💼 Scenario
RetailMax is a national retail chain with 800 stores and an e-commerce platform generating $4 billion in annual revenue. The company manages a product catalog of 250,000 SKUs sourced from 3,000 suppliers. Customer complaints about incorrect product descriptions, wrong pricing, and inaccurate inventory availability on the e-commerce platform have increased 340% in the past year.
Analysis reveals that 18% of product records have incomplete attributes, 7% have pricing discrepancies between the point-of-sale system and e-commerce platform, and 12% of inventory counts are inaccurate. Each supplier provides product data in different formats with varying levels of completeness. The merchandising team manually enters product data into three separate systems with no validation rules.
The CFO estimates that poor product data quality is costing the company $28 million annually through returns from incorrect descriptions, lost sales from items showing as out-of-stock when available, and overstocking of slow-moving items. The board has demanded a remediation plan within 60 days.