PIM & MDM Why Data Onboarding Is Slowing You Down and What to Do About It

Data onboarding is an often-overlooked area which makes it one of the biggest contributors to high operational cost, long time-to-market cycles, and lost revenue. It’s a complex challenge and it is not strange that many organizations still approach data onboarding with a maze of spreadsheets, ad hoc processes, and the manual effort of fetching, classifying, altering and uploading product images and documents. The truth is it doesn’t have to be that way. A structured, automated approach to onboarding new data can eliminate stress and long hours among your employees and turn your supplier onboarding process into a competitive advantage.

The Consequences of Manual Handling

Retailers and distribution companies are constantly refining and expanding their product assortments as existing suppliers add new products or new suppliers fill gaps. These changes in product assortment require mapping, cleaning and uploading of information across multiple systems, including updated imagery and pricing, sustainability disclosures and packaging materials. This is something that needs to be done before a product can even be considered sellable. Most companies still go through these processes manually, so when a supplier and a company need to add new data to systems, a team is often given the task of managing this data.

The team is then handed Excel sheets filled with hundreds of fields to map and validate, each with supplier-specific formatting, values, and attribute names. Each image and document must be mapped, renamed and adjusted before being uploaded. Product descriptions need to be rewritten to align with the company’s tone of voice and SEO guidelines. Then there’s classification, grouping of SKUs (stock keeping units), creation of product bundles, and association linking of spare parts and accessories, most of which the suppliers haven’t defined themselves. The process is demanding, repetitive and easy to get wrong. When every product depends on multiple manual touchpoints, the risks quickly add up:

• Time to market slows down
• Delays, stress and inconsistencies are introduced
• The risk of publishing incorrect or inconsistent product content increases, hurting customer experience, SEO and sales
• Misclassified items can disrupt category navigation, making it harder for customers to find what they’re looking for.
• Missing product images can reduce conversion rates, and a single error can even cause a product to disappear online altogether.

The True Cost of Manual Onboarding

The operational pain points are well known to anyone working close to the process. What’s less visible, but just as critical, is how much strategic opportunity is lost when skilled people are forced to spend their time doing monotonous data work rather than creating value somewhere else.

When onboarding teams spend hours cleaning spreadsheets or rewriting supplier copy, their ability to contribute to assortment strategy, campaign planning, or conversion optimization is diminished. Teams find themselves overloaded, acting more like data clerks than merchandisers. The pressure is constant, and the risk of burnout increases.

Why Traditional Technology Is Not Enough

Many retailers have implemented product information management (PIM) or master data management (MDM) systems, expecting these platforms to solve data onboarding challenges.

While they provide a solid foundation for structured data governance, they rarely solve the problem of how the data gets into the system in the first place. Most platforms assume that the data arrives clean and structured, but unfortunately, this is seldom the case. What’s needed is finding other ways of working where your data flows intelligently, helping your business grow. This is where automation and process intelligence come in, allowing you to deliver faster, with less time and the same quality.

Rethinking the Process with Automation

What if you could automate most data onboarding steps? As we’ve covered, data onboarding is a multi-step workflow, from file detection and data mapping to asset management and publishing. But when that process is handled clearly, the opportunity to apply automation where it has the most impact becomes obvious.

The goal is not to replace teams, nor is it to automate everything. It’s about making the process more effective, identifying the right opportunities, and reducing the amount of manual and repetitive work so that people can focus on what actually drives measurable business value. By combining AI with process automation tools, you can take your data onboarding process to new heights and transform manual routines into efficient adaptive flows that fit your organization.

Supplier data onboarding with process automation leads to:

• Improved time to market
• Lower operational costs
• Less risk of poor product presentation
• Automated management of suppliers' continued input

From Bottleneck to Growth Enabler

The reality is that most organizations already understand that their data onboarding process is inefficient. What they lack is a structured way to fix it, one that fits their current systems and doesn’t require disruptive overhauls. That’s why process automation, when done right, becomes a strategic lever. Among many things, it gives your business the agility to scale. Whether your assortment doubles or compliance requirements evolve, your onboarding process stops being a constraint.

Data Onboarding with Avensia

At Avensia, we’ve reimagined how supplier product data flows into your business and automated the entire journey. Instead of chasing files, converting formats, or waiting on manual reviews, our intelligent solution picks up product data from any source and gets it where it needs to be, clean and ready to go.

Unlike many rigid systems that force suppliers into narrow formats, our approach is flexible and comprehensive:

• It automatically retrieves files from brand portals, emails, upload forms, APIs, internal systems, etc., and validates them immediately.
• With the help of AI, it aligns attributes to your internal data model, splits or merges values, and routes information to the right system.
• It has accessibility as a built-in element.
• It comes with an Adventure Alt Texter solution that uses AI to generate descriptive, accurate, and context-aware alt text for product images.

Tailored Value for Every Supplier

Large suppliers often expect retailers to connect on their terms, whereas small suppliers often lack the tools or technical maturity to conform to strict requirements. Our solution addresses both, without compromise.

For larger suppliers it:

• Removes repetitive preprocessing tasks.
• Ensures immediate compatibility with your data model.
• Accelerates onboarding, updates, and enrichment at scale.
• Reduces dependency on manual validation teams.

For smaller suppliers it:

• Removes complexity by accepting native formats and structures.
• Empowers partners to onboard with minimal friction.
• Reduces rejections and back-and-forth communication.
• Provides a consistent experience without demanding technical investment.

By meeting each supplier where they are, you are able to build stronger relationships and unlock broader assortments faster. Avensia’s onboarding solution is not a replacement for your existing tech stack. Instead, we understand the strengths of your partner platforms and make sure that you get the most value out of them. Our role is to extend and tailor what's already in place, ensuring that your processes, your goals and your growth ambitions come first.

Do you want to learn more about how we combine deep process insights with AI and platform expertise to help you evolve at your pace on your terms? Contact us here and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.