How to onboard products with your suppliers without chasing spreadsheets

The problem: the spreadsheet that goes back and forth

In many companies, onboarding a new product starts with an email: “Here is the template, fill it in.” The supplier fills it in their own way, renames columns, leaves gaps, writes dimensions in another unit. Someone on the team fixes it, asks for what is missing, waits for the answer and fixes it again. Each round takes days, and the product cannot be sold in the meantime.

The problem is neither the supplier nor Excel: it is that the information is captured outside the system where it will live, without the rules that system requires.

The alternative: suppliers enter data in your system

When the supplier enters data directly, with access limited to their brands, the conversation changes:

• The rules are in the form. What data each product type needs, which fields are required and which values are accepted. The supplier cannot submit without the required data.
• Values arrive normalized. If color is picked from a list, you don't get “Navy blue”, “Navy” and “Marine” as three colors.
• The supplier sees what is missing. Instead of waiting for an email back, they know right away what to complete.

Review: a queue, not an inbox

What the supplier submits should not go straight into the catalog. A validation queue lets your team:

1. see what arrived, from whom and when;
2. compare the submission against what your channels require;
3. approve it, or send it back with a written reason.

A submission returned with its reason gets fixed faster than an email thread, and it leaves a record of what was asked and why.

What the supplier sees and what they don't

A supplier portal has to be strict about scope. The supplier needs to see and edit their brands' products, with their history and requirements. They don't need —and shouldn't— see your prices, channels, credits, team or other suppliers' products. Separating what they discuss with your team from what your team discusses internally matters too.

For suppliers with many products

Not every supplier onboards one product at a time. For those who send hundreds, accept a template-based file upload, but with the same validation as the form: before submitting, the system says which rows would go in, which would not and why. That way the file stops being a problem and goes back to being a loading format.

What to measure

To know whether the change works, measure a few things and always measure them the same way:

• Days from the supplier's submission until the product is approved.
• How many submissions are sent back and for what reason: if a reason repeats, the form is missing a rule.
• How many products arrive complete for the channel where you sell the most.

Those three numbers show where the bottleneck is: with the supplier, in the form or in the review.

How Bruxel handles it

In Bruxel the supplier joins your organization limited to their brands, with a short menu: their products, submit products and their uploads. The product onboarding form builds itself from what you already configure —your attribute groups, your category tree and your channels' requirements— and the supplier can submit one product at a time or a file with the template. Nothing submitted enters the catalog until your team approves it. The supplier portal guide explains what the supplier sees and writes, and the product onboarding with your suppliers use case shows it on video.

Where to start

Pick the supplier who sends you the most new products and one of their brands. Define which data is required for that type of product, invite them with access to that brand only and ask them to onboard their next products through the portal. Within a few weeks you will see how many correction rounds you save, and that tells you whom to invite next.