There is a tendency when deploying Product Information Management (PIM) solutions, that you may want to add a portal for your trading partners:

• Manufacturers may have a customer portal where their downstream re-sellers can fetch the nicely arranged product information that is the result of their PIM implementation.
• As a merchant, you could have a supplier portal where your upstream suppliers can deliver their information nicely arranged according to your product information standards in your PIM implementation.

However, this is a dead end for both manufacturers and merchants, because:

• Manufacturers and you as a merchant probably follow different standards, so one must obey to the other. The result is that one side will have a lot of manual and costly work to do to obey the strongest trading partner. Only a few will be the strongest all time.
• If all manufacturers have a customer portal and all merchants have a supplier portal everyone will be waiting for the other and no product information will flow in the supply chains.

This topic was discussed in the post PIM Supplier Portals: Are They Good or Bad?

If you want to learn about the better solution than – or supplement to – a supplier portal, please get in contact here: