Unifying 140+ supplier feeds for a spare-parts distributor
How a spare-parts distributor evaluated catalog unification across 140+ supplier feeds
A European spare-parts distributor receives continuing Excel and CSV price files from more than 140 suppliers. The business holds approximately 20,000 products in its warehouse, but its broader catalog contains around 5 million records across four companies, each with its own internal identifiers.
The operational problem was not simply importing files. Supplier records had to be transformed, deduplicated, matched to the correct internal product, and evaluated before any update could reach the ERP.
Claro ingest supplier feeds, normalize incoming data, resolve product identity, apply confidence-based rules, and send approved updates into the existing catalog.
At a glance
Industry: Household-electronics spare-parts distribution
Region: Europe
Operating model: Four-company holding with an ERP-centered product catalog
Scale: 20,000 warehouse SKUs, approximately 5 million catalog records, and more than 140 supplier feeds
Primary Claro workflow: Supplier feed unification and catalog matching
The challenge
Only around 30% of products carried a GTIN. Many remaining items relied on manufacturer and MPN combinations, while OEM alternatives sometimes had neither a clean global identifier nor an obvious one-to-one relationship.
Even simple formatting differences could generate duplicate records. One example involved the same supplier file being processed with and without leading zeros, causing equivalent part numbers to appear as different products.
Domain rules also mattered. A suffix in a manufacturer part number could indicate an alternative part, but that convention was specific to the category and could not be inferred safely by a generic language model.
Why the existing approach was not enough
A PIM could store the resulting data but did not solve the repeated feed transformation and identity-resolution work. A generic MDM project would also have been too broad for the specific operational workflow.
The distributor had already built internal tooling, but maintaining transformations for more than 140 suppliers created a permanent engineering burden.
The required system needed configurable rules, matching based on weak identifiers, traceable confidence, and explicit controls over which updates could be written back.
The solution
Claro was designed as a feed-processing layer above the ERP. Each supplier file is mapped into a common structure while original values remain available for audit.
Incoming records are compared with the internal catalog using identifiers, normalized manufacturer names, MPN patterns, descriptions, and category-specific logic. The result is not treated as universally correct: confidence thresholds determine whether a record can be accepted, reviewed, or rejected.
This creates a repeatable supplier-feed workflow without requiring the holding companies to replace their ERP or agree on a new enterprise data platform first.
How the workflow works
Receive supplier Excel and CSV files — New price lists and product feeds are ingested in the format supplied by each manufacturer or wholesaler.
Normalize supplier-specific formats — Field names, leading zeros, manufacturer names, units, and category values are transformed into comparable representations.
Detect duplicates and conflicting records — Claro identifies records created by formatting differences or repeated supplier submissions before they enter the master catalog.
Match supplier products to internal products — Products are resolved using available GTINs, manufacturer and MPN combinations, descriptions, and category-specific rules.
Apply confidence-based update rules — High-confidence records can proceed automatically, uncertain records are reviewed, and low-confidence records remain separated.
Write approved updates to the ERP — Validated matches and selected supplier changes are returned to the existing catalog and reprocessed when later files arrive.
Why this workflow matters
Spare-parts catalogs combine high volume with weak identifiers and category-specific exceptions. The durable solution is a controlled ingestion and matching loop that can learn supplier formats without giving every feed direct access to the ERP.
Key takeaway
The distributor did not need another place to store five million records. It needed a trustworthy route from supplier files to internal product identity and then to governed ERP updates.
Frequently asked questions
Why are supplier feeds difficult to unify? Suppliers use different field names, identifier formats, units, and conventions. The same product can therefore arrive in several incompatible representations.
Can products be matched without GTINs? Yes. Claro can combine manufacturer, MPN, descriptions, category context, and customer-specific rules, then assign a confidence level to the result.
How are supplier-specific rules handled? Rules such as meaningful MPN suffixes can be configured as deterministic checks alongside probabilistic matching.
Can Claro write directly to an ERP? Yes, subject to the customer’s approval logic and integration design. Many teams begin with reviewed CSV output before enabling automated write-back.
Does Claro replace the distributor’s PIM or MDM? No. It handles the operational feed transformation, matching, validation, and write-back process above the systems already in place.
