The first topic I often have to address with new customers, and very often with prospects, is about standardizing the data, which basically means making the product data consistent.
In the traditional workflow, having consistent data may not be a concern, and for some aspects might even be a shortcut for the design team, constantly running against their deadlines, because some products will be done quicker — and letting managers know the catalog is on time is a great stress reliever.
However, B2B catalogs are essentially tools for both sales people and end users. The focus must be on the content: its correctness and availability.
The Invisible Work of Your Designers
When the data is not standardized — and this is extremely frequent since automation is a niche within a niche — and because the information for each product arrived at a different time, each with a different goal, and managed by different staff (especially for small businesses with more than 20 years of activity), the chaos at hand calls for a Demiurge that organizes all this information in an intelligible and readable fashion.
The designers start to craft all their sense of aesthetic and all their knowledge about perception and composition, to create meaningful content from the chaos. As a matter of fact, on my first contact with a prospect, when I introduce the benefits and the goal of automated catalogs based on adaptable grids, the first reaction of many customers is to state that their catalogs are very peculiar — with a hint of pride too — but the reality is their product information is not consistent is not consistent.
This is extremely relevant because if the data is not consistent, the shift is unavoidably on the composition and the look & feel rather than on the products content. Pleasing the eyes does not make a catalog better.
Disorganization Exposed
I built AGL (Advanced Grid Layout) embracing the paradigm that consistent data across each section is a real value for the end user. When data is consistent because it has been standardized, reading is easier and skimming information comes naturally:
I guess now you see the big picture. If you have always created your catalog with unstandardized data, it is most likely that your catalog has been built under the same constraints.
Unstandardized data can be a risk for your business
Providing a catalog to your customers with very limited and unchecked information is essentially a disservice you are doing to your most loyal clients, and a serious threat to new ones and prospects. Long-time customers may already be familiar with products that have only a generic bullet point (like screws, washers, and bolts, for instance), but their new employees might not — and this can result in stress and frustration. New customers and prospects might start to challenge your credibility and professionalism, and that is certainly something you would like to avoid. Usually your sales people are there to mitigate these issues and assist customers, however sales reps come and go, while your catalog is always there. It can work 24/7, but it should not work against you.
Standardizing your data Is a real benefit
Eventually we can agree that having standardized data is a great benefit regardless of the methodology you use to produce your catalog. I warmly recommend employing an expert technical writer to perform the task of standardizing and consolidating your data, since this directly influences your catalog, e-commerce website, product flyers, and technical sheets. However, since the explosion of increasingly advanced AI and LLM assistants, this task can also be achieved quickly by someone on your internal team. Today there are no excuses left for not fixing the data in your catalog.
While standardizing your data may result in additional time to complete your traditional catalog, it is with automation that having consistent data across each product line truly shines. Since AGL can build hundreds of pages in seconds, standardizing the data is our main goal. Once the database has been standardized and consolidated, we move into maintenance mode — which comes with an additional discount for our customers. With AGL, our customers have a real way to forecast their budget and save money while offering their customers the best catalog ever.
On the contrary, when the data has not been standardized and the organization of the page relies on the designer's skills, you think your page is organized — however your page has simply been gracefully composed, and what you get is "Mondrian".