From Data Overload to Market Leadership: Moving Beyond Manual Systems and Siloed Supplier Portals to Connected Product Data Exchange

In today's challenging economic landscape, Australian merchandising leaders face a critical choice: remain bogged down in manual data processes or transform into strategic market drivers.

The Hidden Productivity Crisis

Recent Australian Retailers Association research reveals a startling reality: merchandising professionals spend up to 40% of their time on manual data management rather than strategic category development. With retail margins squeezed by inflation and cautious consumer spending, this has significant consequences:

• Products reaching shelves 3-4 weeks later than necessary

• Innovation delayed when it's most needed to attract price-sensitive consumers

• Skilled category managers wasting 15+ hours weekly on administrative tasks

• Manual data handling increasing product information errors by 30%

A significant contributor to this crisis is the traditional approach to supplier portals. Most retailers expect suppliers to manually enter data into their proprietary systems, overlooking a critical reality: suppliers typically manage 7-12 different customer portals, each with unique requirements. The result? Low adoption rates (35-45%), incomplete product information, and merchandising teams spending nearly a third of their time chasing data suppliers have already provided elsewhere.

The Transformation Opportunity

Forward-thinking Australian merchandising leaders are addressing these challenges by:

1. Automating product data collection from suppliers through unified platforms

2. Leveraging AI for data validation, eliminating costly errors when every margin point counts

3. Creating a single source of truth for product information, enabling faster pivots as consumer spending shifts

4. Building stronger supplier collaboration through systems suppliers actually want to use

This last point is crucial — the most successful organisations recognise that suppliers prioritise customers with easier data processes, especially when allocating limited stock.

By creating supplier-centric platforms where suppliers can upload once and connect everywhere, these leaders are achieving adoption rates above 90% while their competitors struggle with fragmented, incomplete data.

Real Results in Today's Economy

A leading Australian home improvement retailer implemented an automated product data ecosystem just as interest rates began impacting the housing market. They shifted from a proprietary supplier portal to a network-based platform that suppliers found substantially easier to use. Their results:

• Supplier participation jumped from 43% to 94% within 90 days

• Time-to-market reduced by 65%, allowing rapid pivoting to meet changing consumer priorities

• Product data completeness improved by 86%, enhancing online discovery and reducing returns

• Merchandising productivity increased by 40%, delivering $1.2M in additional margin through better category management
  

Their Merchandising Director noted: "We finally acknowledged suppliers won't use our portal when they have a dozen other customers and environments to support. There is no benefit for them in using ours -it’s just another place to manage their content and incur risk of not doing so. When we made it easy to share data they could then reuse for their other customers, everything improved—our data quality, our speed to market, and ultimately our profitability".

The Path Forward

As interest rates remain elevated, and consumer spending grows increasingly selective, manual approaches to product information are no longer sustainable. The merchandising leaders who will thrive are those who:

• Automate the "first mile" of product data collection

• Implement AI-driven validation to do more with existing teams

• Create seamless data workflows across the organisation

• Prioritise supplier experience to drive participation

• Focus on time-to-value, not just time-to-market

This last point is especially critical—suppliers are juggling multiple systems and prioritising customers who make their lives easier. The most successful merchandising leaders recognise that supplier adoption isn't about mandates but about creating platforms suppliers actually want to use.

By liberating their teams from data drudgery and suppliers from portal overload, these leaders will unlock a new era of merchandising excellence—one where category experts spend their time building markets rather than managing spreadsheets. In today's economic environment, this transformation isn't just desirable; it's essential for market survival.

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HivePix is a platform as a service that connects product data across supply chain partners, unifies product data across different sources and formats, and makes that data traceable for regulatory reporting and sustainability initiatives.

To learn more about how HivePix can transform your product information workflows, visit www.hivepix.com or contact us via email at info@hivepix.com.