The Top 5 Limitations with Excel Product Information Management: Is it Hindering Your Shopify Sales?

Many businesses initially rely on fragmented spreadsheets and manual processes to handle the complexities. As your product range expands and the need for consistent, enriched data across multiple channels becomes crucial, these manual methods can become serious roadblocks. This article will introduce the top five challenges businesses encounter with product information management, including fragmented data in multiple spreadsheets, and how Catsy PIM emerges as Shopify’s optimal product information management software provider. 

Fragmented Data in Multiple Spreadsheets

Managing product information across multiple spreadsheets becomes an uphill task as your product catalog grows. Data is often scattered across different files and locations, leading to inconsistencies, errors, and inefficiencies. PIM (product information management) Software addresses this challenge by centralizing your product information into a single, organized hub. Say goodbye to navigating through various spreadsheets—and hello to a unified platform where all your product data resides. This centralized approach streamlines data management, ensuring accuracy, consistency, and efficient collaboration across your organization.

Product Data Updated in Some Places but Not in All

Maintaining accurate and up-to-date product information is crucial for business success. However, ensuring consistency across all channels becomes a significant challenge when updates occur in isolated locations. A PIM solution tackles this issue by providing a synchronized environment. When you update product data in a single source of truth, those changes can be pushed to your channels upon approval. This real-time synchronization eliminates the risk of outdated information, providing a seamless and reliable solution for businesses aiming to manage product data in spreadsheets consistently updated across various platforms.

Exporting Product Data in Channel Format

Preparing your product data for different sales channels often involves manual efforts and the risk of format discrepancies. To resolve this, you need a solution that streamlining this process by offering automated export functionalities. Whether you’re preparing your product data for an e-commerce platform like Shopify, a distribution partner, Amazon, or any other channel, a PIM ensures that the data is exported in the required format. This automation saves time and minimizes errors, ensuring your product information is consistently formatted and ready for seamless integration with various sales channels.

Ensuring Product Readiness and Enrichment

Product readiness or “enrichment” involves more than basic product information; it requires a comprehensive understanding of all required, optional, and recommended attributes. Businesses need to take a holistic approach to product data by providing a framework that allows companies to ensure that all necessary qualities are present, and optional and recommended ones are enriched as needed. When using spreadsheets for manual management, all attributes for every product on every channel become challenging to maintain. Catsy solves the limitations of Excel with Enrichment Dashboards. This feature streamlines the product enrichment process and ensures your product data is complete and optimized for enhanced customer experiences. You can have a clear view of product readiness all at once.  

Managing Product Data for Localized Stores

Expanding your business to localized stores with different languages, currencies, and measurement types introduces complexities in managing product information. PIM simplifies this challenge by offering robust localization features. Whether dealing with language variations, currency adjustments, or different measurement units, you can manage product limitations seamlessly for each localized store. This localization capability ensures that your product information is tailored to meet the specific needs of diverse markets, enhancing your global reach and the success of your Shopify stores.

Excel Use for Managing Products May Result in Lost Sales

It may appear that handling product data using Excel is easy, yet as your store expands, Excel will have BIG limitations. If product information is managed separately instead of centrally, organizations can have delayed products, occasional mistakes, and miss out on some sales. This is precisely what is getting in your way.

Working with Spreadsheets can result in Human Errors

There are some limitations of spreadsheets because everything has to be done manually. When you change product details individually, it increases the possibilities of typos, errors in prices, and incorrect information. As a result, your customers get confused by product shortages, which damages your company’s image.

Marching In Place Harms the Company’s Annual Growth

Excel is not suitable for large amounts of data. The manual process is no longer effective when the product catalog has many items. Many businesses find it hard to handle all their product data in spreadsheets, especially when there are a lot of SKUs. Using a PIM tool allows you to automate specific duties, which speeds up the process and keeps it error-free.

When Teams Don’t Work Together, It Slows Down Their Progress

It is not easy to control who has access to files or see who makes changes in Excel within a team. This is a significant challenge that Excel faces when people collaborate. Such software allows everyone on a project to collaborate easily because updates, permissions, and version control are always in sync.

Problems with Setting Up Channels

You cannot export your data into the formats that work with Shopify, Amazon, social commerce channels, or many other sites.PIM vs ERP reveals that only PIM offers custom formats, whereas Excel does not have this feature, leading to wrong listings and less engagement on sales.

Issues Arising from Difficult Formulas and a Great Amount of Data

With more data, Excel operates more slowly and tends to crash. It becomes hard to accommodate multiples of 576 items on a single Excel spreadsheet. This makes production less swift and causes a drop in efficiency. Difficulties in using Excel become noticeable when many product updates are needed.

Conclusion

While businesses may initiate their journey with product information management best practices using fragmented spreadsheets and manual processes, the true potential for efficiency and growth lies in embracing a centralized, automated solution. Catsy is your expert solution, tailored to address businesses’ specific challenges in managing product information through manual methods. Bid farewell to fragmented data, inconsistent updates, manual export hassles, incomplete product data, and the complexities of managing localized stores. PIM propels your business to the next level of efficiency and organization, ensuring you’re well-equipped for the demands of a dynamic and competitive market. If you’re ready to transform your product information management software and unlock a new era of efficiency, let us be your strategic partner in success.
Contact us today for a personalized demo and see firsthand how Catsy can give you what you need: a robust and efficient solution for managing your product information for Shopify.