Nowadays, a significant proportion of business processes are automated and carried out electronically. This also applies to e-commerce and electronic procurement in the B2B sector, associated marketplaces and trading systems. In connection with electronic procurement and logistics, catalog data management is an essential link for the digitalization of corporate processes, linking previously isolated individual areas within and between companies and optimizing the associated processes.

BMEcat makes it possible to integrate supplier catalogs directly into enterprise resource planning systems. The creation of these catalogs is done directly in the BMEcat software, like e-proCAT.

BMEcat files can be imported into various online shop systems. This enables the user to import his catalog in XML format into systems such as Shopify, Magento, Amazon, Shopware and others. However, transferring data in (almost) real time is often only possible via third-party interfaces. By using the XML format, importing catalog data from BMEcat into other systems does not involve excessive effort.

Why should you rely on standard formats?

The greatest advantage of standard formats is that many software products already support them by default. This means that there is no need to hire a developer to customize the format.

Example: Orders

Your online store exports orders in openTRANS format. You want to import these orders into your ERP system. If your ERP system can read the openTRANS format, you do not need an individually programmed interface.

Example: Product data

In the example, you use a PIM (Product Information Management – platform for managing product data) like our own mediacockpit, to manage the product and article data. This article master data can be transferred to both the online store and the WMS (warehouse management system) assuming these support the BMEcat format.

What if neither the online store nor the merchandise management system supports one of the standard formats?

If this is the case, you often have to resort to converters or have an interface programmed. We recommend using standard formats like BMEcat and having an interface created for the chosen format. Of course, e-proCAT itself can already export to a wide variety of flat file fomats like CSV, TXT and Excel.

But even if our standard exports are not adequate, using an open and documented standard format enables the reusability of the interfaces when changing systems in the future. For example, if you want to change the online shop CMS, but the warehouse management system remains, you can select a new CMS that supports the chosen open data standard format. The chances are much higher that there are already favorable and functioning solutions that are able to process these formats. In addition, when building interfaces, the chances are much higher that a programmer ideally already has experience with the format and threfore achieves much faster results.

Try for yourself!

Sign up for your free e-proCAT demo and start creating your first B2B catalog today!