<p>The company struggled to obtain data on their 40K+ products from hundreds of vendors, each using a different system. </p> <p>The products had no preconfigured attributes, which resulted in incorrect and inconsistent data. For instance, if two different vendors were selling the same product, the data returned from them might appear differently. One vendor might include information on product color and spell the attribute as “color,” whereas another might spell the same attribute as “colour” instead. </p> <p>To further compound the problem, different vendors reported different attributes, making cohesive product data analysis challenging to accomplish. The company had no way to enforce specific key product attributes in their current system. Without this control company, analysts had to sift through duplicate and overlapping data points to relate data fragments of the same product.</p> <p>In summary, the company needed: </p> <ul><li><strong>Unified access to product data from all vendors:</strong>The company was looking for a solution that consolidated product data provided by its vendors into a centralized system.</li> <li><strong>Control over product attributes:</strong> A chaotic mix of product data made the process of analyzing product data difficult. The company needed a way to require vendors to report on a uniform set of key attributes. Further, the company needed a way to mandate selected attributes.</li> <li><strong>Access to multilingual product data: </strong> Lack of multilingual product data was another challenge the company faced. Access to product data in different languages was essential for a global corporation with a worldwide presence.</li> <li><strong>Lower maintenance costs:</strong> The company had to deal with multiple systems and vendors, requiring a large staff. Lots of data needed to be compiled into spreadsheets, which was a time-consuming manual process that increased resource costs.</li> </ul>