The typical supplier must deliver data to a variety of buyers, e-procurement platforms and networks, and vertical marketplace sites. Each of those end points may require unique data formats based on different dialects of XML schemas. Poet eCatalog Suite insulates suppliers from these differences by letting them keep a data store that can deliver data on the fly into the appropriate delivery format and with the correct degree of customization. Instead of telling the IT department to clean up all their data, we offload it into a repository where it can be cleaned up independent of the mission-critical applications, said Mike Hogan, Poet's vice president of corporate development. We store a superset of all the info and can generate XML and also older flat-file formats on the fly, Hogan added.
Users can manage just one set of data, but buyers still get only what they want to see.
E-commerce suppliers face several typical challenges with their catalog data. Product data are usually stored in legacy IT systems where some fields, such as descriptions or units of measure, may not be meaningful to every buyer. Furthermore, buyers in most cases want their catalog data to reflect negotiated pricing and product selection. Custom catalogs are then generated for each buyer according to a profile. The data is then transmitted via the Internet using the appropriate XML dialect.