Supplier catalog import, automated: every catalog in your ERP — even when your supplier has no data feed.
Catalog standards are great — when suppliers use them. Most send PDF, Excel, or nothing at all. Syntact reads any format, maps it to your article model, and writes verified articles to your ERP. Your team approves — instead of typing.
The catalog arrived. It still never makes it into your ERP.
Not because your team is slow — but because there's no import path between the supplier's format and your article master. Standards only close the gap for the suppliers who use them. The rest stays manual.
Structured catalog feeds work — when the supplier provides one. Your top three might. The other 50, 100, 200 send price lists as PDFs, Excel files in ever-changing column logic, or the catalog as an email attachment. And for those there is no import path. Only typing.
Wrong field lengths, custom product group logic, broken character encoding: the import fails, IT investigates, purchasing waits — and in the end someone fixes it by hand anyway. A standard is only as good as the file that actually lands in your inbox.
When entering a catalog costs days, the catalog stays in the pile. The articles are missing from your system, sales quotes from gut feeling or stale data — and nobody adds up what that costs over a year.
Suppliers raise prices, then your team types: cost prices, tiers, discount groups — article by article. Barely done with one round, the next price list lands in the inbox. It's a race you cannot win manually.
A missing import path never costs just typing time.
The catalog gap has two built-in costs: the articles that never make it into your system — and the old prices that keep selling silently. Both grow with every supplier and every pricing round.
A standard file with a creative interpretation, an Excel with new column logic: the import path breaks, and 'automatic' becomes manual again. Or doesn't happen at all.
What isn't imported doesn't exist for your ERP, shop, or costing. Quotes are built from memory and gut feeling — on prices nobody has verified.
The supplier raised prices, your system still shows the old cost. No alarm, no error message — just a margin that shrinks a little on every order. For months.
What was painstakingly entered is outdated with the next price list. Manual entry doesn't scale — the backlog grows with every supplier and every pricing round.
What does the typing cost you — the typing nobody questions?
A conservative calculation: pure data entry time only. Margin lost to outdated purchase prices, quotes built on stale data, and the articles that never get entered because there is no import path aren't even included yet.
Approve catalogs instead of typing them.
No supplier portal, no mandatory format, no re-educating your suppliers: catalogs and price lists keep arriving the way they arrive today. Only the entry is done by AI — embedded in your existing system landscape.
PDF price list, Excel in any column logic, a catalog as an email attachment — and yes, Datanorm and BMEcat too: Syntact continuously reads your intake. Nobody converts anything, nobody asks the supplier for a different format.
The AI recognizes articles, prices, tiers, discount groups, units, and attributes — and maps everything to your article model. Every record is matched against your existing data via duplicate checking: existing articles are updated instead of created twice.
Your team sees the finished catalog as a proposal: new articles, changed prices, flagged exceptions — next to the original source. Approve, and the articles are in your ERP. Days of typing become minutes of review.
Approval stays with your team: no article lands in your master without your people's sign-off. The AI proposes — humans decide.
Standards need disciplined suppliers. Syntact only needs the file that arrives anyway.
A standard import only works when the supplier delivers the standard — cleanly. Syntact flips the dependency: your suppliers don't adapt to the software; the software reads what actually arrives.
PDF, Excel, catalog, email attachment, Datanorm, BMEcat: Syntact reads what your suppliers actually send. Standards remain welcome where they arrive clean — they're just no longer required.
No portal, no mandatory format, no re-educating anyone: your suppliers keep sending what they send today. The dependency on the supplier's format is gone — and with it the reason catalogs pile up unentered.
Everything is mapped to your product groups, attributes, and units — not to a standard schema someone has to bend back into shape afterwards. Your data logic stays the reference, not ours.
Every article is checked against your existing data: EAN, supplier article number, description. Existing articles are updated instead of duplicated — the master gets cleaner with every catalog, not fuller.
The AI proposes — people approve. Unclear unit, suspicious price jump, possible duplicate: flagged and put in front of your team for a decision, with the original source right next to it.
Syntact is not a PIM replacement and not another data silo: SAP, Dynamics, JTL, Akeneo, or Pimcore remain the system of record — Syntact is the supply layer that reliably gets every catalog in.
Your ERP/PIM stays. Syntact fills it.
Catalogs come in from the inbox, verified articles land in your ERP and PIM — via API or standard interface, with your article master as the reference. No system migration, no additional data silo.
We build missing connectors for free — contractually guaranteed. Compatible with anything that has an API or an import format for article data.
Catalog Pilot: your 3 most labor-intensive supplier catalogs — automated into your ERP in 14 days.
A pilot on your real catalogs, with your article model and your team — on terms where doing nothing is the most expensive option.
If your catalog pipeline isn't live in production after 90 days, we keep working for free until it is.
You pay no platform license as long as the pilot isn't running in production. The risk is on us.
Catalog intake, article model mapping, and your approval workflow — set up, not sold.
90 days of direct access to the person building your use case — no ticket system, no call center.
If the pilot doesn't go into production, you pay only half the implementation.
Missing an interface to your system? We build it for free — contractually guaranteed.
The mechanism is already running — with real customers, on real data.
This exact use case runs in production at McSHARK: product, price, and logistics data from the most varied sources, harmonized in a semantic data layer — with ROI from the first use case. Syntact is the AI foundation platform for enterprises: one foundation for every use case, operated in the EU, all the way to on-premises.
- Catalogs, price lists, and article master in one semantic data layer
- Permissions & audit log on every level
- After the catalogs: order entry, invoice verification, knowledge assistant — same platform
"With Syntact, we successfully unified all our product, pricing, and logistics data and achieved ROI from the very first use case."
First, see how it works live. Then: your demo, on your data.
Two steps, zero risk: a 30-minute call with a live demo first — then, if it fits, a custom demo we prepare for free on your data.
- 1Book today: 30 minutesLive demo on a real example: A supplier catalog without a data feed becomes verified articles and prices in your ERP. We capture your requirements — and tell you honestly whether it's a fit.
- 2Then: your demo. Your data.We prepare a custom demo with your documents, free of charge — ready in one week, presented in 60 minutes.
- Founder & CEO of CodeFlügel — software & AI from Graz since 2011
- 15 years of AI, app and data projects for industry and trade
- Projects for companies like Siemens, Henkel and voestalpine
In the call you talk directly to an expert — no sales call center.
- Why isn't a catalog standard like Datanorm or a supplier feed enough?
- Standards work brilliantly under one condition: the supplier has to provide the file — and provide it clean. In practice, only your biggest suppliers do; the rest send PDF price lists, Excel files, and catalogs with no import path at all. Syntact closes exactly that gap: it reads whatever format actually arrives and turns it into verified article data in your ERP.
- Does Syntact also process proper Datanorm and BMEcat files?
- Yes. Clean Datanorm and BMEcat files are processed directly — and so are the files where suppliers interpret the standard creatively: wrong field lengths, custom product group logic, encoding issues. What breaks a classic import still gets extracted, mapped, and put up for approval with Syntact. You don't need a second path for the edge cases.
- What other formats does Syntact read?
- Everything suppliers actually send: PDF price lists, Excel in any column logic, CSV exports, full catalogs, attachments straight from the email. Multi-column price tables, tier prices spanning several pages, catalogs with thousands of positions. The rule is simple: if a human could read the file and enter it, Syntact can too — just in hours instead of weeks.
- Does our supplier have to change anything or participate?
- No — that's the whole point. No portal anyone has to log into, no mandatory format, no process change on the supplier side. Your suppliers keep sending exactly what they send today. The dependency on the supplier's format — the reason standardized feeds never worked across the board — is gone.
- What about tier prices, discount groups, and conditions?
- They are recognized and mapped along with everything else: quantity-based tier prices, discount groups, customer-specific conditions, gross/net logic. During the pilot we define together how these structures are represented in your ERP — after that, every catalog puts them where they belong. Unclear cases are flagged and put in front of your team instead of guessed.
- Our article model is special — custom product groups, attributes, units. Does that fit?
- That is exactly what the mapping is for. During the pilot we define your target model together: product groups, attribute sets, unit logic, variant structure. Syntact maps every catalog and every price list to that model — not to a generic schema. Anything that can't be matched unambiguously is put in front of your team for a decision instead of guessed.
- What happens with duplicates and articles that already exist?
- Every article is checked against your existing data — via EAN, supplier article number, and description matching. Existing articles are updated, for example with new prices, new ones are created, and uncertain cases land flagged in the review queue. The master grows in a controlled way instead of wild — duplicate checking included, on every single catalog.
- How does it get into our ERP — and what if a connector is missing?
- Via API or standard interface: SAP, Business Central, JTL, weclapp, and others are connected; alternatively it runs through an import format your system understands. If a connector is missing, the connector guarantee applies: we build it for free, contractually guaranteed. Your ERP stays the system of record — Syntact fills it.
- We already have EDI or catalog feeds with our biggest suppliers. Why Syntact?
- Keep them — they work where they work. Syntact is the automation path for the rest: the 50, 100, 200 suppliers sending PDF and Excel, where neither EDI nor format discipline will ever take hold. That long tail is exactly where the typing happens today — and exactly where the lever is.
- Day-to-day business is at capacity — we don't have time for a project.
- The pilot is built to run alongside your day-to-day business: our solutions architect sets up the pipeline, your team provides your three most labor-intensive catalogs, a master data extract, and feedback in short sessions. And the best moment is right now — the catalog sitting in your inbox today will otherwise be typed in by hand again. Or not at all.
- What about data protection and our supplier data?
- Syntact runs GDPR-compliant in the EU — in your own cloud or on-premises if you prefer. Catalog, condition, and article data stay in your systems, and access follows your permission model. We provide the documentation your data protection officer and purchasing department need.
- What does automated supplier catalog import cost?
- The platform starts at €800 per month — and the license only starts once you're in production. Setup, catalog intake, and the ERP/PIM connection are included in the pilot package, and implementation is covered by the 50/50 guarantee. A single large catalog costs more to enter manually than the platform costs in a whole year.
Catalogs are the start: the same platform maintains your entire article master.
Attributes, variants, enrichment, continuous updates: after the catalog import, the same pipeline keeps your article master data current for good — for approval, never behind your team's back.
Automate product data managementThe next catalog is definitely coming. The question is who enters it.
Minutes of review instead of days of typing — and no supplier who has to adopt a standard before their articles make it into your ERP.