The supplier's spreadsheet into Akeneo or Salsify, for review

The question this file answersHow long does a supplier spreadsheet take to reach the shop as live products — and who rewrites it by hand?

Fits: retailers and marketplaces processing hundreds to thousands of SKU updates a month (retail playbook) from supplier spreadsheets and PDFs, with a PIM or a platform admin as the destination.

Not for: shops that source only from suppliers already feeding a structured product feed straight into the PIM — the reformatting is not your cost.

Typical day

What the desk looks like today

Typical, from the retail and e-commerce playbook — not a client's day. Hundreds to thousands of SKU updates a month arrive from suppliers as spreadsheets and PDFs, each in its own layout. A merchandiser reformats columns, rewrites descriptions, maps items to your categories, chases photos, publishes, updates prices — then starts on the next supplier's file. It hurts twice a year, when a new season's range arrives from every supplier in the same fortnight, and every week the shop sells at last month's price because the sheet is still in an inbox.

What changes

What Monday looks like after

The week the autumn range lands. The merchandiser opens the PIM to rows in review — attributes mapped, categories suggested, a draft description, the few SKUs with a missing size or a suspect price marked. Their day is editing the sentences that carry the brand, checking the categories that were guessed, and deciding what goes live — not rebuilding a spreadsheet. The photography brief still comes from them. Prices reflect this month's sheet, not last month's. You can see, per supplier, how many rows arrived clean and how many a person had to fix. The Forrester (2023) time-to-publish range is above; an analyst figure, and enrichment is all it covers.

Typical, not a measured client result. Every figure here comes from the playbook source named below.

~40–60%

faster time from supplier sheet to live catalogue — Forrester (2023)

Before: a merchandiser reformats supplier sheets into the catalogue every week. After: Forrester (2023) reports 40–60% faster time-to-publish — brand voice still has a person.

Where this number comes from

Forrester "Product Information Management" (2023): AI-assisted catalogue enrichment reduces time-to-publish by 40–60%; Salsify/Akeneo benchmarks: 50%+ less manual entry of product attributes. Analyst and vendor numbers, not our measurement. Playbook range 40–60%.

What we install

What we put in front of the systems you already run

Whatever holds your product data stays the master — Akeneo, Salsify, Plytix, or the Shopify or Magento product admin if there is no PIM. In front of it:

each supplier file is read and its columns mapped to your attribute model, once per layout
attributes are extracted per SKU, and inconsistencies — a size not in your scale, a colour spelt three ways — flagged
a category is suggested from your tree and a description drafted in your house style for editing
your price rules — margin, rounding, currency — run in bulk
rows land in the PIM through its API as "in review", not live, and the merchandiser publishes.

First scope: the supplier whose file is largest or ugliest.

What stays human — and what this will not do

Brand voice. Visual merchandising. Assortment decisions. Photography direction. The one sentence that makes a product yours.

What can go wrong — and what we do about it

If your attribute model is inconsistent — three colour fields, sizes as free text — extracted data lands in the same mess; fixing the model is audit work. When a supplier changes its spreadsheet layout the mapping breaks and has to be re-taught — so rows land in review, never live. Drafted descriptions read like the average of your catalogue, not your best copywriter; the sentence that carries the brand is still written by a person. The Forrester 40–60% is time-to-publish for enrichment; assortment decisions, visual merchandising and photography are outside it.

How long it takes, and what we need from you

Audit, about two weeks (€1.5–3K): we take a month of supplier files, count SKUs and layouts, map one supplier's columns to your attribute model by hand to see how dirty it is, and check the PIM or platform API. Pilot, 3–5 weeks — medium complexity in the retail playbook (€10–20K): two or three suppliers, rows in review only, the merchandiser publishes every one. Production: the remaining suppliers, then price rules. From you: PIM access, your attribute model, examples of on-brand descriptions.

The path: free 60-second estimate → free 20-minute review → paid audit of this one process (€1.5–3K, typically two weeks) → pilot with your people in the loop (€10–20K, weeks, not quarters). No transformation programme. Prices are public, on the services page →

This is about you if…

Do suppliers send product data as spreadsheets and PDFs, each in its own layout?
Does a merchandiser reformat, describe and categorise each SKU by hand before it goes live?
Is there a PIM — Akeneo, Salsify, Plytix — or at least a platform admin where rows can land in review?

What does this mean in euros?

That depends on your volumes and wage costs — this page will not invent the number. The free 60-second estimate runs that calculation from your answers, with every multiplier sourced.

Get your free savings estimate 60 seconds · no sales call Or write first → Map an ops process like this one — free, 60 seconds →

Not a named Aperanda client. Process file · Ops.

Deep-dive process file. Volumes, weeks and sources come from the industry playbook; nothing here is a named client.

All process files