We all like spreadsheets, right? They’re familiar, flexible, and useful. As a merchant, if you’re working with a small catalogue, one or two users, and limited channel demands, they’ll do the job on product data management well enough. But the real problems start when your product data starts to become a real operational asset rather than simply lists of attributes and a sentence of description. You’re offering more SKUs, using more suppliers, displaying more attributes, and selling on more channels. In turn, there are more people touching the data, and this turns the practice of using spreadsheets from being a handy tool into being an active series of bottlenecks.
Below, we explain where spreadsheets fail, what that failure costs, and why PIM is a much better fit once your business reaches the happy circumstances where product information needs to be governed, enriched, and published at scale.
Spreadsheets work…until complexity explodes
Excel isn’t the problem. Excel is a perfectly good software tool, but when it comes to managing large volumes of product information, there’s a mismatch between tool and task.
Spreadsheets cope acceptably when you have:
- a small catalogue
- one main sales channel
- limited attribute complexity
- infrequent updates
- minimal need for cross-functional collaboration
However, once those conditions change, the strain on spreadsheets takes its toll. The data failure usually manifests in inconsistencies and fragmentation. The operational consequence is version sprawl and drift, endless checking, and the constant demand for manual rework. Commercially, the impacts are slower launches, weaker channel performance, errors in product listing, and a lack of trust in the data for the business users (and information for the end user/customer).
Version control – where things start unravelling
The tell-tale sign that spreadsheets are no longer sufficient for the job isn’t a tech failure. It’s how your users behave.
Teams end up working across multiple files:
- the marketing version
- the supplier master
- the eCommerce upload sheet
- Lack of accountability – is the “latest” file really the latest and most definitive?
Predictably, the whole thing is a mess. People update the wrong version, they overwrite each other’s changes, or they send email files around departments for approval.A PIM clears up this mess by creating a single governed source of truth. There is one live record, not a stack of competing versions. And it’s that fact which changes the operating model immediately.
Excel cannot enforce product data standards reliably
Quality product information thrives on rules. That means categories with defined attributes. values with standardised formats, and channels with specific fields. And don’t forget compliance-sensitive data – this needs stringent control!
Spreadsheets are weak in this area. Even with validation rules, users can paste over restrictions, rename columns, break formulas, or introduce slight variations which invariably cause problems further downstream.
And that’s how you end up with:
- “Black,” “black,” and “Blk”
- mixed units of measure
- missing mandatory fields
- inconsistent product names across categories
A PIM is built to stop that drift in that it enforces controlled vocabularies, required fields, workflow stages, and validation rules at the point of entry.
Collaboration breaks spreadsheet-based workflows
By nature, product data is cross-functional. Product, marketing, eCommerce, compliance, sales, and operations departments all need to contribute to its completeness. Spreadsheets don’t handle multiple sources of collaboration well because they offer no adequate:
- workflow management
- task assignment
- approval routing
- role-based permissions
- audit trail
What commonly results is duplicated work, slow approvals, and limited (if any) accountability for data. A PIM provides the foundations for collaboration as a managed process, not via endless chains of email attachments.
Multi-channel publishing exposes the limits fastest
The real problem with scalability emerges when you need to syndicate the same product data to different destinations. Your website, marketplaces, customer portals, catalogues, and internal systems all require slightly different outputs.
If you’re still operating on a spreadsheet-led basis, all the above usually means maintaining separate files or columns for each channel. You then have to copy, reformat, and check every update… repeatedly. That’s a lot of person hours – and it’s essentially paying a specialist rate to your people to be glorified data inputters.
A PIM deals with this much more effectively. A single master product record is able to support channel-specific models, completeness checks, and structured outputs. Industry analyst Gartner’s guidance reflects this shift: multichannel publishing, product contextualisation, workflow, and rich content authoring have now become core PIM capabilities, while supplier onboarding and AI-assisted content are common extensions in today’s product data management ecosystem.
Spreadsheets hide avoidable costs which look like ‘normal’ work
As we said earlier, the strongest argument against using spreadsheets isn’t so much the software itself but the accumulated cost of using a mistaken tool for too long.
This cost always shows up as:
- hours spent cleaning and reformatting unusable data
- repeated manual uploads
- failures in product listing leading to suppressed SKUs
- broken filters, causing lower discoverability
- customer complaints due to inaccurate information
- delays when onboarding new products and suppliers
Many businesses have fallen into the habit of absorbing all these problems as parts of the ‘ordinary’ workload. But they aren’t ‘ordinary.’ In this day and age, they just rack up product data ‘debt.’ The interest payable is commercial failure.
When Excel is still OK, and when it’s definitely not
Excel still has a place. It is useful for:
- ad hoc analysis
- temporary clean-up work
- small early-stage catalogues
- quick internal planning tasks
Excel is no longer fit for purpose as the master system when:
- multiple teams edit product data regularly
- the catalogue grows into the hundreds or thousands of SKUs
- differing channels need different outputs
- approvals and governance are foundational
- errors have a tangible commercial cost
At that point, the question becomes not whether spreadsheets are ‘what we know best,’ but whether they are pulling the handbrake on your commercial ambitions.
The practical difference a PIM makes
A PIM turns product information from a file management problem into a controlled business process. It centralises data, supports collaboration, enforces standards, and distributes structured outputs far more reliably than when using spreadsheets.
All the above is why we at Start with Data position PIM as part of a broader approach to product data management. And it isn’t just a software choice because the real value isn’t about simply governance, structure, and workflow discipline that spreadsheets simply cannot sustain as your business expands its range of products, its entry points to market, and its reach across territories.
Next step
If your teams are spending too much time fixing unsuitable files, checking versions, and reworking product data uploads for your channels, you’ve probably already outgrown spreadsheets. Reach out to us for a discovery call. We can begin to discuss exactly how your business can move to a more scalable product data operating model, in line with your strategic ambitions.