From Paper Backlogs to Digital Product Catalogs
Across industrial and niche sectors, paper catalogs are becoming a liability. Product data lives in printed books, scattered PDFs and isolated spreadsheets, forcing staff to cross-check multiple sources before confirming a part number. When a print catalog is out of date, technicians risk ordering the wrong item or delaying maintenance while they hunt for clarification. That downtime has a direct impact on customers who increasingly expect near‑instant product lookup and ordering. In response, companies are building a digital product catalog as a single source of truth instead of relying on physical documents that are obsolete as soon as specifications change. This shift underpins broader product information management strategies: by centralizing and standardizing data, businesses can publish consistent information across e-commerce sites, partner portals and internal tools, replacing slow, error‑prone manual workflows with connected, searchable systems.
Hydroscand’s Print Catalog Replacement with Akeneo
Industrial hose supplier Hydroscand illustrates how a centralized digital platform can replace print catalogs at scale. The company manages more than 30,000 products sold in over 20 markets, previously documented across printed catalogs, PDFs and an e-commerce site. Field technicians depended on these materials, yet they were not always up to date, slowing product launches and complicating specification changes. Hydroscand has now consolidated product information in Akeneo’s Product Cloud and uses Akeneo Digital Showroom as its main interface for product discovery. Product management, marketing and sales teams work from the same dataset, while translations and channel distribution are handled centrally. Engineers, distributors and service staff can query a unified, live system instead of juggling separate documents, improving search precision for technically complex parts. A key outcome is the planned phase-out of printed catalogs, cutting production effort and environmental impact while supporting a more agile catalog digitization strategy.
Why Centralized Product Information Management Matters
Centralized product information management is about more than convenience; it directly affects operational resilience. When product data is fragmented, even routine changes—such as an updated specification or new variant—require manual edits across multiple documents and systems. Any discrepancy can lead to inaccurate orders, increased returns and confusion in the field. Platforms such as Akeneo’s Product Cloud concentrate thousands of items in a single digital product catalog, where attributes, media and fitment rules are maintained once and reused everywhere. Teams across functions access identical, current data, reducing the risk that someone is working from an outdated sheet or catalog page. This shared, structured repository also accelerates product launches and channel updates, since information can be pushed simultaneously to e-commerce, partner networks and internal tools. In effect, businesses trade static documentation and downtime risk for live, synchronized data that travels with the workflow instead of against it.
Digitizing Complex Fitment Data in Niche Industries
Niche sectors such as automotive dismantling face an added challenge: mapping millions of components, overlapping part numbers and vehicle variations into usable digital data. Software provider LekoTech argues that weak inventory structures and inconsistent fitment information—not demand—limit growth in reused-parts sales. Many dismantlers still depend on handwritten labels, manual searches for OEM references and ad‑hoc naming conventions, which translate into incorrect listings and higher return rates when parts do not fit. LekoTech’s model focuses on catalog digitization strategy rather than just marketplace visibility. Dismantlers capture images; LekoTech handles structured data creation, fitment mapping and automatic export to institutional e-commerce platforms, supported by tools like license plate, VIN and OE code search. A dedicated digitisation team emphasizes accuracy over full automation, recognizing that a fast but unreliable system can be as damaging as a slow one. This standardized approach enables more confident online sales in a traditionally offline segment.
Digital Platforms as the Backbone of E-Commerce Growth
As companies expand e-commerce channels, digital platforms that unify product data become essential infrastructure. For a dismantler, turning a yard of used parts into reliable online stock requires consistent, searchable descriptions and fitment rules. For an industrial supplier, ensuring that a technician can pinpoint the exact hose or fitting in seconds depends on precise attributes and up-to-date specifications. In both cases, a modern product information management system underpins that capability, replacing fragmented references with a structured, queryable product cloud. Once data is centralized, businesses can plug it into marketplaces, web stores and partner systems without re-keying information, reducing manual errors and support tickets. Live digital records also make it easier to comply with changing technical, safety or environmental requirements across markets. Ultimately, ditching paper catalogs is less about going “paperless” and more about building a resilient, data-driven foundation for faster, more accurate digital commerce.