quarter of the world’s population preferring to do their business or purchasing online.

Catalog Management System

The CMS system is deployed to keep records of product information in a well-organized and cohesive manner. This helps customers and partner channels alike to understand the advantages of the product. Catalogs are created to display comprehensive details of the functionalities, cost, etc of the product on the company’s website.

The Catalog Management System helps in creating and editing online catalogs, and also provides an estimate of the product’s cost. The CMS tool is used as a planning tool to enhance the quality of product information through all available channels.

Benefits of Catalog Management System

The catalog management system has turned into an indispensable tool for e-commerce retailers and businesses. E-commerce businesses have their own set of discerning issues like sales across multi-channels, increasing the product catalog content, handling supplier data, checking and maintaining data quality, etc. The catalog management system helps out a lot in all of those departments.

• The maintenance of a multichannel experience is important for online businesses. Catalog management manages the content on all channels smoothly. Having consistent and high-quality data uniformly spread across multiple mediums can provide a good shopping experience for the customer.
• Catalog management enhances the existing data and makes it consistent and detailed ensuring that consumers have a pleasant shopping experience. The information provided by this system also completely errors free.
• An excellent catalog management system helps in supporting a large number of products and their information. This can enhance the launch of the products in the market making the business grow exponentially.
• Often, prices vary for similar products depending on who is buying them. Certain individuals or a particular demographic can have separate price sheets for them. Maintenance of catalog management allows only the relevant prices to be displayed to the customers.
• Businesses also procure product data from third parties who may denote information in another way than the one being used in the business. Manually rectifying or modifying these attributes can be time-consuming and a waste of resources. A good catalog management tool can normalize third party product information to the set guidelines of the company easily.
• Product information grows over time and can be difficult to check or upgrade manually. The catalog management tool can be used to modify, upgrade and check any kind of product information easily.
• Customers prefer detailed product information when they intend to make a purchase. Many customers would prefer to do business with a brand or a company who they know to have accurate product information.
• The management tool makes it easier for customers to search for any kind of product depending on what they search for. Good product listing enhances the customer’s loyalty to the company.

How does Catalog Management work?

As mentioned above, Catalog management strives to make sure that all available product information is of a consistent and high-quality level. It also ensures that this data is streamlined across all sales channels.

A good online catalog should include details like names, price, supplier, hierarchy, description, etc. Other information should be classified like class, color, style, neckline, length, fit, etc under those categories to lead the customer to the right product.

Products are tagged based on different attributes to create catalogs, these are further used to classify and band similar products together. These tags should also contain SEO friendly descriptions to ensure that people who search for the same are led to the company’s website.

There are also many articles and research that prove how bad product information leads to the loss of customers; existing and potential. The more detailed and organized a catalog is, the more the business grows and profits from it. It also ensures a company’s product to be highly visible by promoting it across all channels and this can further lead to sales conversion.

Catalog Management Performance

• The cloud-based variant of the catalog management software is expected to grow and take over the on-premise model. The cloud-based management tool offers speed along with ease of access provided with less capital and operational costs.
• Small and medium-sized sectors are likely to deploy the help of the catalog management software due to trying to cut down operational costs and enhancing the sales process.
• Geographically, North America has the largest market for this software in the world. This could be due to the existence of the many manufacturers and companies established in the region. This region also has the reputation of quickly taking to technological advances and innovation.
• Key players in the catalog management consist of – IBM, Suntec, Salsify, Sigma Systems, Oracle, etc.

Tips to improve your catalog management process

• There should be a bond of trust between customers and businesses. By using the management tool, a company can ensure that it is listing down all the necessary and relevant data that a customer requires to make a purchase. This leads to the formation of trust in a customer and there is an increased likelihood of them remaining loyal to the company.
• Time should be taken out to check through this tool if all the required information is updated and relevant.
• It is best to figure out the catalog management process first before implementing it and then resolving issues. A due procedure should be established to understand what steps to take in an orderly manner.
• This tool can be configured to recommend relevant and similar products to the customers when they are on the website to increase the order value.

Data relevant to a particular company can only be utilized by them to create catalogs featuring unique details about the company and product. With catalog management tools boosting the sales figures of a company to significant proportions, opting to deploy this system is a decision worth taking.