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CASE STUDY - CATALOG - DISTRIBUTION
How a leading national distributor eliminated catalog data chaos and built a frictionless procurement workflow
Industry: Packaging/Distribution
Focus: Catalog
Location: Northeast, US
THE CHALLENGE
Overcoming manual data bottlenecks in procurement
The organization hit a critical operational ceiling. Every vendor price update and portfolio expansion triggered hours of manual data "clean-up," forcing teams to make critical procurement decisions with compromised visibility and escalating margin risk.
Manual Price-Sheet Bottlenecks
Retrieving disparate PDFs, copying static data, and manually syncing updates across systems.
High Rework
Burdens
100% of purchase orders (POs) required manual edits, consistently driven by mismatches between vendor catalogs and ERP data.
Limited Operational Visibility
Fewer than 10% of order confirmations were tracked, drastically increasing the risk of missed deliveries, unflagged pricing errors, and costly downstream exceptions.
THE SOLUTION
Securing ERP integrity with Quidi Catalog
They deployed Quidi Catalog as the upstream "front door" for all supplier data. By establishing a single, high-integrity source of truth prior to ERP entry, they make sure that every downstream procurement workflow begins with trusted, validated inputs.
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Quidi Catalog delivered a comprehensive, automated ecosystem:
Automated
Ingestion
Seamless intake of multi-format supplier data, including emails and PDF catalogs.
Classification, Extraction, & Normalization
Instantly identifies catalog documents, extracts core fields (SKU, price, Unit of Measure), and applies standardization rules to ensure absolute data consistency.
ERP Comparison
& Validation
Automatically audits extracted supplier values against existing ERP records to pinpoint discrepancies.
Controlled
Write-Back
Executes precise API write-backs for pricing updates, protected by strict operational guardrails.
Human-in-the-Loop Exception Handling
Routes ambiguous items and discrepancies to an exception queue for review.
Immutable
Audit Trail
Provides complete, end-to-end traceability from the source catalog and extracted values through to final ERP update decisions.
IMPLEMENTATION
Blueprint for success - from intake to runtime analytics
THE RESULTS
Shifting from manual clean-up to autonomous scale
By replacing constant manual intervention with autonomous synchronization, the organization transformed its sourcing and procurement operations:
Proactive Detection
Catalog changes are automatically detected, extracted, and cross-referenced the moment they arrive.
Controlled Velocity
ERP updates are applied with strict administrative controls, complete visibility, and zero guesswork.
Upstream Resolution
Pricing and data exceptions are routed to the right reviewer with full context immediately - never discovered late in the transaction cycle.
WHY IT MATTERS
Continuing to scale across the enterprise
This deployment establishes a scalable foundation designed to protect profitability and fuel frictionless growth:
Margin Protection
Minimizes profit leakage driven by outdated vendor pricing and manual entry errors.
Operational Scale
Enables the company to absorb aggressive growth and rapid product launches without a linear, costly increase in headcount.
Financial Control
Delivers a high-integrity, compliance-ready audit trail linking vendor catalogs directly to the ERP.