In addition to print and online catalogues and web shops, many of our customers also require electronic product catalogues for the direct exchange of product and order information. These electronic product catalogues are intended for B2B business partners such as retailers or major customers with e-procurement systems.
With the help of electronic product catalogues, your business partners can import your product data, including prices, into their own systems in order to sell them or order them from you.
There are a variety of catalogue formats and classifications for electronic product catalogues. Formats determine the structure of the files for data exchange. Classifications enable industry-wide standardised designations of product groups, products and their characteristics. Common formats include BMEcat, GS1xml, Datanorm and Excel. Common classifications include eCl@ss, ETIM and Proficl@ss. A digital B2B exchange catalogue therefore contains product information according to a specific classification in a specific output format. Depending on the recipient, any combination of formats and classifications is possible – many wholesalers or major customers have even defined their own requirements. This means that most user companies also need many different catalogue editions.
Even if you already maintain your product data in specific systems – technical specifications in your PIM system, for example, and pricing, logistics and customer data in your ERP system – professionals need another software solution to generate digital B2B exchange catalogues: a catalogue designer (ECAT designer).
Software such as Viamedici's ECAT module transfers your product data from PIM and ERP into the data fields of catalogue formats and classifications. It helps you with mapping and ensures the quality of the data generated. Your product data is assigned to the fields of the target formats via an intuitive user interface. Internally, you continue to organise your data as usual, and the data presentation for the electronic product catalogues is derived from the mappings created. This makes it possible to use mappings created once for different catalogue editions.
The tools we use already contain a wide range of catalogue formats and classifications for this purpose.
When configuring an electronic catalogue, the following is specified:
- In which catalogue format is the catalogue written (e.g. BMEcat or as an Excel file)?
- Which data source provides the data for the catalogue (e.g. PIM data and ERP data)?
- Which classifications are output (e.g. eCl@ss and ETIM)?
Examples: Very often, the data comes from two sources, SAP and PIM. The SAP data is typically mapped to the BMEcat fields, while the PIM data is mapped to eCl@ss, for example. This results in an electronic catalogue that contains customer-specific prices from SAP and product descriptions from the PIM, organised according to eCl@ss. Alternatively, you can use the eCl@ss mapping mentioned above in conjunction with a mapping of the standard prices from the PIM system to BMEcat and a further mapping of the PIM data to ETIM. The result is an electronic catalogue that contains standard prices and displays the products according to ETIM and eCl@ss.
Supported catalogue formats
- BMEcat 1.2 und 2005
- GS1-XML
- Datanorm
- ARGE Neue Medien
- CSV-Formate
- Nexmart
- Eldanorm
- Gaeb
- ...
Supported classifications
- ECl@ss (ab Version 4)
- ETIM (ab Version 3)
- ProfiClass (ab Version 3)
- UNSPSC
- GPC
- ...
In order to meet the expectations of your business partners, you must provide all data in optimal quality. This requires a precise analysis of your data sources and mappings. Questions such as the following need to be clarified:
- Which product data is required for which purposes?
- Which of the required product data is available? In which system?
- How complete, how accurate, how reliable is this data?
- Who is responsible for maintaining the data? Are there documented processes for this?
Together with our partners, we at INFOLOX offer the tools and all the complementary services you need. This includes analysing your requirements and data flows, defining processes and responsibilities for data maintenance, providing training and education, and even strategic planning for electronic communication with customer and distributor systems. If required, we will of course also provide you with all the support you need for operational implementation. Because at INFOLOX, we don't just sell software; we offer our customers comprehensive solutions – solutions that work.
