Every retailer above a certain size has the same meeting. Someone presents a figure, someone else has a different figure, and the next twenty minutes go on working out whose is right rather than what to do about it.
The systems are not broken. They are answering slightly different questions and presenting the answers as if they were the same one.
The same product, defined four ways
A single item can legitimately be:
- A SKU in the EPOS, created by whoever set up the till file.
- A product in the storefront, with a variant structure invented by whoever built the site.
- A line in the ERP, keyed to a supplier code.
- A pick unit at the fulfilment partner, defined by how it ships.
Nobody made a mistake. Each definition suits its own system. The problem is that no system holds the definition that connects them, so the join is done by a person, in a spreadsheet, every month.
Reconciliation is a treadmill
The instinctive fix is a reporting layer that pulls from everything and resolves the differences. It works, briefly. Then a supplier changes a code, a bundle is introduced, a variant is split, and the mapping quietly rots.
The reason this never ends is that reconciliation happens after the data is created. Every fix is retrospective, and the sources carry on generating the same divergence at the same rate. You are cleaning up behind a process rather than changing it.
Fix collection, not reporting
The durable version is duller and cheaper over time:
- One authoritative definition of a product, in one system, that the others reference rather than redefine.
- Creation in one place. If a new line can be created in three systems, you have three product catalogues regardless of what the architecture diagram claims.
- Codes that are meaningless. Identifiers carrying supplier, season or category information get restructured when the business does, and every historic record becomes wrong.
- Validation at entry, where somebody can still fix it, rather than a report three weeks later that nobody owns.
Where the argument usually gets lost
Someone points out that this is a big change and the reporting layer is cheaper. That is true this quarter and stops being true fairly quickly, because the reconciliation cost recurs and grows with the catalogue while the fix is paid once.
The stronger argument is not cost though. It is that reconciled data is confidently wrong — it produces a number with no visible caveats, and people make buying decisions on it.
The test
Pick one product. Ask each system what it is, what it costs, and how many exist. Then ask which of those answers other people are already making decisions with.
If nobody can say which is authoritative, the reporting is not the project.
If your retail numbers disagree with each other, get in touch, or read more about how we work in retail.