Retailers rely on information and speed. Sales, product, operational, and logistical data are being updated and shared constantly both internally and externally in fast-moving organizations. Retailers need accurate and real-time data, but have been trudging manually through Excel spreadsheets that can’t keep up. Retailers need to quit Excel for managing data.
Excel offers many benefits for those in need of a spreadsheet, not a database. Using Excel spreadsheets to track everything in the organization quickly leads to messy formatting and incorrect data. Organizations have had to account for this by increasing headcount which is not only costly, but incredibly time-intensive (not to mention that humans make errors too).
Product Data Falls Behind and Apart
Products are more than prices and descriptions: they have visual components and are constantly being updated. Images and videos can’t be stored in Excel, so visual pieces need to be stored and shared separately. Updates need to be done manually in Excel which is painstakingly time-consuming.
How many times have your organization’s sales taken a hit because a product didn’t go live or had the wrong information? It happens so frequently that it’s practically commonplace now. With so much data being shared with a non-collaborative program, information gets lost, altered, and rarely fixed.
If you are a retailer asking brands to send product data via Excel, you know how painful the sorting of information can be. Even if you provide brands with a standard format, you’re asking brands to potentially harm their data. The spreadsheets you receive will be slow to open and probably not in the format you wanted anyway. Brands are spending an immense amount of time, your organization is spending resources and time, and because of all the work involved, there’s a cap on how many brands you can work with.
Relying on CSVs and Excel can also create formatting issues with large numbers for UPCs, SKUs and MPNs. They also limit the ability to format text in proper paragraph format.
Optimization on the Digital Shelf
How long does it take your organization to update a thousand product descriptions? Retailers are ultimately responsible for updates from the brand. In an omnichannel world, you can’t be the slowest sales channel or you will lose brands, sales, and credibility. Optimization needs to happen continuously and rapidly which is exactly why retailers need to upgrade from Excel.
The Power When You Quit Excel
Quitting Excel gives your business the opportunity to innovate and move faster. Invest in software that will ultimately give your business the agility it needs to be successful, and doesn't slow processes or data-sharing. Innovative systems use machine-learning algorithms to update product data across channels reducing the need for manual edits.
When you quit Excel in favor of a more sophisticated software, you'll be able to see analytics in real-time and be able to understand the channels and brands that are performing the best for your business. This leads to the ability to develop better strategies for the future of your organization.
Ready to finally quit Excel in favor of faster, high-quality data?
Schedule a demo of Syndic8 today.