How Graybar streamlines catalog management with Mirakl Catalog Platform

For nearly a century, Fortune 500 distributor Graybar has been a leader in the North American market, specializing in electrical, communications, data networking, and industrial products. Catering to more than 155,000 clients across construction, commercial, institutional, government (CIG), and industrial sectors, Graybar's offerings cover everything from new construction to infrastructure upgrades, renovations, maintenance, and original equipment manufacturing.

Why Graybar needed a catalog management platform

Ensuring consistent and rich product data for end customers is essential for Graybar’s technical offerings, which total more than 1 million products. Adding new products to its catalog from its network of 1,200 supplier partners was a long and painful process, testing the limits of manual catalog management procedures.

Each new SKU typically took days of back-and-forth for Graybar's online data team, with suppliers sharing files manually over email. Dealing with suppliers of different size and IT maturity, with a wide variety of catalog formats, added even more complexity. Graybar needed a supplier portal that would allow suppliers to upload their product catalogs autonomously, ensure completeness and quality of product data, and free Graybar’s online team to focus on value-added tasks. Adding new products to its catalog from its network of 1,200 supplier partners was a long and painful process, testing the limits of manual catalog management procedures.

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Why Graybar chose the Mirakl Catalog Platform

Graybar explored building an in-house solution, but quickly determined that it would take too much time and require too much resource investment, pushing implementation out for more than a year. Other solutions on the market, such as Graybar’s existing PIM (Product Information Management) system, didn’t offer supplier centric capabilities and the bilateral communication that was needed to enable true collaboration with their suppliers.

Mirakl Catalog Platform, integrated on top of the Graybar PIM, emerged as the most relevant option for Graybar's needs, offering:

• Increased operational efficiency: With Mirakl Catalog Platform, Graybar can centralize and manage all product data from all suppliers via a single interface. Updates are seamless and advanced validation rules automatically check data consistency with business requirements.

• Autonomy for suppliers to manage product data: Graybar’s suppliers can easily add products to the platform autonomously, enabling quicker onboarding and reducing time spent by the Graybar team. Flexible catalog integration methods cater to the needs of all suppliers, regardless of their level of sophistication, and allow them to use their own native format using AI-powered mapping tools.

• More complete, accurate, and enriched product data, powered by AI: Products are analyzed to flag errors and to make AI-driven recategorization recommendations. AI-powered tools enrich product content, attributes, and translations while optimizing for SEO ranking.

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• Speed to market: Graybar’s suppliers can now add new SKUs and have them live in a single day, allowing Graybar to bring new products to clients much faster than with previous manual processes.

• Fast integration into tech stack: By integrating Mirakl's supplier portal, Graybar was able to introduce a new catalog management solution in just a few short months, without having to draw on in-house resources.

• More streamlined management processes: Mirakl Catalog Platform has significantly enhanced operational efficiency for Graybar. The company can easily manage thousands of products, including updating product availability and adding new items, all from a unified interface. Product data enrichment is 30 times faster than manual processes.