Product data governance: keeping data consistent across a team
When one person runs the catalog, consistency comes naturally. When a content manager writes descriptions, a purchasing manager adds suppliers, a marketer edits titles for ads and a developer tweaks the import, the catalog starts to drift. Different spellings, overwritten edits, duplicate products. Data governance is a set of simple agreements that prevents this.
Agree who owns what
Every field should have one owner and one source:
- Price and stock: calculated from supplier data and pricing rules. Nobody edits them by hand.
- Titles and descriptions: owned by content managers.
- Categories and attributes: owned by whoever manages the catalog structure.
- Pricing rules: owned by the person responsible for margin.
Most conflicts happen when two people or two processes write to the same field.
Write down the standards
A one-page guide saves hours of corrections. It should cover:
- title format, for example "Brand Model, key characteristic, colour";
- allowed values for common attributes and units of measurement;
- category structure and where new products go;
- image requirements;
- how to name new suppliers and price types.
Keep one source of truth
If the catalog lives partly in spreadsheets, partly in the store admin and partly in someone's head, there is no way to keep it consistent. Choose one system where product data is assembled and send it from there to all channels.
Control changes
- Bulk changes are tested on a sample first.
- Rule changes are noted with the date and the reason.
- New suppliers are mapped to existing fields and values, not to new ones.
Review regularly
Once a month, check for duplicates, products without categories, unusual attribute values and products whose prices fall outside the normal margin. Small fixes done often are easier than a big clean-up once a year.
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