Goodbye Supplier portals and data pools, say hello to Productpedia an (ETL + Collaboration ) tool for product data.

Supplier Portal: Are they good or bad ?

A supplier portal (or vendor portal if you like) is usually an extension to a Product Information Management (PIM) solution.

The idea is that the suppliers of products can upload their product information into your PIM solution. This process usually replaces the work of receiving spreadsheets from suppliers.

In my opinion and experience, this is a flawed concept, because it is hostile to the supplier. The supplier will have hundreds of downstream receivers of products and thus product information. If all of them introduced their own supplier portal, they will have to learn and maintain hundreds of them. Only if you are bigger than your supplier and is a substantial part of their business, they will go with you.

And then let us imagine that every provider of product information had their PIM customer portal, and every receiver had their PIM supplier portal. Then no data would flow at all.

If you have a different perspective. Pls write to me sooryavenkat@theproductpedia.com

Data Pools : Are they good or bad ?

A data pool is a centralized repository of data where trading partners (retailers/distributors, suppliers) can obtain information about products in a standard format.

In my opinion and experience, this is another flawed concept, because it is hostile to distributes and retailers. Here the manufacturers and upstream distributors upload standard product information to a data pool. On the other hand, the receiver (distributor/retailers) is provided only with a standard data in a raw format that is not optimized for their webstore’s. So, the distributors & retailers need to manually process the source data and convert it into their PIM data structures so that it is optimized for their webstore. This will consume hundreds of hours of manual work to transform and map the source to destination data models.

Moreover, no one can expect every manufacturer , distributor, and retailers to be present in the global data pool. Data pools are only suitable for bigger manufacturer who has larger market share to dictate terms to their distributor and retailer. This concept is in my eyes flawed exactly the opposite way.

We are moving more towards a decentralized world, not a wise idea in creating a centralized authority to manage product information for the world.

What on earth is a Productpedia solution ?

It’s a 24/7 coffee shop where the entire channel can hang out. It’s not another portal or data pool. It’s a marketplace where companies (Manufacturers, and distributors/retailers) can manage all their partners through one platform. Companies (Manufacturers, and distributors/retailers) can ship their product informations in a bespoke model.

The input and output of product data can be onboarded or distributed automatically in one-to-one mappings. Both Manufacturers and distributors gets actionable flow of product content and the opportunity to review it together during feedback periods.

Doesn’t that sound great? It’s time to optimise e-commerce content in product pages that get customers to visit, purchase, & trust you more.

What are you waiting for?

Join Productpedia.