Businesses, in time, can find their business systems cluttered with dirty or inaccurate product data. Bad data can slow the progress of the company like sludge can kill horsepower in an engine. Dirty data slows the sales process and slows the order process because sales channels may be working off old product data. This leads to lost sales and a high rate of order mistakes and invoice errors which must be fixed at a high cost to the company.
Product Information, or the data describing and specifying a company’s products can be found in several systems at many companies with no easy way to aggregate or collect this product data. This data is not easy to manage and is made up of multi-media like images, audio and video, pictures, text, and integers all in various file formats. When product data is in different formats, different systems and in disparate applications it is very hard to work with. Product data is in the erp system, may be in a graphics tool like InDesign or Quark and can be salted across the company’s locations in isolated folders on desktops and laptops. This data, costly to create, is also costly to use and will add little to the corporate...