I grew up in Madras aka Chennai, India

Where St Thomas is supposed to be buried

And the British got their start in India

I encountered my first catalog in the shape of the Sears catalog

My mum used to have a stack of these

Nowadays, like everyone else I suppose, my preferred 'catalog' is Google. Especially if I want to search for nuts.

Or Amazon.

Occasionally I might look at recommendations from friends

So search engines and Amazon are the de facto product catalogs today

Yet you have lots invested in your curated and centralized catalogs.

Should you continue to invest in your current catalog infrastructure?

The product catalog has to change to take advantage of opportunities beyond the traditional e-commerce site

Current gen product catalogs are great when you have one channel

With a little twisting and turning they can even be adapted to a couple of channels

But after that it starts to get pretty hard

But what happens when your catalog needs to publish to lots and lots of end points? ....

When every app or web page is a chance to display and sell product?

Next, how do you match the right product to the right customer at the right time?

Your investments in supply chain and ERP give you great control over the supply side

Investments in CRM, sentiment analysis and user behavior have given you deeper knowledge of your customers

But the final piece of the puzzle is more real-time intelligence on products

Products with a deep set of attributes to give you the ability to match the right product with the right customer at the right time

Matching well can turn browsers into buyers

The journey doesn't end with the customer clicking the buy button

You have to make sure that you have what you sold ... and if you don't, get it

Ideally you only sell what you have or what you can get

And then once sold you have to make sure it get's to the customer and then they're satisfied with what they got

The better and more connected your product catalog to all these functions ... the fewer dissatisfied customer on any count

Used to be all about location

Assortment not much of a competitive differentiator with Amazon and marketplaces

Price still important

Experience is key. Not just location, but timing and preferences.

That's a lot of requirements ... but it all does start with the next gen catalog

Simple easy access
Community contributes
Give and get
Lightweight but highly functional standards

Like FourSquare is a catalog of places and LinkedIn is a catalog of people

Cloud plus private data
Private data such as supply chain, inventory and margins

Like Expedia combines public and private data for travel or Zillow for real estate

Every product on the planet
Constantly updated
Breadth and depth

Like Google

Deep data on all products
Attributes grow through machine aided learning and community contribution
With quality control

Like Amazon

Product presentation assembled in real time from multiple sources

Like Bloomberg brings together real-time feeds for financial institutions

You curate the product, the attribute and presentation
Using simple rules
To convert browsing to buying

Like Hubspot helps web sites with inbound marketing