Why supplier product data arrives in poor shape and what it costs in lost sales, returns, manual work and slow launches, and why the fix starts at the source.
Chaos in supplier product data
In construction and DIY, many B2B e-commerce directors face a classic problem: getting product data from suppliers and cleaning it. Suppliers (manufacturers) often send product information in random formats: some data arrives in PDF or Excel files, some in the body of emails, sometimes even as photos of tables. With input of such poor quality, the e-commerce team spends a lot of time cleaning, completing and standardising the information by hand before it reaches the online shop or the product catalogue. As a result there is no single, consistent source of truth about products: the data is scattered across many places (ERP, emails, PDF catalogues). Every update has to be entered several times, which raises the risk of errors and delays.
Why is this a problem? Because without good product data, even the best e-commerce strategy will not work. In the Forrester Consulting 2024 State of B2B Ecommerce report, 66% of the surveyed companies said they have "poor" data, and more than 40% named siloed data and insufficient technology as top challenges. The report puts it plainly: "Without good data, B2B ecommerce problems will never be solved." In other words, if supplier product data is incomplete or wrong, the whole online sales initiative is held back from the start.
The consequences of poor data quality
Neglecting product data quality has real business costs. These are the main ones.
Lost sales
B2B buyers, like retail buyers, abandon a purchase when key information is missing or contradictory. According to Eklipse Creative, incomplete or wrong product data costs companies an estimated $9.7 million a year on average.
Unhappy customers and returns
Data errors (wrong dimensions, an incorrect technical description) lead to the wrong product being delivered. In B2B this can delay a construction project or mean a second shipment. Across retail, according to the same source, 31% of returns in 2024 were caused by inaccurate product descriptions. Each such mistake damages trust in the brand and in the B2B relationship.
Rising operating costs
Employees waste time correcting and completing supplier information again and again. Retyping data from PDFs or emails is slow and error-prone. For many B2B companies, onboarding the data of a single supplier takes weeks of tedious work. During that time new products are not in the range, and existing information may already be out of date.
Slow product launches and blocked growth
If every new product has to pass through manual data clean-up, putting it on a B2B platform takes much longer than it should. Research cited by Eklipse Creative shows that almost half of companies (45%) need 6 to 11 months to update product data for new sales channels, and 21% need 1 to 2 years. In construction, where a range can include tens of thousands of SKUs, this means serious delays in reaching the market. A company that cannot quickly publish complete information about new products (for example a new line of tools or materials) loses its competitive edge and its ability to scale.
In short: poor product data means real financial and reputational losses. The good news is that there are proven ways to solve the problem at the source. One of them is a portal where suppliers deliver their own data and your team checks it before it reaches the PIM: see our page on the supplier and partner portal.
Sources
- Implementing Product Information Management · Pimcore
- B2B ecommerce is hindered by bad data (Forrester 2024 State of B2B Ecommerce) · Digital Commerce 360
- The hidden cost of bad product data · Eklipse Creative
