For scaling businesses with multiple locations, like franchises or retail chains, managing purchases can quickly become chaotic. When individual teams buy what they need from unapproved vendors, the result is rogue spend, wasted time, and a complete lack of financial visibility. This disorganized approach actively hinders growth and profitability.

That’s why product catalogs are essential tools for modern businesses to achieve procurement efficiency, cost control, and purchasing compliance. This article outlines how, by centralizing approved items and vendors, companies can transform chaotic business buying into a streamlined, strategic advantage. With a comprehensive  procurement and purchasing platform  like Order.co, you can create a single source of truth that empowers your entire organization to buy smarter.

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What is a product catalog in procurement?

A product catalog in procurement is a curated, digital list of pre-approved products that employees are authorized to purchase from designated vendors. It acts as a central hub for all business buying, standardizing what can be bought, by whom, and at what negotiated price, eliminating guesswork for employees.

To be effective, a procurement catalog must contain several key components:

• Include comprehensive product information: Provide users with rich product descriptions, clear images, manufacturer part numbers, and specific SKUs to eliminate ambiguity and reduce ordering errors.
• List negotiated pricing and vendor data: Feature the specific, contracted prices you've negotiated with preferred suppliers to ensure savings are realized on every transaction.
• Organize items logically: Structure items in a logical category hierarchy that makes it easy for employees to find what they need, which improves the user experience and drives adoption.
• Define access rules and policies: Embed compliance directly into the buying process by controlling which users or locations can view and purchase specific items.

Ebook

The Procurement Strategy Playbook for Modern Businesses

Learn the key pillars of a strong strategy, valuable procurement metrics to track, and initiatives you can start implementing today.

Download now

The high cost of purchasing without a product catalog

Without a centralized product catalog, businesses face significant operational friction and financial leakage. When purchasing is decentralized and unmanaged, every transaction becomes a potential source of waste and risk, leading to:

• Increased maverick spend: Employees inevitably buy off-contract or from unapproved vendors, leading to higher costs and compliance risks.
• Unmanaged tail spend: Businesses often struggle with the large volume of small, infrequent purchases from many different suppliers, creating enormous administrative overhead for AP teams.
• Operational inefficiency: Manual procurement processes are a drain on productivity, leading to errors, delays, and rush shipping fees for incorrectly ordered items.
• Inconsistent standards: Without a product catalog, multi-location businesses struggle with inconsistent standards because each location buys independently, leading to eroded brand and quality consistency.

The core benefits of procurement catalog management

Effective procurement catalog management transforms purchasing from a reactive, chaotic process into a controlled, strategic function, unlocking savings, enforcing compliance, and streamlining operations.

• Enhance cost control: Enforce the use of negotiated pricing and guide employees to preferred vendors, maximizing spend under management.
• Guarantee purchasing compliance: Ensure every purchase adheres to company policies, budgets, and approval workflows before an order is even placed.
• Streamline operations: Simplify the buying experience with a user-friendly, single source for all purchasing needs, reducing the time it takes to find and order products.
• Reduce AP workload: Drastically reduce downstream work for the accounts payable team by ensuring orders are correct and pre-approved from the start, eliminating invoice exceptions.

Common product catalog use cases by industry

Different industries tailor product catalogs to meet their unique operational needs, turning them into powerful tools for efficiency and standardization.

• Hospitality: In the  hospitality industry, a catalog helps centralize purchasing for everything from housekeeping supplies to F&B items, ensuring a consistent guest experience across properties.
• Property management:  Property management companies  can use catalogs to streamline maintenance by creating one-click lists for recurring items and unit turnover kits, accelerating repairs and reducing vacancy time.
• Healthcare: In healthcare, product catalogs are critical for ensuring patient safety and regulatory compliance. A validated item master serves as a catalog for clinical and non-clinical supplies, guiding staff to order the correct items.
• Retail & franchises: For  retail and multi-location businesses , a catalog is key to brand consistency. It enables one-click ordering to facilitate expansion, making it the best franchise purchasing software for brands focused on growth.

One retail business, Faherty Brand, leveraged product catalogs with Order.co to accelerate and standardize ordering for new store openings. Launching a new store used to take days, but with custom catalogs, the Manager of Retail Operations shared that it “now takes five minutes. It’s just one click of the button, and then it’s all in your cart and you’re good to go.”

Ebook

The Procurement Strategy Playbook for Modern Businesses

Learn the key pillars of a strong strategy, valuable procurement metrics to track, and initiatives you can start implementing today.

Download now

The Order.co advantage: Key product catalog management features

For growing, multi-location businesses, a strategic product catalog is the foundation for transforming from chaotic purchasing to a controlled procure-to-pay process. By unifying all your vendors and products into a single, AI-powered platform like Order.co, you can eliminate rogue spend and empower your teams to buy the right things, from the right suppliers, at the right price — every time.

Order.co’s unified catalog offers superior control and efficiency:

• Unify everything in one place: Consolidate products from every single vendor into one marketplace for total visibility over 100% of your spend.
• Guide every purchase: Create custom product lists with robust  purchase order approvals  and workflows embedded directly into the shopping experience, ensuring every dollar of spend is pre-approved.
• Leverage AI-powered sourcing: The platform's AI actively identifies cost-saving opportunities by suggesting alternative products or vendors with better pricing.
• Automate accounts payable: Receive itemized invoices each week or month for all purchases across all vendors. This automates reconciliation and eliminates the manual work that plagues AP teams.

Ready to transform your procurement with a unified product catalog?  Schedule a demo with Order.co today .

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