How single product database will create efficiencies for Corporate Express

Corporate Express Inc. expects to reduce errors in product descriptions for its web site and catalog and reduce the amount of time required to produce flyers when it adopts a single database to manage product information for web and print, Chuck Coleman, director of product support systems, tells Internet Retailer. Corporate Express is implementing a system from Trigo Technologies Inc. of Brisbane, CA, to manage product data for its web site and catalog.

Corporate Express uses outside producers to create catalog content. “Once the data goes to the catalog producers, it takes on a life of its own,” Coleman says. “Someone has to re-key it and it’s easy for someone to mis-key it. Then there’s no way to know that outside of a proofing operation. The overhead is tremendous.”

Corporate Express also expects a rapid reduction in the amount of time it takes to produce sales flyers. It produces nine flyers a year, each of which takes four to six weeks. With a centralized data base, it will be able to pull all the information together and create a flyer in two weeks, Coleman says. Corporate Express also expects an easier time of creating specialized catalogs, such as its catalog for the legal profession or its forthcoming janitorial supplies catalog. "Everything comes from the same fountainhead, so we get a very consistent grouping of data," he says.